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Freeze on refrigerants heats up search for replacements

Hydrofluorocarbon ban to start 2018 in developed countries

The world has agreed to begin phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), whose greenhouse effect is 10,000 as strong as carbon dioxide.

Nearly a year after the 197 signatories to the Montreal Protocol started work on an agreement covering HFCs, 170 countries have cut a binding accord to farewell the gases.

HFCs turn up in refrigerators, air conditioners, and are a popular alternative to halon in large-scale fire suppression systems (such as are installed in data centres). Its use as a replacement for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) ramped up after the Montreal Protocol came into effect in 1989, leading to the worldwide phase-out of the ozone-destroying gas.

Currently, HFC emissions are rising by 10 per cent annually.

The replacement chemicals, however, are a powerful greenhouse gas. Although the volume released into the atmosphere is tiny, had the growing use of CFCs not been curtailed by the agreement, it had been predicted that by the end of the century their use would have added 0.5°C to the planet's temperature.

Since the fate of HFCs wasn't part of the Paris Climate Agreement signed earlier this year, the weekend meeting in Rwanda agreed to amend the Montreal Protocol.

The agreement institutes a three-phase process:

  • The US and the European Union (and other developed economies) will freeze production and consumption by 2018 (Europe had already adopted its own regulations in 2014, America via the EPA in 2015);
  • China, Brazil, and African nations will start their freeze in 2024; and
  • The hottest countries – including Kuwait, Pakistan, India, Saudi Arabia – get to stick with HFCs until 2028.

Cool to temperate countries have the least trouble, because CO2 is already known to be a usable refrigerant, but it doesn't perform well in hot environments, so that will spark an international research effort.

CO2 has already begun replacing HFCs in data centre systems. Refrigeration engineering news site R744.com notes that its effectiveness in big facilities was discussed at a 2014 conference, for example.

If all goes to plan, HFC production will be cut by 80 per cent by 2040.

Perhaps with the experience of the Montreal Protocol, which failed to destroy the global economy, opposition to the HFC ban has been relatively muted. ®

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