Green House Emission Reduction Strategies

This assignment analyzes the potential for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in a house by focusing on energy consumption from various household appliances. It examines the current emissions of a specific house built in 1992 and proposes replacements or modifications for items like the washing machine, refrigerator, and television to achieve lower energy usage. The goal is to demonstrate how these changes can significantly decrease the house's annual greenhouse gas emissions, ultimately aligning with a more sustainable lifestyle.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the Existing House........................................................................4
Measures to Reduce the Greenhouse Gas Emission......................................................................16
Transport....................................................................................................................................16
Heating and Cooling..................................................................................................................17
Hot Water...................................................................................................................................19
Washing Machine......................................................................................................................20
Refrigeration..............................................................................................................................21
Television...................................................................................................................................22
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................23
Bibliography..................................................................................................................................25

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Introduction
Greenhouse gases absorb and emit radiation within the earth’s atmosphere. Consequently, this
leads to the greenhouse effect that causes an increase in the atmospheric temperature. Examples
of greenhouse gases are Carbon (IV) Oxide, methane, ozone and water vapour. Households
contribute to the emission of these gases. The lifestyle and behaviour of household users is a
major determinant on the amount of the greenhouse gas emitted into the atmosphere (Ramseur,
et al., 2008). Activities in the house such as washing, cooking and bathing may result in the use
of energy that contributes to greenhouse gas emission for example, use of fossil fuels as a source
of energy. This paper focus on the greenhouse gas emission for a house with four occupants. The
plan for the house is as shown below.

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Greenhouse Gas Emissions for the Existing House
The area of the house is calculated as follows:
(3.53×2.5) + (3×2.5) + (2×2.5) + (2.5×2.5) + (3.5×3.5) + (6.49×4.1) = 66.434 m2

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Figure 1: House details

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Figure 2: Personal Transport
The members of the household do not use public transport to commute.
Figure 3: Household air travel

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Figure 4: Building floor and roof
Figure 5: House windows

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Figure 6: External walls
Figure 7: Air leakage

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Figure 8: Heating System
Figure 9: Cooling system

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Figure 10: Hot water service
Figure 11: Washing Machine

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Figure 12: Dishwasher
Figure 13: Hand dishwashing

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Figure 14: Bathing
Figure 15: Clothes dryer

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Figure 16: Household lighting
Figure 17: Refrigeration

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Figure 18: Household main cooker
Figure 19: Microwave
No data on drinks provided hence the input was nil.

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Figure 20: Drinks
Figure 21: Household laptops

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Figure 22: House television
Details on other appliances were not provided hence no details were entered for those appliances.
Food, drinks and waste were not considered.
Figure 23: Greenhouse gas emission graphs

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Measures to Reduce the Greenhouse Gas Emission
Transport
From the graphs above, the household greenhouse gas emission resulting from the use of private
transport by the household is 16.5 tons while that of a green household is 2.766. This may be due
to the number of cars present in the household and their usage. All the household occupants own
vehicles which they use to commute to work on a daily basis. Vehicles contribute to the emission
of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. A solution to reduce the household greenhouse gas
emission would be to use public transport to commute to work. Increase in the use of public
transport instead of private cars leads to a reduction in the use of fossil fuel and greenhouse gas
emission (Bulkeley & Betsill, 2005). Instead of 20 people using their personal vehicle to
commute, it would be better if all used one vehicle of high capacity hence leading to a reduction
in the amount of green house gas emission. The figure below shows that if all the house
occupants used the same train to commute to work daily, the greenhouse gas emission would be
reduced significantly.

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Figure 24: Greenhouse gas emission for public transport
Heating and Cooling
Heating and cooling systems account for some of the largest amounts of energy usage in homes
and commercial buildings hence significantly contributing to greenhouse gas emission. To
increase their efficiency and effectiveness, several things can be recommended. These are:
1. Ensuring regular maintenance of the system by qualified persons.
2. The control for the systems should be improved.
3. Where possible, control can be automated.
Regular and scheduled maintenance of the heating and cooling system increases their overall
efficiency hence leading to a reduction in energy consumption. Consequently, this leads to a
reduction in the amount of greenhouse gas emission (Kruger & Seville, 2013). The house under

