Analytical Essay: Sustainability at Home

In this assignment you are asked to conduct an energy audit in your home (using
the personal energy audit form), and then use one of the approaches we discussed
in class (economics approach (Week 3), social approach (Week 2 or Week 4),
ethical approach (Week 5), or political economy approach (Week 5), to make an
argument about the findings of your audit.
You are encouraged to use the US Environmental Protection Agency calculator to
make your kilowatt hours into more tangible equivalencies.
https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator
Process:
1. Complete the Personal Energy Audit by completing the form provided for
you. You can also input the form into Excel to do the calculations for you.
2. Figure out what kind of argument you want to make about the amount of
energy you and your family use. Would you like to justify your actions or
discuss how you could change? Would you also like to conduct an ecological
footprint analysis to compare your findings to those of other places? Think
about what you want to say, and what approach we have studied would help
you to say something interesting or important.
3. Collect some peer reviewed journal articles on the topic of sustainability,
energy use, ethical environmental behaviour, cost-benefit analysis, etc. You
should also collect some journal articles relating to the approach that you
want to use (ethics, political economy, etc.).
4. Write an outline of your essay, and proceed to make your argument using a
few sub-arguments, evidence from your audit, and the journal article
findings. Incorporating geographical concepts and theories is integral!
5. Bring your essay to the peer review class(es) on October 28 and October 30.
Discuss your work with a peer.
6. Hand in your peer review form for a partner (and their essay if conducted
online) by October 30, at 5pm.
7. Make any amendments to your essay, changes suggested, or add further
research to reinforce your argument. Take this time to review what you
wrote and make sure it makes sense! The key part of this essay is to say
something that you can justify!

8. Label the file with your lastnameGEO702Essay and save (print for Apples) as
PDF.
Part 2: Formatting
The essay should be separated into parts. You can use headings to make it easier
for your reader.
1. Introduction (around 200+ words)
In this section, you give a brief introduction to your topic. Explain in a thesis
statement what your essay will be about. It can be as simple as In this essay I will
discuss the ethical importance for a suburban family to reduce their energy use.
After the thesis, you should give an outline of the rest of the paper. One or two
sentences per section should suffice
2. Literature Review or Background (around 500+ words)
In this section you summarize and extend existing arguments drawing on 6 peerreviewed
journal articles on your topic, including those from one of our
perspectives: social, economic, ethical, or political. A literature review is where you
find articles that are useful to your research and argument, and explain what these
authors found that is relevant. You can include subheadings (heading 2) in this
section to indicate the themes/subsections of your literature review
3. Findings and Analysis (around 500+ words)
In this section, you highlight the sub-arguments you will use to support your thesis.
What are your research findings? What do you think about them? How does the
research you conducted help you to make your argument? Here think of the course
concepts we have discussed in the first section and pick one perspective to apply
(social, economic, ethical, or political). Include any definitions you think are useful.
You can include subheadings (heading 2) in this section to indicate the
themes/subarguments of your findings and analysis.
4. Conclusions (around 200+ words)
In this section, you summarize your arguments that supported your thesis. You
highlight in a different way than the introduction how your pieces come together to
support your argument. You reiterate what you discussed in each section, and can
elaborate what we can learn or do to further extend your project.
4
5. References (around 100+ words)
In this section you include the full APA format citations for your in-text citations
used in your essay. This must include the 6 peer-reviewed journal articles from
your literature review, as well as any other sources you used to get information
that you did not already know yourself. APA format guidelines are available here
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guide/genera
l_format.html. You can forgo the APA requirement of an abstract for this assignment.
Hanging indents make your reference list look great. Make sure if you use citation
makes that you double check them. They are frequently inaccurate.
6. Include a title page, instead of your institutional affiliation, ensure you
include your name, student number, course and section codes, and title.

Your essay should be typed and double-spaced, with 1″ margins on all sides. APA
recommends 12 pt. Times New Roman. Arial 11pt is also acceptable.

Include a page header (also known as the “running head”) at the top of every page.
To create a page header/running head, insert page numbers flush right. Then type
“{TITLE OF YOUR PAPER}” in the header flush left using all capital letters. The
running head is a shortened version of your paper’s title and cannot exceed 50
characters including spacing and punctuation.