CO2 may be the main culprit of climate warming activities - but there are other greenhouse gases out there even more potent. Twenty thousand times more potent, in fact. And controlling these gases is just as important to meeting our climate ambitions as reducing carbon emissions is.
Paul unpacks the Kyoto protocol and the seven gases identified to have significant global warming implications on our planet. And Paul discusses where these gases are coming from and what we're doing to address and control these super gases.
CO2 may be the main culprit of climate warming activities - but there are other greenhouse gases out there even more potent. Twenty thousand times more potent, in fact. And controlling these gases is just as important to meeting our climate ambitions as reducing carbon emissions is.
Paul unpacks the Kyoto protocol and the seven gases identified to have significant global warming implications on our planet. And Paul discusses where these gases are coming from and what we're doing to address and control these super gases.
This is 8 minutes a podcast helping you understand the energy and climate challenge. In just a few minutes. I'm your host, paul Schuster. We've put a lot of carbon into the atmosphere A lot and so much of our climate action right now is trying to figure out how we're going to decarbonize or capture that carbon. But carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas causing our planet to warm. In fact, it's not even the most potent. Some other greenhouse gases can be over 20,000 times worse than carbon dioxide. Today I'll discuss these other gases, their impact on climate change and what we're doing to help control them. 8 minutes it's how long it takes the sun to raise to the earth. Or about how long it takes for my dog's stomach to realize that eating an entire chicken carcass was not a good idea. And there goes the living room carpet. Okay, let's get it on.
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Carbon is often used as a proxy for all things greenhouse gas related. We talk about decarbonization and carbon capture technology, but CO2 is only one of the primary greenhouse gases that are affecting our climate. It's not even the most potent, though, to be fair, it's certainly the most abundant of all greenhouse gases. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 laid out the primary gases of which the world needed to be concerned. Carbon dioxide was front and center, but five other gases were also identified due to their high global warming potential, and then a seventh gas was added at a later stage to round out what are known as the Kyoto gases.
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Some of these you may be familiar with. For instance, methane has been getting a lot of attention recently, and for good reason. For one thing, it's the second most abundant of the greenhouse gases, next to CO2. The US EPA suggests that methane accounts for about 16% of global emissions. But methane is also way more powerful than CO2. The EPA indicates that it has 28 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide and can reside in the atmosphere for up to 20 years. Cutting methane emissions is a primary focus both at the country as well as the individual level. And methane is, as I'm sure you've guessed, from livestock and cattle. So there has certainly been a drive to see if limiting the amount of meat being eaten could help to drive down methane emissions. But it's more than that as well. For instance, changing livestock diets to focus on fattier foods or alternatives such as seaweed those have been shown to reduce the amount of methane coming from those animals and manure management practices that switch to drier aerobic conditions produce significantly less methane than traditional anaerobic processes, or consider anaerobic biodegesters that are able to convert that methane waste stream into something more valuable like energy. But methane isn't just from cows. It goes by another name we're all familiar with, which is natural gas. I've always thought that whoever came up with the term natural gas should get a marketing award or something, because it definitely makes methane sound a lot more beneficial for the environment.
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Methane is kind of a funky greenhouse gas because we can burn it for power heat stove top applications and that burning actually converts most of the methane to carbon dioxide and maybe even a bit of water. But no system is completely sealed tight and most of the concern in the utility and oil and gas industries is on how to reduce the methane from leaking and escaping before it gets to the combustion point. Those leaks can be extremely dangerous, which is why the Biden administration included stringent penalties in the Inflation Reduction Act to account for methane leakage. Rules at the EPA just last week crystallized in order to incentivize gas companies to invest into the leak control, prevention and monitoring systems that they need to reduce this potent gas.
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Also included in the Kyoto Gases is another gas called N2O or nitrous oxide Ring a bell yeah, this is laughing gas, like what used to be in dental and other minor surgical applications. But nitrous oxide is even more potent of a greenhouse gas than methane. For one thing, it can linger in the atmosphere for up to 114 years, and the World Bank estimates that the warming potential of N2O is nearly 310 times more than that of carbon dioxide. Nitrous oxide comes from a couple of different sources, but primarily N2O is tied intimately to the agriculture industry. Nitrogen is often used to enhance the growth of plants, yielding greater abundance of crops for smaller acreage, which, frankly, is a great thing. But only about half of the nitrogen added for plant growth is actually absorbed by the crop. The rest gets washed off in groundwater or off-gassed as nitrous oxide. According to Inside Climate News, about 75% of the nitrous oxide released in the US is related to agriculture. But again, n2o can be managed through different regenerative agriculture methods, including avoiding overwatering and reducing the amount of times the soil is tilled. These methods have been shown to really reduce the amount of N2O reaching the atmosphere. Alright, so the three main culprits of global warming are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, but that doesn't mean that there aren't some other doozy gases out there as well.
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The Kyoto Protocol also calls out sulfur hexafluoride, or SF6, as one such gas. The good news is that SF6 isn't very abundant, but the bad news is that it's like a sucker punch of a greenhouse gas. The EPA indicates that the global warming potential of SF6 is 23.5 thousand times stronger than that of CO2. So, even though it's not used in a lot of applications, eliminating SF6 is of critical importance. One of the big areas where the gas is used is actually in power utility applications, as SF6 is used as a kind of insulator in medium-voltage switchgear. The gas helps to prevent electrical arcing in the switchgear and keeps the equipment safe. Fortunately, alternative methods are emerging to replace old SF6 switchgear with non-GHG emitting equipment, but there's a lot of switchgear out there in the world and it's going to take time to make the turnover.
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Two other gases that the Kyoto Protocol calls out are hydrofluorocarbons, hfcs, and perfluorinated carbons, pfcs. Hfcs are typically used in refrigeration, but how they came about to be used in the first place is just a microcosm of how difficult it is to systemically address climate activity, because back in 1987, the globe agreed to reduce ozone-depleting gases as part of the Montreal Protocol. That led to certain chlorofluorocarbons CFCs to be phased out of refrigeration in favor of hydrochlorofluorocarbons HFCs. But those were soon phased out for similar ozone-related reasons and replaced by the HFCs that were more ozone-friendly but were soon identified by Kyoto as being really bad for global warming. And in turn, pfcs came in to replace the HFCs, but PFCs are just as bad for the…. Get the point Make a trade-off in one area and there's a corresponding impact somewhere else. Today, at least, most refrigerants are moving away from HFCs and PFCs towards more climate-friendly alternatives.
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Alright, the last gas, nitrogen trifluoride or NF3, was actually added a few years after Kyoto. Nf3 is another of those superpotent greenhouse gases, being about 17,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide, but its application is primarily in silicon wafer etching and manufacturing and is being phased out for alternative gases. There's a lot of focus in the climate space and rightly so on reducing our carbon dioxide emissions in the air. Without a doubt, this is super critical to achieving our 2°C target as set out in the Paris Agreement. But just as important are these other supergasses of methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur, hexafluoride, hfcs, pfcs and nitrogen trifluoride. These gases are more potent, last longer and can have a devastating impact on the planet. I'm Paul Schuster and this has been Great Metal Science.