Montreal Protocol

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.

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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.

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."

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The U.S. State Department's effort to combat a class of "super greenhouse gases" many thousands of times more potent than CO2 hit a speed bump at the White House yesterday, jeopardizing its chances of meeting a May 4 deadline.

The goal of the effort is to use the Montreal Protocol to phase down the global use of hydroflurocarbons, or HFCs. While currently used only in small amounts for air-conditioning and refrigeration, these gases are projected to grow astronomically in coming decades.

In response to the White House delay, Sens. John Kerry and Barbara Boxer sent a letter to President Obama today urging him to get behind the State Department plan.

"We understand that your administration is considering offering an amendment to the Montreal Protocol next week that would provide authority to regulate HFCs. We strongly support such an amendment," they wrote.

Reps. Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, leading the push for climate legislation in the House, also supported the State Department plan in a letter sent earlier this month to the White House.

Left unchecked, HFCs would add up to 25 times the current total U.S. emissions to the global burden by 2040, largely because of their use in ever greater numbers in the developing world. They could effectively negate all reductions in CO2 currently being contemplated.

Over the 20 years of its existence, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has tackled the phase out of more than 90 similar gases, and policymakers believe it offers the best avenue for immediately handling HFCs.

Earlier this month in Bonn, Todd Stern, the United States' chief climate negotiator, described the Montreal Protocol as "the most successful environmental treaty that we have," and he listed it first among five building blocks for a successful international climate treaty to be negotiated in Copenhagen at the end of this year.

The State Department, EPA, the White House Council on Environmental Quality and the Pentagon are among the agencies behind the plan to amend the Montreal Protocol so it can regulate HFCs, and expectations for success were high going in to an interagency meeting at the White House yesterday.

But the plan hit stiff resistance from a White House economist who attended the meeting, three sources closely involved in the process tell SolveClimate.

The U.S. State Department is working feverishly on a proposed amendment to the Montreal Protocol that would tap the highly successful international treaty for urgent climate duty.

Facing a May 4 deadline, State Department officials are meeting with their counterparts from across the administration this afternoon at the White House, and there is high expectation that they will secure the approval they need to go forward.

The goal is to use the Montreal mechanisms to phase out a class of man-made "super greenhouse gases" that have a global warming potential many thousands of times more powerful than a molecule of CO2. They are now used in small amounts, but their proliferation in coming decades is projected to grow astronomically.

Left unchecked, these gases – hydroflurocarbons, or HFCs – would add up to 25 times the current total U.S. emissions to the global burden by 2040, largely because of their use in ever greater numbers of automobile air conditioners and refrigerators in the developing world. They could effectively negate reductions in CO2 currently being contemplated.

Over the 20 years of its existence, the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer has tackled more than 90 similar gases, reducing their use by 97% globally, and policymakers believe it offers the best avenue for immediately phasing out these super GHGs.

State is collaborating with the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality to beat the amendment deadline. With an administration only 100 days old, many unfilled positions within it, and the need for swift interagency cooperation, the effort to get government-wide agreement on the amendment has been challenging.

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."

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