Development of brownfield sites can help significantly in controlling greenhouse gases and the impact that they have on global warming. Reducing the impacts of greenhouse gases can be accomplished through reducing the amount of gases created or by sequestering the gases once they have been released into the environment. The process of sequestering greenhouse gases may result in carbon offsets. Greenhouse gas technology is anything but "light as air." In fact it can be quite heavy; as a result it's instructive to provide a primer on greenhouse gases before delving into carbon offsets.

Common greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide (N2O), various fluorocarbons, and a few others. Collectively these gases trap heat and energy in the atmosphere like the warm, moist condition in a greenhouse; hence the name "greenhouse gases" are commonly referred to by their acronym, GHGs, and are frequently lumped together by assessing their global warming potentials (GWPs) and converting into carbon dioxide (CO2) equivalent emissions. The CO2 equivalent emissions are referred to as carbon equivalents (abbreviated as CO2e), or sometimes just simply called carbon. ...

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