I Am Here to Proselytize About Leak Detection

Obligatory subtitle: Therm is carbon neutral now

If you’ve talked to me about refrigerants in the last four years—so basically if you’ve met me professionally or bumped into me at the grocery store—I have happily yapped your ear off about refrigerant leak detection.

I am finally getting to write my proselytizing post.

Therm just offset our company's entire footprint from founding through 2025 using our own refrigerant leak detection credits—81 credits issued under Verra's Refrigerant Leak Detection methodology (VM0001), the same methodology we helped update in 2024 to reflect modern continuous monitoring technology.

I'm beyond excited; I think they are the most underrated credits on the market.

Let me prove it.

Super pollutants are responsible for nearly half of global warming to date. Most are human-made. Many are recent. Refrigerants—HFCs—are a major contributor.

They’re also essential. We need cooling for food, medicine, data centers, homes, morgues (👀). In a warming world, cooling demand is not going down.

Here’s the tension: refrigeration systems leak refrigerants.

Not because operators are negligent or the systems are broken. But because they are pumping refrigerants (a gas) through pressurized mechanical systems with seals, vibration, and service cycles. Leakage is predictable during normal operation. The EPA's own reported national average puts leak rates at 25% of a supermarket's total refrigerant charge, every single year—meaning a typical system cycles through five to six full charges over its lifetime.

At Therm, we reduce operational refrigerant emissions two ways.

Option one: replace or retrofit the system to use climate-friendly refrigerants. When the system leaks, it's no longer a catastrophic warming accelerant. Proven. Effective. Capital-intensive.

Option two: install leak detection.

If the problem is that refrigerants leak, then detecting those leaks in real time and fixing them quickly is an extremely rational intervention. I mean, what if they just... didn't leak?

We install software that monitors systems continuously. When a leak starts, operators know immediately. Not at the next inspection. Not after months of loss. Immediately.

Leaks get fixed faster. Less refrigerant escapes. Emissions drop.

It is deployable today.

I actually mean that literally. It's plug-and-play.

With sufficient capital, we could install refrigerant leak detection across the entire U.S. grocery sector within a year. The operational refrigerant footprint of an entire industry could be materially reduced before 2026 ends*.

Technology, check. Feasibility, check. So what's the hold-up? Moneyyy.

Refrigerants are cheap. “Unnecessary” maintenance is not. And operational emissions are dispersed—each of the ~42,000 grocery stores contributes a relative little, which makes the total problem enormous but the individual incentive weak.

Historically, refrigerant leak detection credits have been priced too low to unlock the scale the climate math demands. We'd need to see the market price move meaningfully to catch the attention of grocery partners.

This is the frustrating part, and where I start gesturing wildly if we're talking in person.

Because we are not waiting on innovation. We are waiting on valuation.

We chose to offset our own footprint with refrigerant leak detection credits because we believe speed matters. Because eliminating super pollutant emissions now has more value than waiting for perfect transitions later. Because this is a solution that exists, works, and scales.

It's so absurdly simple. It's ready.

And it reduces emissions immediately, within existing infrastructure, at scale.

If you want to argue about pricing, scale, grocery math, or why this is my Alamo—shoot me an email. I’m always happy to soapbox. -E6

*I wrote this with the conviction of the marketing person. Please direct all technical questions about implementation to Justin Laka.