SF6: The Little Gas That Could“¦ Make Global Warming Worse

SF6: The Little Gas That Could“¦ Make Global Warming Worse

As interest grows in wind, solar and electric vehicles, we will see a concurrent shift towards electrification. Penetration of energy storage and greater reliance on electrification for industrial processes will supplement enlargement of power grids with high and ultra-high voltage transmission lines, substations, and other infrastructure. While the promise of electrification is in part climate related and to address energy poverty, the lack of data and uncertainty around life cycle impacts highlights the need for an honest accounting of systems-level vulnerabilities, trade-offs and risk-shifting along the value chain. Here we focus on only one of many distinct mitigation challenges that such honest accounting will need to consider: a synthetic, relatively obscure, and odorless gas: Sulfur Hexafluoride (SF6). In 1997, the Kyoto protocol identified SF6 as one of the six main greenhouse gases (GHG). Not without a good reason: SF6 is the most potent GHG known to humanity, with a warming potential 23, 900 times that of carbon dioxide (CO2) and atmospheric residence of up to 3, 200 years. Should we worry? The issues of growing SF6 emissions and their underreporting particularly problematic as countries at all levels of developments push for electrification of their economies. How is SF6 related to