My Make Project by: Manreet Dhillon Gr. 8 NMS Student
We have all been cooped up in our homes for quite a while now, and along with doing our school work, playing video games and playing outside there is nothing much to do! Before Covid-19
I was going to participate in the Calgary Youth Science Fair, with some past experience. CYSF got cancelled, but we could post our projects on Make, and that’s what I did!
In this research project I wanted to go in depth to know if Alberta is really a high carbon emitter compared to other places, and what will happen to our future environmentally? I had hypothesized that Alberta will be a huge carbon emitter overall in Canada but not around the globe because looking through previous research work I see a clear difference in the amounts of carbon megatonnes that are released. I also know that other energy sources also produce carbon emissions but can still protect our environment, such as electric cars.
As I got deeper in this project I began comparing the oil emissions between other large oil producers and emitters such as Wyoming and even Japan. When I compared Alberta’s oil emissions in Canada it released the most carbon emissions topping Ontario and Quebec, but if we thought per capita, Alberta was the second highest, with a minor difference between Saskatchewan. As I got further into my project I also wanted to research other cities that emit carbon emission, so I compared Alberta’s carbon emissions per capita to Wyoming (USA), Xinjiang (China) and Japan as a whole because it's almost the size of Alberta (⅗). Here I found Alberta is not the highest carbon emitter globally meaning Wyoming and Xinjiang topped Alberta while Japan was still at the bottom because it does not have many oil sands.
Overall I really enjoyed this project and if I were to do this next time I would look into the Canadian carbon tax and see if it is effective in the reduction of our carbon footprints and to reach our Paris Climate Target. The purpose of my project was to see if Alberta deserves all its “blames” or not?
If you would like to check my project in depth, you can visit the link below:
https://makeprojects.com/ysc/project/albertas-oil-emission-and-climate-future