CO2 foot- and handprint (methodology for mini-research paper)
Written assignment: conduct a mini-research project and summarize the applied method, the results and learning in a mini-research paper.
Topic: The personal CO2-Footprint (and ways to mitigate the own impact) and about your carbon handprint (beyond mitigating your personal emissions).
Methodology: To calculate your personal CO2-Footprint you need to multiply the amount of the source used with the emission factor of the carbon source (carbon intensity – CI). See an explanation https://shrinkthatfootprint.com/calculate-your-carbon-footprint . What is a Carbon Handprint ? Please see https://go-positive.co.uk/what-is-a-carbon-handprint .
To simplify things we are going to use an online calculator: https://www.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx You can create a free user account to save your data and modify it later.
CO2 foot- and handprint (methodology for mini-research paper)
More important points for the mini research paper:
• Please reflect your actual, real life when entering the data in the online calculator: Were you live now, how you heat/cool your apartment, how
you move through the city, how you are traveling, how much you are spending for food and other products, how much you are taking the plane,…
• Please calculate your footprint for an entire current year (e.g. 2024) for the country Austria
• Formatting requirements: length of your total contribution (including references): 1500 to 1800 words (results in around 3 to 4 standard A4
pages, depending on whether you decide using figures or not), please use a font size of 11 or 12 with justified text alignment. Maximum length of
your abstract should be 160 words.
• Structure of the paper: Title (you can invent one that fits your work), author name, contact (email), date, please use the given structure and
adhere to the basic principles of an acceptable scientific publication (see next slide). As a structured example, please see here one of my peer-
reviewed publications (open access – you can freely download a pdf version if you like). If you like, you can add up to 2 figures (or tables) that you
produced by your own, based on the data of your personnel carbon footprint (and e.g. a comparison with other data).
• References and Citations: whenever you are using information from external sources (ideas that are not your own), cite them directly at the
relevant place in the text, by using brief references, like so: “(Author, year)” and add a “References” section at the end of the paper listing all the
used references consistent with the used citations in the text. Please use the APA citation style, see here for a short guidance.
• Contents of the paper: Try to answer the following questions by the research paper (you do NOT need to write down these questions in your
work, these should simply serve as a guidance for your content):
• How large is my current personal CO2 footprint and how did I calculate it?
• What are the biggest contributors to my current personal CO2 footprint?
• What are the most efficient ways to significantly reduce my current CO2 footprint?
• How much could I reduce my personal CO2 footprint and what would that mean for my daily habits?
• What would be limitation and benefits of this reduction?
• What factors are limiting a further reduction of my footprint?
• Beyond simply reducing my personal CO2 footprint, how could I positively influence the climate further (CO2 handprint) ?
• What are my lessons learnt from that exercise?
A (very short) primer on scientific writing:
What is an acceptable scientific publication?
• Original work / first disclosure: own and primary work
• contain sufficient information to enable peers to (1) assess observations, (2) to repeat
experiments, and (3) to evaluate intellectual processes
• available to the scientific community without restrictions
Organization of a scientific paper:
• Abstract: Miniature version of the paper, very brief summary of the main sections, stands at the very beginning of
the research paper.
• Introduction: (1) clearly state the nature and scope of the problem investigated, (2) briefly review the pertinent
literature to orient the reader, (3) state the method of the investigation
• Materials and Methods: describe the experimental design/data/method in such that peers are able to repeat your
experiment.
• Results: first provide the big picture without repeating the previous section, then present representative data short
and clear and avoid redundancy.
• Discussion and Conclusion: (1) present the principles, relationships and generalizations shown by the results, (2)
point out exceptions and define unsettled points, (3) discuss theoretical implications and practical applications of
your work, (4) state your conclusions and summarize your evidence for each conclusion.
• References: for all information used from external sources (ideas that are not your own), list of all the used
references consistent with the used citations in the text.
