Lab-5–Why is Option-B Green?

Question:

I have a conceptual question from lab 5. In question 2, why does option B, which is the environmentally friendly option, have more carbon emissions than option A?

Answer:

Your question gets at the heart of the kind of questions engineers have the tools to answer.  The presumption is that if you “spend” a bit more at the beginning you’ll accrue savings over the life of the project that justify the extra initial “cost”?  We can measure that “cost” in many ways:  $, Energy, GHG, radiation….. 

What we can do, and indeed you’re doing it in this assignment, is evaluate the extra initial costs and the savings, and then relate them (in this case “payback”) to see whether the option is “worthwhile.”