Gases are used in nearly every part of modern life, from heating your home and powering electricity plants to keeping you alive during surgery and making the chips inside your phone. The answer to “what gas is used today” depends on the context, but natural gas, oxygen, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide are among the most widely consumed. Here’s a breakdown of where different gases show up and why they matter.
Natural Gas for Energy and Heating
Natural gas is the single most common gas people interact with daily, whether they realize it or not. It fuels stoves, furnaces, water heaters, and power plants across the globe. Over 40% of building heating worldwide relies on gas, and in the European Union, roughly one-third of all natural gas demand goes to heating buildings alone. It’s a mixture primarily made of methane, along with smaller amounts of ethane and propane.
Electric heat pumps are gaining ground as an alternative, meeting about 10% of global space heating needs as of 2021, with installation rates climbing quickly. Still, gas heating dominates in most developed countries, and natural gas remains a major fuel for electricity generation as well.
Medical Gases in Hospitals
Hospitals rely on six individual gases and three gas mixtures for everything from keeping patients breathing to numbing pain during procedures. The six gases are oxygen, nitrogen, nitrous oxide, argon, helium, and carbon dioxide. The three mixtures are Entonox (a 50/50 blend of nitrous oxide and oxygen used for pain relief), Heliox (79% helium and 21% oxygen, used for patients with airway obstruction), and standard compressed air.
Oxygen is the most critical. Patients in acute care typically receive air with 24% to 100% oxygen concentration, compared to the roughly 21% found in normal air at sea level. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy takes this further by delivering oxygen at higher-than-normal pressure, which floods the blood and tissues with oxygen to fight stubborn infections, promote wound healing, and protect organs from damage caused by poor blood flow.
Anesthetic Gases
When you go under general anesthesia for surgery, the gases doing the work are most commonly sevoflurane, desflurane, isoflurane, nitrous oxide, and halothane. These are inhaled through a mask or breathing tube and keep you unconscious and pain-free throughout a procedure. Sevoflurane is particularly popular because it has a mild smell and works quickly, making it a common choice for both adults and children.
Industrial Gases in Manufacturing
The steel and metals industry consumes enormous quantities of oxygen, nitrogen, and argon. Oxygen feeds blast furnaces and cutting torches. Nitrogen creates inert atmospheres that prevent unwanted chemical reactions during manufacturing. Argon, because it’s completely nonreactive, is used in welding to shield the molten metal from contamination by air.
Beyond metals, liquid nitrogen plays a key role in recycling operations, helping to process plastics, packaging, and scrap tires by making materials brittle enough to break apart. The chemical industry uses all major industrial gases either as raw materials for making products or as inerting agents to keep volatile processes safe.
Gases That Make Your Electronics Possible
Semiconductor manufacturing, the process behind every computer chip, requires a staggering variety of specialty gases. NIST’s index of semiconductor process gases lists over 40 different compounds. Some of the most important include silane (used to deposit thin layers of silicon), nitrogen trifluoride and carbon tetrafluoride (used to clean and etch chip surfaces), hydrogen (for reducing oxides), and ammonia (for creating insulating layers).
Many of these gases are toxic, corrosive, or flammable in their pure form, which is why chip fabrication plants, known as fabs, have some of the most sophisticated gas handling and safety systems of any factory on Earth. Without this precise cocktail of gases, manufacturing transistors at the nanometer scale would be impossible.
Refrigerant Gases in Cooling Systems
Your car’s air conditioning and your home refrigerator both rely on specialized refrigerant gases. Since 1994, the dominant refrigerant in vehicle air conditioning has been HFC-134a. But because HFC-134a has a high global warming potential, regulations are pushing the industry toward alternatives. Starting with model year 2025, new light-duty vehicles in the U.S. must use refrigerants with a global warming potential below 150.
The leading replacement is HFO-1234yf, which has a global warming potential of just 4 compared to HFC-134a’s much higher figure. It’s already used in the majority of new light-duty vehicles. Carbon dioxide (designated R-744) is another option with a global warming potential of 1, though it requires higher-pressure systems. Existing vehicles can still be serviced with HFC-134a, so both old and new refrigerants will coexist for years.
Carbon Dioxide in the Atmosphere
Carbon dioxide is the gas most discussed in the context of climate change. As of November 2025, the global average atmospheric concentration measured by NOAA reached 426.48 parts per million, up from 424.06 ppm a year earlier. That steady annual climb reflects ongoing fossil fuel combustion and is the primary driver of global temperature increases.
CO2 also has practical everyday uses: it carbonates beverages, serves as a fire suppressant, and helps preserve packaged food. But its role as a greenhouse gas is what keeps it in the headlines.
Hydrogen as an Emerging Fuel
Hydrogen is increasingly discussed as a clean energy carrier, particularly “green” hydrogen produced using renewable electricity to split water. Global installed capacity for water electrolysis, the machines that produce green hydrogen, reached 2 gigawatts in 2024 and added another gigawatt through mid-2025. Low-emissions hydrogen production is on track to hit 1 million metric tons in 2025, though that’s still less than 1% of total global hydrogen production.
China is the dominant force in this space, accounting for 65% of global installed electrolyzer capacity. Production from projects already operational or committed to is projected to reach 4.2 million metric tons per year by 2030. Most hydrogen today is still produced from natural gas through a process called steam reforming, but the green hydrogen sector is scaling fast.