How to slash 40% carbon emission by 2020

Hazimi Ismail Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi Mara (UiTM) Shah Alam

The climate changes all over the world initiate the people to think and worry about the global warming. In 2010 as example, the wet season that is always happen in East Coast States, Kelantan, Terengganu, Pahang and East Malaysia looked like immigrated to Kedah and Perlis. Globally, the climate changes became worse when the snow storm occurred in European countries in 2010 was one of the worst scenarios in recorded history. The global warming is one of the consequences of abundance CO2emission in atmosphere. As we know, CO2 is the highest contributor to the green house effect that causes the global warming nowadays. In order to reduce or limit the CO2 abundance in the atmosphere, we have to find ways and take the actions. In this essay, I tried to categorize the ways into 3 main approaches. Number one is the actions need to be taken by the industrialists, second is to be applied in transportation industry and the third one is to be acted by civilian or normal people like me. Energy production and industry are the main contributors to the CO2 emission all over the world. The electricity generation is mainly generated from the fossil fuel such as coal, natural gas and petroleum. These types of energy resources need the combustion process to drive the turbine in converting energy into electricity form. As chemically proceeded, the CO2will be emitted along with the water and some other impurities gases. In order to reduce the emission from the energy generation, we have to find the alternative energy resources. The natural resources such as solar, wind, wave and others are cleaner way despite their inefficiencies in the process. There is a new technology have been developed where the CO2 is separated from emission gases and stored in the storage under the seas. The name for this project is called Carbon Capture and Storage System (CCS). However, this kind of initiative is costly and still in early stage of development. In some readings, the transportation is claimed as one fifth of the total CO2 emitters. In simple words, I categorize the transportation into 3 types; land, air and water. On land, the vehicles should be designed with higher fuel efficiency. There are already alternative engines have been developed such hydrogen fuel cell, electric engine and some other technology in order to replace fossil fuel engine. So, as the users, we have to choose the best vehicles in giving the best mileage-fuel ratio. In the same time, we also can cut our living cost. The people who live in the major cities should use the public mass transport or sharing the car. We can solve the congested traffic and also can help the environment. In the comfortable climate countries, their civilian should be encouraged walking or cycling to work. People can get good healthy, lesser living cost and also can live in healthy environment. In air transportation, the airplane should be designed in higher aerodynamic efficiency. Lesser drag coefficient we have, higher fuel efficiency we can get, and resulting lower CO2 emission from the airplanes. I do the research about the winglet for my final year project, thus I recommend the winglet should be compulsory to be installed on every commercial airplanes. The winglet can reduce the induced drag and also can give higher lift-drag ratio during the take-off. Some airplanes need to wait in landing and taking-off because of congested air traffic. The air traffic control must be improved in order to reduce the landing and take-off time. The CO2 emission during the airplanes waiting time can be reduced as much as possible. In water transportation, I suggest the planning for routes and logistic should be improved. If the route is properly chosen and planned, the shipping time can be reduced and the fuel consumption can be decreased. The first thing I need to do is making the first move. It is useless if we have the knowledge, but do not apply it in the real life. Even 1 effort from 6 billion people in the world is not significant, but it still matters. The actions that I will do from now on, is to recycle things, use paper bag instead off plastic bag, buy energy efficient equipments that use inverter technology, use green products 1

that can be recycled and biodegradable, use public transport or share the transport to the campus and also by spreading this concern to my friends and everyone I know. If 1 people can make 10 people near him to realize this thing, and these 10 people to spread this concern to other 100 people, and so on, I am very sure the current world can be the better world in the future.