HFCs

Coca-Cola is going HFC-free. The soft drink giant announced today that it is phasing out hydrofluorocarbons — potent "super greenhouse gases" — by requiring that all new vending machines and coolers be HFC-free by 2015.

CEO Muhtar Kent told reporters he hopes the move will catalyze a shift away from HFCs in the wider commercial refrigeration market.

If it succeeds, it could be a valuable step in the fight against global warming.

At little noticed talks last week in Port Ghalib, Egypt, climate advocates were hoping to seal a global agreement for the phase down of super greenhouse gases and give next month's Copenhagen climate talks a can-do running start. But the annual meeting of the 198 nations of the Montreal Protocol began on a note of contention that five days of discussions could not overcome.

The 22-year-old Montreal Protocol has delivered an unbroken string of successes in the battle against ozone depletion, accomplished with comity and cooperation, but now observers say it has caught the climate virus. Rhetoric trumped getting down to business, as an agreement to rid the world of HFCs, enormously potent global warming gases, was postponed for at least another year.

"We're approaching tipping points fast, and we missed an opportunity to take action this year," said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, who attended the talks in Egypt.

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• David Sassoon's blog
• 3 comments

When you turn on the AC, what’s cooling you off is heating up the planet.

As temperatures rise, so do air conditioner sales, and what makes most of these 4 billion-plus machines cool indoor environments worldwide are HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons), gases with global warming potentials thousands of times greater than CO2.

HFCs started out as environmentally preferable alternatives to ozone-depleting CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) and HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons), now being phased out by the Montreal Protocol. Then scientists realized their true global warming potential. HFCs use is now increasing so rapidly that scientists warn that if not curtailed, greenhouse gas impacts of HFCs could undermine other efforts to curb global warming.

HFCs are so potent — atmospherically and politically — that the outcome of ongoing negotiations about their regulation could significantly affect both the rate of global warming and the course of international climate change legislation.

The U.S. State Department issued an international proposal jointly with the governments of Canada and Mexico this week to phase down the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) starting as early as 2011.

The move represents a welcome breakthrough for the administration, whose HFC policy has been delayed since May when interagency disagreements stalled U.S. action on the super greenhouse gases.

HFCs, found in small amounts in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems, have a climate warming impact many thousands of times greater than CO2.

Without aggressive action to curb their rapidly growing use in developing nations, their emissions could equal up to 45 percent of CO2 emissions by 2050, under a scenario where CO2 emissions are stabilized at 450 parts per million. They would virtually negate pending international efforts to slash global carbon emissions in coming decades.

The North American proposal throws its weight behind the effort initiated last April by the small island nations of Mauritius and Micronesia to use the existing international treaty mechanism of the Montreal Protocol to accomplish the HFC phase down.

It would be the first time that the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, recognized as a very successful treaty that has stopped the global use of more than 90 ozone-destroying substances in its 20 years, would be deployed to control climate warming gases.

Small island nations stand first in the path of catastrophic impacts of global warming. Unless something is done, these nations face literal extinction in the certain sea level rise of coming decades.

As the innocent victims of a crisis they did nothing to create, they are the most persuasive advocates for climate action. But they are also the least powerful of nations on the globe, occupying a moral high ground that's about to be swallowed up by the sea.

Earlier this month they issued a formal plea for help in the form of a proposed amendment to an existing international treaty. The amendment would enable the world to take swift and decisive action against a powerful class of warming gases called HFCs or hydrofluorocarbons.

Known as super greenhouse gases, HFCs are projected to add an enormous greenhouse gas burden in the next 30 years as their use in refrigerators and air conditioning systems grows in developing countries unless something is done immediately. On top of the warming power of CO2, HFCs are an emergency within the climate emergency.

In Geneva, around formal UN conference tables and careful discussions, the small island nations' amendment was a central topic of discussion during the week-long Open Ended Working Group meeting of parties to the Montreal Protocol earlier this month.

