Hi, I'm trying to figure our new buildings carbon offset (carbon footpring), is this possible?

Question

I work in a very Republican run area for a local government who is building a new Townhall. The Trustees have allowed me to entertain them with the idea of planting enough trees or other things to create a carbon neutral, or close to, building. How can I do this without "out of pocket" expense? How do I figure out the amount of trees necessary to offset the carbon emission? Any advice or help would be greatly appreciated. I speak in front of the board on Friday. I know they won't put much money into this, so I'm trying to do this "grassroots" style, just myself. I can't afford for a private company to figure it out. Please help!

Answer 1

In general it would be very difficult to calculate the carbon footprint through building without exact details of the materials used and the origin of the materials.

If you have an inventory of materials I can try to investigate the carbon footprint of each. Feel free to email them to me.

There are also ways which you can improve the buildings carbon footprint using alternative materials which will not effect the cost considerably.

You may consider investigating "slag" from coal fired power plants which can be mixed with concrete, this reduces the Co2 used in production and helps with the disposal of slag. It also actually improves the quality and strength of concrete.

You may wish if applicable in the design that large cavity wall are used, this should not add to the cost if there is already cavities included, but allows you to install bonded beaded graphite insulation which in domestic houses can save 2.5 tonnes of Co2 a year from heating. You should recoup the cost within a year. Cost is about $700 in a domestic house, but there should be grants available to local government.

Roof insulation should be included for a relatively low cost (about $300) this will prevent about 25% of heat loss, and again the cost will be recouped exceptionally fast. Again there should be grants to local government.

You should also note trees only in certain circumstances can offset carbon emissions and in some case actually emit more carbon emissions than they remove. To know which trees are best suited it would depend on your location and local environment.

To give you a basis for figures, a local development of Carbon Neutral apartments in London cited that the cost to produce the building was only an increase of 5% overall.

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Answer 2

um well i dont know much but if you plant tres near a building  the roots will grow untill they reach the town hall . Thats all i have

Answer 3

Well it might not as bad as u think . In place of guessing how much CO2 there  is go measure it.There are some excellent meters and u might find that u are already Corbin neutral or at least create a base line to work from. Also it is not just trees but any plant.

Answer 4

You'll need to know the architects design for the lighting, heating and air conditioning systems to find out how much electricity the building will use in a year, plus make an educated guess on how much power will be used by copiers, computers, the kitchen etc.  Once you have a believable estimate for annual electricity usage, your local utility should be able to tell you how much oil, gas or coal they burn in order to make a kilowatt-hour of electricity.  Then from that fuel usage, calculate how much CO2 will go into the air as a result of burning all of that fuel; that will take an answer from a chemist etc.  Finally, a biologist etc will have to provide info on what rate so many of what species of trees will convert CO2 back into wood.  But as you can easily imagine....in order to stay warm during the winter, this building would have to burn firewood at a much faster rate than a handful of trees could be expected to reprocess the resultant CO2 back into wood.

Good luck on your presentation.