Tackling Potent Super Pollutants is the Bridge to a Cooler Future

Carbon dioxide is accumulating in the atmosphere at a faster rate than ever, rising more than 10 percent over the last two decades, according to new data from the World Meteorological Organization. And United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres recently warned that the goal to limit the rise in global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius to avoid the worst consequences of climate change “will soon be dead” without swift and dramatic emissions cuts. 

One way for the world to avoid that fate, and get there faster, is by reducing the impact of super pollutants like methane, black carbon, and hydrofluourocarbons (HFCs), which cause over half of all global warming by trapping heat in the atmosphere. That’s the mission of the recently launched Global Heat Reduction Initiative.

The summer of 2024 was the warmest on record for the Northern hemisphere — again. Nine of the 10 hottest years have occurred in the last decade.  

Tacking super pollutants can provide quick reductions in heat, complementing long-term carbon dioxide reduction strategies, Kiff Gallagher, executive director of the Global Heat Reduction Initiative, told TriplePundit. 

Methane alone is responsible for about 30 percent of all warming since the Industrial Revolution, and super pollutants are many times more potent than carbon dioxide, he said. Methane is 150 times stronger in the first year it is emitted. Black carbon, also known as soot, is up to 52,000 times stronger. 

The opportunity lies in the short life of these pollutants, Gallagher said. While carbon dioxide heats up the atmosphere for centuries, methane disappears within 12 years and black carbon within days. This means reducing them will yield bigger near-term results. Avoiding one tonne of black carbon emissions in 2024 is more than 8 times more powerful by 2030 than by avoiding 1000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, according to the initiative. 

By reducing super pollutants alone, the world can avoid 0.6 degrees Celsius of warming by 2050, according to the U.N. Climate and Clean Air Coalition.

“Addressing these pollutants is crucial in the near-term to slow the rate of warming and prevent catastrophic impacts,” Gallagher said. “Conventional climate accounting does not give us the full picture. And without full situational awareness, it is difficult to identify the most effective actions needed to mitigate global warming, especially in the critical near-term before longer-term decarbonization strategies can take hold.”

The Global Heat Reduction Initiative approach

The Global Heat Reduction Initiative — which is run by the third-party standards, certification and verification leader SCS Global Services — wants to incentivize companies to reduce excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by decreasing super pollutants alongside longer-lived emissions like carbon dioxide. The intention is not to supplant current efforts to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels and other sources but rather to add an opportunity for companies, governments and organizations to take more near-term action to tackle global warming, Gallagher said.

“It's critical that we focus on mitigating these pollutants now because we're experiencing destruction now,” he said. “We're experiencing the effects of accelerated warming in the form of massive hurricanes, droughts, fires and heat waves.”

To do so, the initiative developed an accounting approach that assesses drivers of global warming over any period of time, not just the conventional approach of 100 years. A 100-year window often doesn’t accurately show the accelerative pace of climate change and the impacts of the things driving it — including the true impact of short-live climate pollutants because they can dissipate over just a few days or a few years. 

Called the Radiative Forcing Protocol, it was created as a practical application of the newest findings from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was in development for more than a decade. It was peer-reviewed by the Scientific Advisory Panel of the Climate and Clean Air Coalition. 

“The Global Heat Reduction initiative is the only accounting approach I'm aware of that has been put forward to allow corporations to include all of the different drivers of climate change,” Drew Shindell, a member of the Global Heat Reduction Initiative's Technical Advisory Panel, said in a video. “Targeting of short-lived climate pollutants is an essential complement to long-term decarbonization, and this Radiative Forcing Protocol allows companies a ready method to quantify that.”

A registry for companies to earn Heat Reduction Credits

With the help of the new protocol, the Global Heat Reduction Initiative helps companies measure and understand their full climate impact through its climate footprint tool so they can identify targeted mitigation projects, including methane capture, black carbon reduction and other heat-reducing activities.

The organization also created the Global Heat Reduction Registry, which issues third-party verified “Heat Reduction Credits” for effective climate mitigation projects, particularly ones that reduce short-lived climate pollutants. It is currently accepting mitigation projects for independent verification. Projects might recover methane from landfill gas and the anaerobic digestion of manure to produce biogas.

Addressing the trust and transparency challenges in the carbon markets is a key priority, Gallagher said. To that end, the registry is providing traceability, third-party verification, and other safeguards to build confidence in the credibility of their climate accounting and mitigation approach.

“We saw a gap between current climate accounting and current climate science, and we're taking the latest science on heat reduction, or heat and pollution reduction projects, and applying it to this new accounting method,” Gallagher said. “These are projects that are specifically targeting the mitigation, reduction of or avoidance of these super pollutants.”

Health impacts and financial risk are among the drivers for action

Reducing emissions from super pollutants doesn’t just bring the world closer to its climate goals, it also impacts human health, with more than 1 in 5 deaths worldwide caused by fossil fuel air pollution. Improved health is among the co-benefits of mitigating the impact of super pollutants on communities, ecosystems and sustainable development. An increase in local monthly temperature by 1 degree Celsius eventually leads to about a ten-fold increase in displacement, according to a University of Oxford study.

“If we're able to reduce methane and black carbon and tropospheric ozone and low-level ozone and fluorinated gases, then we’ll not only bring temperatures down, but we’ll also slow the rate of warming. That will enable us to get past the threat of tipping points, and will actually make a difference right now,” Gallagher said. “In our climate markets today, you have a long-term model based on 100 years, but we don't have 100 years. What we need is a complementary set of measurement tools that allows us to target these near-term, far more potent pollutants during this critical next 25 years.”

Among the drivers for more rapid business action on climate mitigation is risk. 

“Companies are experiencing it now,” Gallagher said. “There's facility risk. They're unable to get insurance. And there's risk to their workforce. There's risk within their supply chains. So the problem is: You've got a risk, but you can't manage what you don't measure.”

Investors also increasingly see climate risk as a business risk, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission adopting new rules for disclosing climate-related risks that are likely to have a material impact on a company’s business strategy, results of operations or financial condition. 

For the first time, businesses, governments and investors can make verified claims not only about their carbon dioxide reduction, Gallagher said. But also the degree to which they are helping to draw down atmospheric heat.