Comparative carbon footprints: The case of online and onsite learning of undergraduate program in Environmental Science, Chulalongkorn University, Thailand

Abstract

The huge amount of carbon footprints or greenhouse gas emissions from various human activities is the important cause of global warming, currently threatening humanity. With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, universities have been forced to switch class activities from onsite to online learning approaches. It could lead to changes in carbon footprints. Therefore, this study aimed to estimate and then compare the carbon footprints between onsite and online scenarios in the unit of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per hour (tonnes CO₂e/hr.). The undergraduate program in environmental science at Chulalongkorn University, Thailand, in the 2019 and 2020 academic years were used as the case studies. The carbon footprints from lecture and self-learning activities for students in each class year were estimated based on the energy/fuel consumptions in environmental settings, personal devices, printing and photocopying, and transportations, plus the amount of paper used. The web-based questionnaires were used as the main tool to collect data. The results showed that the average carbon footprint for onsite and online learning scenarios was about 0.050 and 0.040 tonnes CO₂e/hr. respectively, which the major carbon footprints were from the energy consumptions in environmental setting (96% and 80% respectively). Air conditioners were the most contribute appliances. For the onsite learning scenario, moreover, the energy consumptions in transportations were accounted for only about 13%, because most students used public transits or walking. The two-way analysis of variance revealed that learning scenario and class year were not factors contributing significant differences in average carbon footprints.