What is the carbon footprint and embodied energy?

A carbon footprint encompasses the total amount of Greenhouse Gas emissions generated by an event, product, person, or from electricity production. Out of all the electricity sources, wind, hydroelectric, and nuclear have proven to contain the lowest carbon footprint. That is, throughout the whole life cycle from construction to operation, these energy sources give out the lowest concentration of greenhouse gases ^[35].

In terms of our country under study, Hong Kong contains the second highest carbon footprint per capita in the world at 29 tonnes per year. This is mainly due to the large-scale importing of energy, manufacturing, and transportation of imported goods ^[36].

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Embodied energy consists of summing the total energy inputs throughout the whole life cycle of a product. Components of the life cycle included that are summed are as follows: extraction, transport, manufacture, assembly, installation, disassembling, deconstruction, and/or decomposition ^[37].