The Fight against CO2

The Fight against CO2| What Is Our Carbon Footprint?

What Is Our Carbon Footprint?

Your challenge is to identify local sources of carbon emissions and/or estimate amounts of carbon emissions for different human activities to aid scientists in mapping carbon sources and sinks. How can you inform decisions to adapt to the consequences of a changing world and aid policy makers in making plans for the future?

Summary

The exponential growth that CO2 has had in the air in recent years has established a problem for society. The idea of the project is that through studies carried out by NASA of CO2 emissions, to be able to account for their production by industries and growth projects of societies, and to give a monetary value to those emissions based on cost. of eliminating that amount of CO2.In this way we want to be able to add to the project, in addition to its economic profitability, the weight of the externality of its carbon footprint. In order to stimulate the creation of greener industries, and minimize the sources of CO2 generation.

How We Addressed This Challenge

The great growth of the population, the industries, the economy, is a sign of the capacity we have to create, progress and grow. But this growth carries a dark side that for a long time in the quest for rapid growth, failed to do so in a sustainable way for our planet.

A reflection of this problem is the exponential growth in the emission of CO2 in the air, which the planet cannot process by itself, and the only thing that has been achieved is its increase. This affects the way of life of many species, since the accumulation of CO2 is affecting the temperature of the planet, and thus modifying our ecosystem.

NASA has been working on the detection of CO2, through satellites that orbit the earth such as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO-2) and monitor the progress.

But it is not only enough with the detection of the problem, but it is also necessary to look for solutions that allow us to continue developing as societies.

Through studies and work on how to mitigate this increase, the idea arises of considering ways in which CO2 can be processed and removed from the environment. Both the oceans and the forests can perform the task of absorbing CO2, but despite the fact that in the months of September-October they can mainly lower the level of pollution in the air, more quantity is necessary to carry out this work.

As a result, we propose a more sustainable way to continue growing but considering the footprint we leave by doing so.

A difficulty that arises when carrying out projects, roads, cities, factories, bridges, power plants, is the decision of which is the most profitable project. Unfortunately, most of these decisions are made through economic evaluations that hardly include the cost of contamination.

To achieve greener development, we wish to include an emission cost in this monetary evaluation of the project given the negative externality it generates.

Thanks to the data extracted from CO2 production, we can calculate how much is the CO2 production of the different infrastructures that we want to carry out, and through the studies of the cost of mitigation and elimination of CO2, provide the monetary cost equivalent to that process for the broadcast that it performs.

This study wishes to contribute when making political and economic decisions, the choice of more ecological projects that in a simply economic evaluation may be rejected due to lack of profitability.

In this way we will be able to reward and stimulate innovation to create increasingly ecological projects, thus reducing CO2 emissions in the environment.

How We Developed This Project

Inspiration: The Planet we want

Although most of our lives we have talked about the problem of accumulation of CO2 in the environment, there has not been a substantial improvement. Our interest is caring for the planet; promote initiatives that reduce the carbon footprint, improve the functioning of ecology, societies, and the economy, with all of them aiming to recover the future of our planet.

Thanks to the need and interest in solving this problem, we have a large accumulation of data on the movements and accumulation of CO2. With them we hope to make decisions that reduce the carbon footprint.

CO2, how and why it affects us

A minor but very important component of the atmosphere, CO2 is released through natural processes such as respiration and volcanic eruptions and through human activities such as deforestation, changes in land use, and the burning of fossil fuels. This is the most important and lasting "forcing" of climate change.

Higher levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have negative effects on crop yield. Although increased CO2 can stimulate plant growth, research has shown that it can also reduce the nutritional value of most food crops by reducing the concentrations of essential proteins and minerals in most plants.

There is a greater than 95% probability that human-made greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide) have caused much of the rise in temperatures on Earth over the past 50 years.

It affects us in many ways, both economically (increased energy and food costs, in addition to natural disasters such as floods or hurricanes are expensive), warmer temperatures, floods and droughts (they combine and create suitable conditions for rats, mosquitoes as well as other pests that are disease carriers thrive). Also diseases such as cholera, West Nile virus, Lyme disease, dengue fever… are increasing and are no longer limited to tropical climates.

Iniciativas de mitigación

To begin to mitigate the effects of climate change, we must start by reducing human emissions of greenhouse gases, any of these are coupled with energy consumption, which in turn depends on economic activities.

Before this, we must adapt to the preservation of outdoor spaces, emergency response, community participation, change in land use, afforestation and adding mitigation to reduce vulnerability, for example, taking into account energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable transportation, methane capture and use, carbon sinks, green infrastructure and improvements in industrial processes.

