Pascal

Heat pumps are almost magic. They steal traces of heat from cold winter air and use it to warm a home. They dump the heat from a grocery store freezer outside into a hot summer day. It’s more efficient to use energy to move heat than it is to generate heat from scratch, which makes heat pumps a powerful tool to lower the carbon footprint of climate control and even some industrial heat needs. They’re already in use in millions of air conditioners, home heating systems, and refrigerators. Unfortunately, the refrigerants at the core of most heat pumps today are environmentally persistent fluorocarbon gases . When these materials leak, their global warming impact is hundreds or thousands of times as strong as the same amount of carbon dioxide. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, refrigerant leaks are responsible for 3% or more of human-caused global warming—more than the