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consideration needs to have a regular schedule for the maintenance of its heating and cooling
system. Also, the recommendation that the thermostat be set at 15oC after 10 PM in the
bedrooms during winter should be strictly adhered to. The system should be switched off in the
lounge once people go to sleep. The bedrooms occupy
( 3.53× 2.5 ) +(3.5 × 3.5)
66.434 × 100=31.72 %
Figure 25: Heating system after improvements
There should be provision of floor insulation to prevent heat loss or gain trough the floor. Floors
having heat resistance of above 2.0 will have minimal heat loss (Siegenthaler, 2012). I would
therefore recommend the installation of an R 2.5 floor insulation. This would ensure that heat is
conserved hence the heating/cooling system would require to run for a lesser period of time
hence less greenhouse gas emissions.

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Figure 26: Floor with R2.5 insulation
Hot Water
Solar energy is considered to be clean energy because it does not result into air pollution or
greenhouse gas emission. Installation of solar panels in a house provides an alternative source of
power for household activities hence reducing overreliance on the traditional sources of power
that are responsible to air pollution (Crawley, 2016). I would therefore recommend the
installation of solar panels to provide an alternative source of power for water heating. For this
case, I would consider a 70% solar boost.

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Figure 27: Solar boost of 70% for hot water service
Washing Machine
The occupants of the house own an old washing machine. Old technology is known to be
inefficient in the use of energy. Modern and new washing machines consume less amount of
energy and utilize the little power that they take efficiently (Byrne, 2014). This results to savings
in energy and water. I would therefore recommend that the residents of the house purchase a
newer and more modern washing machine with a 3 star rating, typical top loader, 7kg capacity,
temperature of around 40oC, with a hot and cold tape.

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Figure 28: New washing machine
Refrigeration
The refrigerator in the house was manufactured in the year 1992. This is an old refrigerator and
may be using all technology that is inefficient and a high consumer of power. In general, modern
refrigerators use far less amount of energy compared to refrigerators of the 20th Century
(Jorgensen, 2006). Replacing the current refrigerator with a modern one( year 2009+) with
similar properties as the previous one will result into lower greenhouse gas emission. This is
because, modern fridges use less energy, hence the available power usage is reduced resulting
into a reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases.

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Figure 29: Modern Refrigerator
Television
The current television set is a 50 inch LCD set. LCDs use liquid crystals to display images. In
contrast, LED televisions use light emitting diodes that use relatively more power and provide
better images (Deshmukh, 2005). As the size of the television set increases, so does its energy
needs. It would therefore be recommendable if the occupants of the house used a 32 inch
LED/LCD television set. This would result into power savings and consequently, a reduction in
the greenhouse gas emission as shown below.

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Figure 30: New Television set
Conclusion
The existing house has greenhouse gas emission that is, 28.613 tons per annum. For a typical
green household, the amount of greenhouse gas emission (excluding food, shopping and waste)
can be calculate from the graphs in figure 31. The amount is 6.925 tons of greenhouse gases per
annum. Also, from figure 1, it can be seen that the amount of greenhouse gases emission reduces
if the proposed changes are made in the existing house. The greenhouse gas emission reduces to
5.777 tons which is less than that of a green household.

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Figure 31: Graphs of greenhouse gas emissions for new house

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Bibliography
Bulkeley, H. & Betsill, M. M., 2005. Cities and Climate Change: Urban Sustainability and
Global Environmental Governance. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge.
Byrne, K., 2014. Bath Advanced Science: Environmental Science. 2nd ed. London: Oxford
University Press.
Crawley, G. M. ed., 2016. Solar Energy. Hackensack: World Scientific Publishing.
Deshmukh, A. V., 2005. Microcontrollers: Theory and Applications. New Delhi: McGrawhill
Publishing.
Jorgensen, S. E., 2006. Eco-Exergy as Sustainability. Southampton: WIT Press.
Kruger, A. & Seville, C., 2013. Green Buildings: Principles & Practices in Residential
Construction. New York: Delmar.
Ramseur, J. L., Parker, L. & Yacobucci, B. D. eds., 2008. Greenhouse Gases: Management,
Reduction and Impact. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Siegenthaler, J., 2012. Modern Hydronic Heating: For Residential and Light Commercial
Buldings. 3rd ed. New York: Delmar.