The amendment was introduced by Mauritius and the Federated States of Micronesia. By the end of the meeting, eight other island nations had signed on as co-sponsors: the Seychelles, Kiribati, Samoa, the Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Comoros, Madagascar and Palau — places few Americans could locate on a map, ten small nations out of 195 treaty signatories.

The existential clarity of these islands' vulnerable position did little to persuade the big polluting nations to come to their rescue. Even the United States remained non-committal.

"The U.S. delegation said good things, but they never came out and said, 'We support the amendment and we will take leadership,'" said Durwood Zaelke, founder and president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, who attended the talks.

"Controlling HFCs is the single greatest near-term climate opportunity the Obama administration has, and with it, the U.S. can create tremendous momentum going into Copenhagen."

For now, the U.S. and many of the assembled nations are caught in opportunism and red tape, eyeing economic advantage and future negotiating room instead of heeding the plea from the island nations to move forward with a proven solution.

Hydrofluorocarbons – or HFCs – are gases most people have never heard of, even though almost everybody in America has bought their fair share of them.

They come inside cars and air conditioners and refrigerators as the newest gases of choice in cooling systems and are many thousands of times more potent than CO2 as climate warming agents.

Use of these gases is expected to mushroom with rising prosperity in developing nations, and if left unchecked could be equivalent to as much as 45% of CO2 emissions in 2050. It is an invisible emergency within a climate emergency whose outsized contours were confirmed in a scientific paper published last month by the National Academy of Sciences.

The public is barely aware of the issue, though, and as the White House works to hammer out its policy, it seems to want to keep it that way.

As a result, HFCs have become one of the most important sleeper issues in the international climate arena, caught in a Byzantine crossfire of conflicting interests and turf wars both within the administration and outside it. At stake right now is an opportunity for the U.S. to demonstrate international leadership and score a big victory for the climate during meetings in Geneva next week. Most stakeholders fear a golden opportunity to build momentum ahead of Copenhagen climate talks will be squandered, even though many see an inspiring victory within easy reach.

"We can take HFCs out before Copenhagen and offer it as Exhibit A to the world to show what can be done to protect the climate," said Durwood Zaelke, founder and president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.

"This is exactly the kind of signal the climate markets need, and the big question now is what will the U.S. do."

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• David Sassoon's blog
• Add new comment

There were four signatures on the two-page letter dated June 15 that was sent to The Honorable Barack Obama, President of the United States – signatures of three ambassadors and one charge d'affaires from nations most Americans could not find on a map.

The Federated States of Micronesia. Republic of the Marshall Islands. Republic of the Fiji Islands. Papua New Guinea.

The letter contained a plea:

Mr. President, please understand that your leadership is indispensable. We are representatives of all vulnerable small island states around the world and the many other low-lying coastal countries that face the growing threat of extinction from climate change. The future of our societies depends on you.

And they asked him for something very specific and reasonable:

The growing global demand for air-conditioning and refrigeration – humanity's need to cool things off – is ironically now emerging as one of the biggest potential contributors to future global warming.

A class of gases known as HFCs – hydrofluorocarbons – used by the refrigeration industry to cool people in their cars and homes and to keep food from spoiling, is turning out to be the primary culprit.

Developed to replace the gases responsible for depleting the ozone, HFCs have a powerful worsening effect on global warming and have created another challenge for lawmakers to confront, an emergency within an emergency.

Each molecule of these man-made gases, often called F-gases, has a global warming potential (GWP) many thousands of times more powerful than a molecule of CO2, thus earning them the nickname "super GHGs."

New projections indicate that unless these gases are rapidly phased out with available alternatives that are benign by comparison, they could negate the impact of all other emissions reductions efforts now being contemplated. By 2040, the international NGO Environmental Investigation Agency estimates HFCs will have added 180 gigatons CO2 equivalent to the atmosphere.

"If we control these gases internationally, we will prevent the release of the equivalent of 25 years of total U.S. emissions" said S.F. LaBudde, campaign director at the Environmental Investigation Agency. "It could hinge on getting the HFC provisions of the Waxman-Markey bill right."

Read More

Bookmark/Search this post with:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

• David Sassoon's blog
• 1 comment