by Elsa Wenzel
July 3, 2008 11:02 AM PDT

A chemical used to make LCD televisions and semiconductors could cause more global warming than coal-fired power plants, a report warns. Nitrogen trifluoride is a "missing greenhouse gas," according to a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters on June 26.

It's used in chemical vapor deposition for making liquid crystal displays, semiconductors, and synthetic diamonds. Production of the chemical could double to 8,000 metric tons in 2009, atmospheric chemist Michael Prather, who co-wrote the report, told New Scientist. Nitrogen trifluoride's globe-warming effect reportedly could be 17,000 times stronger than that of carbon dioxide.

However, the picture is incomplete because nitrogen trifluoride isn't among the six gases covered by the Kyoto Protocol international climate change agreement. This year alone, its production would release the equivalent of the global-warming emissions from Austria, totaling some 67 million metric tons, New Scientist noted.

And that would amount to more global-warming pollution than all the industrialized world's emissions of perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and of sulfur hexafluoride, which is considered more potent. Kyoto's terms left out nitrogen trifluoride and some dozen other gases, in part because they weren't produced at a scale large enough to cause significant harm.