GHG Emissions now on Google Earth™
The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has developed a high resolution digital view of man-made green house gas (GHG) emissions for any 10 km x 10 km area in the world. Scientists from the JRC Institute for Environment and Sustainability (IES) have made it possible to visualize the distribution of GHG emissions all over the world at local level through an add-on layer to Google Earth™.
This application brings environmental information closer to the world’s citizens. By simply entering a city name, the amount of greenhouse gases released since 1970 can be visualized. In addition, the main sources of GHG emissions in the year 2005 can be identified: industries (fuel combustion, process and waste emissions in energy and manufacturing industries); transport (road, rail, shipping); residential fuel combustion and waste handling; and agriculture.
As in my last post Jeremy pointed out “the environmental footprint of their premises, logistics and supply chain, paper and ink consumption, utility consumptions (water, electricity,…), transportation and travels, waste, etc. must also be a point of concern”. Using this application we can definitely get a better view to the complete picture.
How to Use the Application:
- Downloaded EDGAR GHG viewer 2005
Once you have installed Google Earth, install EDGAR GHG viewer and restart the application. Its just a matter of some clicks. I was really excited to see it for the first time. I am attaching a few snapshots that I took today morning. Try it yourself, you will understand how grave the scene is atleast in Europe, China, India and USA.
Snapshot 1 – US of A. Snapshot 2 – Europe and Middle East with Africa
Snapshot 3 : Asia.
Representations : The data presented here covers carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorcarbons (HFCs), perfluorcarbons (PFCs) and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). In order to compare different greenhouse gas emissions the emissions of individual gases have to be converted into CO2-equivalents. The Green Areas of Map has 0.00 -0.10 G equivalent of CO2 and Black/Blue spots are worst affected areas with or more 250 G equivalent of CO2 .
Personally, I hope this modeled simulation of World Wide GHG emissions will help a lot of people involved in Carbon Foot printing or planning to join the Green movement world wide. Let me know your ideas and reviews about this. The data sets are also available for download (free ) at the link.
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Tags: carbon emissions, energy, environment, GHG, Google, green, Green IT
Future, Globalization, Google, Green IT, Technology
“For those new to Tech IT Easy who could obviously not remember the initial announcement, Anand Kishore Raju is a new blogger on Tech IT Easy, who will focus on providing you with analyses of greening the internet, carbon footprints, energy and power figures of the internet and web2.0. Anand, the floor is now yours…”
The debate on climate change has moved beyond an argument about whether it is happening or not, to a discussion about what can be done to tackle its root causes. Pollution and energy savings are keywords that are becoming more and more of interest to people and to governments across the globe, and the research community is also becoming more sensible towards these topics.
McKinsey & Co. recently reported that the world’s 44 Million servers* consume about 0.5 percent of total electricity productions across the globe and emits about 80 megatons of Carbon Dioxide a year, which is nearly the emissions of entire countries like Argentina or the Netherlands (Data needs an Update ).
Recent Studies have also estimated that power consumption related to ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) can be somewhere from 2% to 10% of the worldwide power consumption. This trend is expected to increase notably in the near future. Not surprisingly, reports also confirm that only 20% of ICT carbon emissions derive from manufacturing, while 80% arise from equipment use. With increasing penetration rates of Internet broadband in Asia and Africa these numbers are all set to scale newer heights.
One of the ways to be Green and lower the Carbon Footprint is to Just have less and Do less.
No houses, no cars, no travel, no PCs, no Internet, as seen from the night time satellite image illustrating power usage in North Korea and South Korea. Driving the society back in Stone Age is not the real sense of Going Green. North Korea as compared to rest of world may be emitting lesser Carbon Dioxide but definitely its not A Model Green Society. This scenario becomes clearer in the the second over night pic of the region . The black spot represents North Korea surrounded with developed neighbors like Japan, China and S.Korea.
By Green, I mean to be Sustainable. To be more specific its the ” development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In my upcoming posts I would be writing more about various aspects of Greener Digital Ecosystems with focus on Operations with minimum environmental impact and having long term sustainability.
PS : Some data in the post needs an Update.
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Tags: carbon emissions, energy, environment, green, Green IT, green networking, power consumption
Globalization, Green IT, Internet, Sustainability, Technology, Telecommunications, web2.0
Dear everyone,
I am extremely happy to start off this new year by introducing a fresh face on Tech IT Easy, Anand Kishore Raju, who will be blogging with us in 2010. His main areas of focus as a blogger will be greening the internet, carbon footprints, energy and power figures of the internet and web2.0.
Anand is currently working as a Research Engineer at Telecom ParisTech (ENST). His area of research focuses on the Energy aspects of the Internet, what the scientific community calls “Green Networking”. His efforts are directed towards making Computer Network Science aware that processing, moving and storing bits has a cost in terms of energy and in terms of the Carbon Emission Footprint.
In the past, Anand had also worked at Collaborative Systems Group (ColSys) at Bilkent University, Turkey, where he developed a taxonomy for user properties, influence factors for feedback quality in web 2.0, existing and novel models for deviation types and their detection. He also holds a degree in Computer Science and Engineering and aspires to join HEC in near future.
Anand joins a smart team of collaborators, some of which also work in green computing and many of which share an interest in this important topic for sure. As such, please join us in welcoming Anand to the team and I hope you enjoy reading his words on Tech IT Easy!
Happy New Year,
The Tech IT Easy team
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Tags: carbon emissions, energy, environment, green networking, power consumption
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