Addressing climate change requires solutions to seven greenhouse gases.

A prosperous and healthy future requires us to learn about and solve for climate changing greenhouse gases.

Many of us came to climate tech or grid modernization through an urgency to do something about our changing climate and the immense negative impact that warming can have on our friends and families and the natural environment that we marvel at and enjoy so much. Others may have arrived more pragmatically, through assessments of levelized cost of energy or a desire to protect economic growth and ensure energy security.

This post will likely resonate more for those who want to address climate change. But no worries, good climate results are good economic and security results, so we will all likely arrive at a similar destination even if the narrative around the desired results is different. We saw such alignment when industry joined the charge on ozone-depleting CFCs and the 1987 Montreal Protocol. No doubt regulatory signals were clear, and industry had developed profitable substitute chemicals, but the reference stands: when actions that are good for climate are also good for commercial interests, society moves at speed.

Protecting our families, economy, security, and environment from the terrible impacts of a changing climate requires us to develop solutions that target shared outcomes between those with a passion for industry and those with a passion for climate. And yes, you are allowed to care about both! They are both needed for a prosperous future, modern society, and positively trending standard of living.

Before we can develop solutions and define shared outcomes, we need to know the target of the challenge we are facing. A strategy is only as strong as its foundation after all.

For those of us on this journey because of climate change, we might identify the most fundamental target(s) as the seven principal greenhouse gases that are human generated and direct sources of global warming. The rest of this post briefly relates key information about these gases and why Seven Green focuses its current strategic attention to carbon dioxide primarily and methane secondarily.

Greenhouse gases are gases that allow solar radiation through but block infrared radiation from passing through and leaving the Earth's atmosphere. Trapping of infrared, or long-wave, radiation into the atmosphere leads to a warming trend at ground level. The seven greenhouse gases (GHGs) recognized as contributing to this warming trend and that are a byproduct of human activities are: carbon dioxide (CO2); methane (CH4); nitrous oxide (N2O); hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs); perfluorocarbons (PFCs); sulfur hexafluoride (SF6); and nitrogen trifluoride (NF3).

According to the U.S. EPA, the largest U.S. source of these GHG emissions comes "from burning fossil fuels for electricity, heat, and transportation." Emissions from generating electricity accounted for 25% of 2022 totals, but we know that electricity is not produced as a final product but as an input into economic and societal uses. When electricity created GHGs are allocated to their final uses, we see the highest-level connection between our need for energy and economic and societal growth:

Total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by sector, including electricity end use. Source: EPA

The EPA notes that within the residential and commercial sector, emissions come primarily from burning fossil fuels for heat, refrigeration, and cooling -- 75% of electricity in the U.S. is used in buildings. Other emission sources include waste.

Emissions in industry also come primarily from burning fossil fuels for energy. Other GHG emissions come from chemical reactions associated with converting raw materials into the products we love to use.

It is probably no surprise that GHG emissions in transportation largely come from burning fuels that run our "cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes." Transportation is the largest source of direct emissions (by burning gasoline and diesel), and currently electricity use in the sector represents only 1% of emissions. But we expect that electricity's share in transportation emissions is likely to grow over time with electrification of cars and some trucks and trains. And we anticipate that transportation will need diverse emission solutions as not everything runs efficiently on electricity.

Finally, agriculture's GHG emissions are linked strongly to livestock, soils, and rice. Electricity used to power buildings and equipment for agricultural activities contribute a small percentage of emissions in the sector. Interestingly, other uses of land -- like managed forests -- have acted as a net absorber of CO2, "offsetting 13% of total gross greenhouse gas emissions" per the EPA.

These data show the importance of burning fuel to create electricity or to run transportation. CO2 and methane emissions are directly linked to the electricity that increasingly powers the things we care about, and to the transportation that takes us places and brings us the things we want. So innovative solutions to CO2 and methane emissions are a must if we want to try to have our proverbial cake and eat it too (especially since we need it baked and its ingredients sourced!).

According to the EIA (citing the EPA), CO2 emissions represented almost 80% of U.S. GHG emissions in 2022. And burning fuels contributed to 93% of those CO2 emissions. The EPA explains that methane contributed 12% of U.S. GHG emissions in 2022, although 50 to 65% of those emissions come from human activity (globally). Combined, CO2 and methane represented 92% of U.S. GHG emissions in 2022, making them meaningful primary and secondary targets when setting a goal of mitigating climate change. At Seven Green Strategy, we believe that such mitigation innovations and the strategies that bring them to fruition will be good for our families, the world we live in, and business.

But wait! ... for those asking: "what about the other five greenhouse gases!?" While they contribute less than 10% of U.S. GHG emissions combined, every penny counts when we are in a crunch to protect the people, places, and things that we care about so much. Let's take a quick note of what they are, cite where you can learn more, and be glad that others are working on reductions to these GHGs too.

• Nitrous oxide (6% of U.S. GHGs), coming from agriculture, wastewater, burning fuels, and industrial processes.

• Fluorinated gases, including HFCs, PFCs, SF6, and NF3, are almost entirely human-generated and are used almost entirely (90%) as a substitution to ozone depleting chemicals previously used by humans. They also have a notable role in the production of electronics like semiconductors and electrical equipment.

We have identified meaningful GHG targets (CO2 and methane), and we have identified a clear activity that releases those emissions -- burning fuels (and for oil and gas, their related processing, storage, and transport). Let's keep doing the work to solve this.

Alexina Jackson, managing member of Seven Green Strategy