It is necessary to decrease the levels of deforestation and degradation of forests, forests and other vegetation on land remove up to 30% of our emissions as humans add more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, forests around the world use it to grow faster, thus reducing the amount of CO2 that remains in the air, the viability of planting trees or plants will help mitigate a large part of CO2 and makes it a great initiative for its mitigation.

A study conducted by NASA, found the large volume of CO2 processed by tropical forests, being even greater than that processed by boreal forests. Although CO2 stimulates a more accelerated growth of vegetation, the large accumulation in the air of it causes climatic changes that affect important factors for the growth of forests, such as water scarcity, the increase in the temperature of the earth, and forest fires that not only reduce the amount of forests, but also generate large amounts of CO2.

Studies by the University of Seville, calculate the absorption of CO2, by the different species of trees and their maturation time, important data to take into account.

Another of the main initiatives is to reduce the use of fossil fuels, which are the main source of emission, for that renewable energies are a great option, NASA developed a technology that can help, allows converting CO2 into fuel through the use of solar powered thin film devices (these metal oxide films are manufactured to produce a photoelectrochemical cell). Converting CO2 into fuel before it is released into the atmosphere is one way to mitigate the burning of fossil fuels. Still important, it results in a zero carbon footprint by recycling CO2 into fuels that are compatible for all fuel service companies out there.

Space study of the Earth

Although the idea that is generated when thinking about NASA is space and the study of what is beyond our planet, it has a long work on planet earth. Today we have several satellites in orbit that study the phenomena that we have in the world.

We can focus our research work mainly on three satellites, whose main objective is the study of carbon dioxide and the atmosphere. They are:

-Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)

Is an American environmental science satellite which launched on 2 July 2014. As a mission the climate monitoring and operated by NASA.

-Orbiting Carbon Observatory-3 (OCO-3)

It is a space instrument that investigates questions such as the distribution of CO2 on Earth, but has been adapted to work on the ISS (International Space Station). Put into operation on May 4, 2019 and is operated by NASA.

-Greenhouse Gases Observing Satellite (GOSAT)

It is a satellite known by the name of Ibuki that is dedicated to monitoring gases in the atmosphere. The GOSAT was developed

and operated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched on 23 January 2009.That accumulates its data in ODIAC pioneered the combined use of space-based nighttime light data and individual power plant emission / location profiles to estimate the global spatial extent of fossil fuel CO2 emissions.

The data is shared between both agencies to combat greenhouse effects.

The easy access to the data extracted by the satellites, makes it possible for us to know more about the behavior of CO2 in the atmosphere and to have a better measure of both the effects it produces and its progress.

The Project and ours Difficulties

The idea of modeling the issuance of different infrastructure projects, and being able to give them a monetary perspective to be able to promote the creation of more sustainable projects, requires a careful analysis of data. We can obtain such data, since there is the knowledge of the emission areas, and the production of different agents, but as it is necessary a good data management that minimizes the bias as much as possible. Due to the large volume of data to handle, it was difficult for us to carry out a prediction and cost evaluation model that is sufficiently accurate.

It would be very interesting to work on the project with the ability to analyze both a large volume of data, such as biological knowledge of the process of trees and their time, and an economic management of projects that today involve more discussion of their environmental impact.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

Uruguay

Greenhouse gas emissions by sector (Uruguay, 2016) Greenhouse gas emissions are measured in tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e).

Agriculture - 27.39 million t.

Transport - 3.6 million t.

Waste - 1.97 million t.

Industry - 1.13 million t.

Manufacturing and Construction - 800,000 t.

Electricity and Heat - 800,000 t.

Aviation and Maritime Transport - 800,000 t.

Other fuel combustion - 710.000 t.

Buildings - 600,000 t.

Fugitive emissions - 10,000 t.

Land use change and forestry - -10.52 million t.

As we can see by the numbers, the agricultural industry is the one that generates the most waste, followed by the pollution generated by the burning of fuel in transport. Areas in which policies must be found to carry them out in a more sustainable way.

CO2 emissions in Uruguay in 2018 have increased by 233 kilotonnes, 3.48% compared to 2017. Per capita CO2 emissions, which have increased in the last year, were 2 tons per inhabitant in 2018.

Data Extraction

Looking at the database generated by the GASAT satellite operated by JAXA, we can make a data source that shows us different emission points and how it has behaved over time.

Let's look at some example of it:

Accessing https://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/GOSAT/CO2_monitor/index_Ver.K.V3.html

We can observe different possible points of emission and by selecting our emitter of interest we can see its CO2 production