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Why hot air could be big business

Neasa MacErlean

Joggers may think running is healthy but it has deadly side effects. The problem lies in the shoes: they contain a man-made chemical that eventually turns into a greenhouse gas 23,900 times more dangerous, in climate-change terms, than carbon dioxide.

Trainer technology has developed fast in the last 15 years — particularly in the creation of thick, light, foam-based soles to cushion runners’ feet. But these soles contain a substance called sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). While methane, also a greenhouse gas, lasts about 12 years in the atmosphere, SF6 has virtually no natural decomposition process and will stay in the atmosphere permanently. That is why its use is now being banned. New regulations come into force on Wednesday prohibiting the sale of this type of footwear in the European Union.

Just as the new technology of carbon capture and storage is being developed to reduce CO2 emissions, we need to develop ways to reduce our release of other, even more potent, gases such as methane, nitrous oxide, and SF6.

Carbon capture and storage could be worth £4 billion a year in a country the size of the U.K., according to Edinburgh University, and the value of businesses associated with these other gases could also run into billions.

The International Energy Association calculates that greenhouse gases other than CO2 account for 20 per cent of emissions. The Netherlands has progressive policies for reducing these other gases.

Erik Ter Avest of Senter Novem, the Dutch sustainable development agency, says reducing non-CO2 emissions can be done cheaply. Methane is released in coalmining, gas extraction, and from landfill, cattle and various other sources. Some energy firms — including Centrica — are considering methane capture, a process that is already in large-scale operation in the United States and Australia.

Methane levels in the atmosphere have doubled since the Industrial Revolution. But if captured, methane has serious commercial value: it is the main ingredient of natural gas.

Many industries will become involved in the non-CO2 emissions reduction campaign — whether by changing their processes, building up expertise in the new technologies, buying cleaner energy or thinking about how they handle their waste. —

Guardian Newspapers Limited 2007

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