An urban material flow analysis and carbon footprint assessment of Penang city

The city has expanded enormously and chaotically, not only in size and density but also in numerous interactions with complexity. Penang City is one of the urbanized cities in Malaysia with a high density of population in it. This urbanization in the city has impact on the environment especially when it involved the energy and resources consumption such as food, water and electricity. These three main energies are important for human being in daily life. However, the over use of the energies could be a threat to the human since it can be used up one day. A high consumption of energy also could produce a high production of waste that could leave impact to the environment. A Material Flow Analysis has been done in this city and this study found that the flow is unstable for several reasons. The food waste is higher than the food consumption as well as the wastewater. However, the carbon emission from the electricity consumption is higher than the input. The reading of carbon footprint from the water and electricity consumption are also high, 289.64 kgCO2e/day and 462.85 kgCO2e/day respectively. The findings in this study shows that the uncontrolled of energy consumption and production of waste could leave a huge impact to the environment. Thus, this study could help in obtaining a good mitigation measure in order to reduce the carbon footprint impact on the environment.