Climate Wire | NOAA is celebrating the rare event that the United States detected what is believed to be the world’s most potent greenhouse gas and worked with companies to reduce its emissions.
It is called sulfur hexafluoride, or SF6. Although it’s in relatively small amounts in the atmosphere, it traps 25,000 times more heat than CO2 over a 100-year timescale, according to a NOAA report released last week. And their emissions can affect Earth’s climate for thousands of years.
SF6 is emitted from electrical insulators and high voltage equipment that transmits and distributes electricity. NOAA reported a 60% drop in U.S. emissions between 2007 and 2016. This is primarily due to voluntary industry reductions and the EPA’s mandatory reporting requirements, which began in 2011.
“This is a great example of the future of tracking greenhouse gas emissions, where catalogers and atmospheric scientists work together to better understand emissions and identify ways to further reduce them,” Lab.
Montzka, co-author of a report on the subject published by the journal atmospheric chemistry and physicssaid the findings also helped raise the Environmental Protection Agency’s previous estimates of SF6 emissions.
Southern power companies typically make repairs to power equipment in the winter, and northern leaky power equipment often emits SF6 from degraded sealants in cold weather, so costs are higher in winter than in summer. increase.
The journal’s study found that more SF6 was leaked as a trace gas worldwide in the last decade, and that it “has increased significantly due to rising energy demand.”
SF6 has been described as having the highest known global warming potential of any greenhouse gas such as CO2 that can remain in the atmosphere for over 100 years. The journal reported that the life span of He SF6 in the atmosphere could range from 580 to 3,200 years. Mainly used for electric circuit breakers and high pressure gas insulated switchgear.
NOAA used a “top-down” sampling approach, using aircraft and tall towers to take air samples at various altitudes, and a “bottom-up” approach, measuring emissions from businesses and ground-based power installations. Some state governments also helped track them down.
Lei Hu, a physical scientist at NOAA and lead author of the study in the journal, said the United Nations needs more cooperation between companies and regulators to detect such powerful gas emissions. should be encouraged.
One breakthrough in the US was the discovery of emissions from a large factory in Metropolis, Illinois. At this plant, he produced SF6 as a component of insulating materials in electrical equipment, but it was not reported. The factory closed in 2010.
“That was the first step,” she said, recognizing the gap between the large amounts of potent greenhouse gases detected in the region and the low reported emissions.
Without global detection and mitigation efforts, SF6’s climate impacts will continue to grow, warns the journal’s study.
It said that “significant uncertainties remain in SF6 emissions and distribution at national and regional scales.”
Most of the national emissions reported to the United Nations are from developed countries and China. However, they account for only 50% of her global SF6 emissions found in atmospheric observations made from 1990 to 2007.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission of POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2023. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environmental professionals.
