Organizational Governance

Super Pollutants:
The Other Half of the Climate Action Equation

Safeguarding your operations and accelerating climate progress means moving beyond carbon-only thinking and embracing every available lever for cooling the planet.

Brand Provided | By Kiff Gallagher | Published 3 months ago | About a 3 minute read

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Despite hundreds of governments and thousands of companies committing to science-based climate targets in line with the Paris Agreement in recent years, global temperatures continue to climb. 2024 recorded the highest average surface temperature in history, capping the hottest decade since records began in the 1880s.

Suffice to say, the global economy is not decarbonizing fast enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. But a deeper issue underlies our limited progress: Most climate strategies overlook half of what’s driving planetary heating today. Addressing this blind spot could unlock faster, more effective climate action — especially for businesses on the frontlines of escalating heat risk.

The Paris Agreement set a clear goal: Limit global warming to well below 2°C to avoid catastrophic impacts and irreversible tipping points. To support that aim, most emissions-reduction strategies focus on carbon dioxide (CO₂) — a pollutant that can linger in the atmosphere for centuries. Accordingly, climate-accounting systems typically use a 100-year timeline to evaluate warming impacts.

But that long-range lens misses a critical fact: Nearly half of today’s warming is caused by short-lived climate pollutants — also known as super pollutants — including methane, nitrous oxide, black carbon and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). These major heat drivers remain in the atmosphere for just days or years, yet they are exponentially more potent than CO₂ in the short term.

Because these super pollutants aren’t adequately accounted for in most climate plans, their mitigation remains a vastly underused tool — that’s a missed opportunity for the planet, and for companies grappling with climate goals amid rising temperatures.

To reduce warming more quickly and shield themselves from intensifying heat impacts, businesses need a more holistic approach — one that considers all major heat drivers.

By looking at the full spectrum of greenhouse gases and heat contributors through a “total climate accounting” approach, organizations can identify interventions with the greatest climate return per dollar spent — achieving faster, more efficient progress toward their goals while unlocking local benefits including reduced urban heat and improved air quality.

For example, destroying HFCs — a common element of refrigerant waste, aerosols and foam-blowing agents — can prevent warming thousands of times greater than the same amount of CO₂. And those results are nearly immediate. There are also simple, but meaningful swaps such as investing in more reflective building and surface materials, which can reduce local heat — especially in dense urban environments — as well as energy bills.

Some forward-thinking companies are already putting this thinking into practice. Google, for instance, recently signed a major contract to eliminate 25,000 tons of methane and HFCs by 2030 — equivalent to removing 1 million tons of CO₂. By tackling super pollutants now, the company is buying time to scale the infrastructure needed for deeper decarbonization.

Similarly, Napa Recycling and Waste Services, a contractor for the California county, recently leveraged a total-climate-accounting approach to narrow in on heat and maximize its climate return on investment. Armed with a better understanding of both long- and short-term heat drivers within its operations, the company has been able to prioritize climate projects that will best address near-term heat drivers while also decarbonizing. Now, it is exploring ways to mitigate the methane emissions associated with its composting and the black carbon fueled by diesel generators, which will offer tangible benefits in air quality and heat reduction for local communities.

Extreme heat is no longer a future threat — it's here, wreaking havoc on economies and business operations alike. The longer we delay, the more costly and disruptive these impacts will become.

To safeguard their operations and accelerate climate progress, businesses must adopt a heat-informed strategy. That means moving beyond carbon-only thinking and embracing every available lever for cooling the planet. Super pollutants are the other half of the climate equation, and it’s time for businesses to upgrade their climate math.

Kiff Gallagher

Executive Director, Total Climate Accounting

Kiff Gallagher is co-founder and Executive Director of Total Climate Accounting at the Global Heat Reduction Initiative - a climate finance, registry and data provider that enables businesses and governments to target near-term atmospheric heat reduction on their path to net zero.

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