The ICU as a measure of embodied Carbon
The concept of the ICU - International Carbon Unit was conceived in November 2006 when it was realised that the World needs a way to readily compare the Carbon used in various dissimilar activities and products. It was found that even educated people had difficulty in comparing the Carbon used in say driving a car or driving a computer.
However, if we could for example say that a car used up 1 Carbon Unit per mile but a computer could run for say 4 hours using up 1 Carbon Unit then that would be very clear to one and all.
ICUs were launched on Wednesday 21st May 2008 at the All Energy 08 conference in Aberdeen, Scotland, UK. ICUs were first presented to an audience at the Future Homes Conference and Exhibition organised by the Crichton Carbon Centre in Dumfries on Thursday June 5th 2008.
See http://www.carboncentre.org/
An ICU is defined as the GHGE - GreenHouse Gas Effect (of the Carbon Dioxide) produced by burning 100ml of n-octane - the volume of n-octane measure at 20 Centigrade.
In this way, one ICU as a GreenHouse Gas Effect measure may be caused by xKg of Carbon Dioxide or yKg of methane or a weight of any other gas in the environment.
Thus there are approximately or nominally 10 ICUs in a litre of fuel.
NPL - National Physical Laboratory in Teddington, UK have been asked to provide the accurate conversion from 100ml of n-octane to xKg Carbon Dioxide.
This site is being built, please return in the future to see how the concept is progressing.
