 |
This is the carbon footprint of a school that uses HK$4.5 million of electricity per year. The area in red that is most of the Kowloon peninsular would have to be covered by trees to soak up the carbon dioxide generated by this one school's electricity use alone. |
A carbon footprint is a means of expressing how much effect our carbon emissions have on our planet. The idea is that the footprint is the area of land needed to soak up our carbon dioxide emissions. (There is much debate about how the absorption figures should be calculated - forests sometimes burn and re-release the stored carbon, and mature forests arguably absorb very little or no carbon dioxide.) We've taken a sequestration rate applicable to tropical rainforests of 3 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare per year. The area of tropical rainforest needed to soak up the school's emissions is 1% of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region's land area. Here's the same picture again, but larger:
Set as favorite
Bookmark
Email this
Comments (0)
Subscribe to this comment's feed
Write comment
