(c) Assuming you eat (and with luck burn!) the recommended daily allowance of 25

Question

(c) Assuming you eat (and with luck burn!) the recommended daily allowance of 2500 kcal per day (in the U.S. at least), what is the corresponding carbon emitted (assume it is all from fuel oil)? Food production (and distribution) is notoriously inefficient so this is of course only a tiny fraction of your actual emissions from eating (no, not those emissions!). For example, it takes ?0.4 kWh to produce a pound of corn, but nearly 32 kWh for a pound of beef. Somewhere in between are apples (1.7 kWh/pound) and cheese (6.75 kWh/pound). (1 kg = 2.2 pounds.) In terms of efficiency, for 1 food calorie it takes roughly 1 calorie to produce corn, but 25 calories to produce beef, so your actual energy consumption (and emissions) from eating could easily be 10 times more than what you estimated above.

Explanation / Answer

Total energy consumed in a year = energy consumed daily*365

= 2500*1000*365 = 912500000 cal

=3817900000 Joules

=3817900000/1055.0558

=3618671.16 Btu

=3.6186 mmBtu

CO2 emission (only fuel oil is consumed)

= per unit emission*energy = 71 kg *3.6186 =256.92 kg of CO2

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse #
• Subjects

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.