Assessing the carbon footprint of Harum Manis production in Perlis

Abstract

Carbon footprint (CF) is the total amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) involved that can be associated with the emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and other gases. During the process of planting harum manis, some amount of carbon has been emitted and released to the environment. Several factors that may contribute to GHG emissions in harum manis production are vehicles, utilization of fertilizer, pesticides, machinery work, electricity, and soil management. This study has been established as a basis to achieve the main goal to quantify carbon footprint by measuring the equivalent CO2 (CO2-e) for the production of harum manis in Perlis. In order to quantify and measure the carbon footprint, the identification of system boundaries has to be established. In system boundaries, determination of the factors or inputs of the harum manis production has been identified which can be divided into three categories, upstream process, agricultural process, and downstream process that taking into account the emission factors for each processes and global warming potential of different GHGs. For the upstream processes, the amount of CO2 equavalent from fertilizer contribution was calculated as 4.890×108 kgCO2e, while for pesticides, machinery work, and electricity, the amount of CO2-e were 0.722 kgCO2e, 15.620 kgCO2e, 2.471×103 kgCO2e, respectively. In seedling production for agricultural processes, the amount of CO2 equavalent contribution was calculated as 26.460 kgCO2e. For those processes categorized in the downstream process of the determined system boundaries, electricity was the associated factor to the processes as grading, storage, and packaging. It was very difficult to segregate those electricity consumption for those processes from the upstream and downstream processes. Therefore, carbon footprint total (CFT) was calculated as 489015.467×103 kgCO2e. Then, the value for carbon footprint efficiency (CFE) is 6.810×10-6 kgCO2e and carbon intensity (CI) is 1.482×106 kgCO2e. Lastly, the advantages of this study is can estimate the number of carbon emission released and planning for the future reduction with suitable method.