WILLEMSTAD - Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions and publishing this Carbon Footprint for the year 2018 is a continuation of the already published Footprints for the years 2010 and 2015.
A Carbon Footprint provides insight into Curaçao's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions, in particular carbon dioxide CO2 and methane CH4, which are the main cause of climate change. To this end, the emissions from Curaçao have also been identified and analyzed for 2018. The information obtained can serve to formulate and improve policy and to reduce the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. The intention is to again prepare a new Carbon Footprint in 2022 for the year 2021.
The research focused on the most important sources of greenhouse gases, namely:
- fuel consumption for electricity and water production,
- fuel consumption for transport (mainly road transport, not by sea or aviation),
- fuel consumption and emissions in the industry (oil refining and concrete industry).
- dumped waste,
- use of gas (households and businesses),
The data required for the calculations has been obtained from Aqualectra, CRU, Curoil / Curgas, Refineria ISLA and Selikor. The cooperation by the companies, which is very important for the success of the investigation, has been good.
The total emission of greenhouse gases is almost 2308 kilotons of CO2 in 2018 (more than 2.3 million tonnes). A reduction of no less than 45 percent compared to 2015, as a result of the strongly reduced refinery activities (-87%), decrease in CRU consumption (-34%), decrease in the use of fossil fuels for the production of water and electricity (-7%), and a modest decrease in gasoline and diesel for vehicles (-2%).
The CRU contributes most to total emissions by 38 percent, followed by waste (landfill, 18%), transport (17%) and the production of water and electricity (17%).
Figure 1 above clearly shows that (in addition to the production of energy and water) the contribution of CO2 air pollution from waste and transport are considerable. A footprint that is largely produced by ourselves; household waste and car exhaust emissions. The largely disappearance of the refinery gives us a different picture of air pollution. As comprehensible as it is to act against industrial pollution, we too make a significant contribution to this.
In order to better compare greenhouse gas emissions with other countries, these are also expressed per capita. This comes to 14.5 tonnes / capita for Curaçao. Although a strong reduction compared to 2015 (26.4 tonnes / capita), it is quite high internationally. For comparison; the average emissions of the world were 4.9 tonnes / capita, E.U. countries 7 tonnes / capita, Aruba 9.1 tonnes / cap and Colombia 1.5 tonnes / capita (2017).
If we make a calculation of the emissions per capita without a refinery and associated CRU, this results in 7.7 tonnes / capita for Curaçao. This figure is somewhat higher than the emissions of the E.U. countries and lower than, for example, the Netherlands (10.3 tonnes / capita in 2017).
