Achieving Fast Mitigation: Kerry-Lieberman and UnSNAPing a Mobile Refrigerant
It's easy to overlook crucial provisions of the Senate climate bill that address strategies to reduce non-CO2 climate-forcing that accounts for almost half of the warming effect our activities cause. In the brouhaha the bill caused, it was also easy to overlook the significance of a petition from NGOs to EPA asking it to end the privileged status of the most widely used mobile air conditioning refrigerant, which has a global warming potential (GWP) up at 1,400. Yet these two closely-related actions, despite having nothing to do with CO2 emissions from the power plants targeted by the Senate bill, may well provide the most significant climate protections the US achieves in the near term.
The Senate climate bill unveiled on May 12th by Senators John Kerry and Joe Lieberman contains a section titled “Achieving Fast Mitigation” to address non-CO2 climate forcers, including black carbon soot, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). When combined with other similar sources like ground-level ozone, these non-CO2 greenhouse gases and pollutants make up 40 to 50 percent of total climate forcing.
Why is this called Fast Mitigation? The non-CO2 forcers are short-lived in the atmosphere -- a few days to about fifteen years -- meaning reductions will produce benefits fast and help to avoid the tipping points for abrupt climate change. Reductions in CO2 of course are essential but will not produce cooling for centuries.
We addressed controls over HFC greenhouse gases with hundreds to thousands the global warming potential of CO2 19 months ago here. Both the Senate bill and the House's Waxman-Markey bill now address HFCs and thus complement the proposal by the US, Canada, and Mexico under the Montreal Protocol ozone treaty which, if the Parties reach agreement in November, would result in avoided emissions of at least 100 billion tonnes of CO2-equivalent.
Studies show that technology is already available to address the non-CO2 pollutants and gases. Expanding biochar production is one such strategy but the hugest GWP reductions can be made in HFC refrigeration and air conditioning applications. That's where the NGO petition on HFC 134a comes in.
The NRDC, joined by the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) and the Environmental Investigation Agency, filed the petition to withdraw EPA approval for use of HFC-134a in mobile air conditioning installed in new cars. HFC-134a has a GWP 1,400 times greater than CO2, while replacements such as soon-to-be approved HFC 1234yf (GWP: 4), already-approved HFC-152a (GWP of ~140), hydrocarbons (GWP: 5), and CO2 (GWP: 1) have comparatively tiny GWPs.
Durwood Zaelke of the IGSD, one of the groups filing the petition, says that “reducing all HFCs can produce a planet-saving 100 billion tonnes or more of CO2-equivalent in climate mitigation. We can get 30 percent of this by outlawing high GWP HFCs in mobile air conditioning, as the European Union is already doing, starting with new models in 2011. And we can do it fast—easily in seven years for new cars as required in Europe, or in as little as three years if automakers get serious about improving their cars.”
Time for a More Climate-friendly Mobile Air-Conditioning Refrigerant?
What is driving the search for the next, “third generation” mobile refrigerant is both California's desire to move on and European Union regulations that will require air-conditioned vehicles sold in EU countries to use refrigerants with global warming potentials (GWP) less than 150 beginning in 2011 for new type vehicles and in all vehicles by 2017. HFC-134a has a 100-year GWP of 1,430, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. But, these regulations cannot be complied with in the EU alone without unacceptable impacts on the global market for autos and trucks, which today is a fully integrated international market. Vehicle manufacturers feel they must select a single global refrigerant that satisfies regulatory authorities in all markets worldwide.
Systems satisfying the EU regulation using carbon dioxide (R-744) and HFC-152a (R-152a) have been engineered and tested, and component and systems suppliers have announced their commercial availability. Additionally, global chemical manufacturers have developed and are currently testing new refrigerants that meet the GWP 150 limit. They would like to optimize fuel savings, cost savings, and environmental benefits by selecting the refrigerant that best satisfies life-cycle performance accounting standards for both direct greenhouse gas emissions and the indirect greenhouse gas emissions of the fuel burned to power the air conditioner.
HFC-1234yf has a GWP of four (4); the air conditioning system that uses it is safe and not substantially different from the system used for HFC-134a; and, perhaps most important of all, its system efficiency would allow 12 billion gallons of gasoline to be saved worldwide by 2025. Its slightly greater cost would be more than made up in fuel cost savings to the driving public over the life of the vehicle. The numbers involved are truly impressive: globally, vehicle air-conditioning consumes between four and twenty percent of national transportation fuels, depending on climate, traffic congestion, national wealth, and other factors. In the US, six percent of fuel use -- seven billion gallons -- is consumed annually just to operate vehicle air-conditioners. Refrigerant emissions have the carbon equivalent of burning another seven billion gallons of fuel. US vehicle air-conditioning fuel and refrigerant GHG emissions are equivalent to about 130 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent or 36 million metric tons of carbon equivalent.
An HFC-1234yf air-conditioning system achieving 30 percent higher fuel efficiency worldwide would have an incremental cost of about $200 per car purchased but would save a typical car owner over $800 during the life of the car. Global benefits spread over 20 years might include 50 billion gallons of fuel saved -- a potential $200 billion benefit ($10 billion a year) if gasoline were valued at four dollars a gallon. Additional value for the carbon emissions saved if this fuel is not burned, and for HFC-134a emissions avoided, would add $4-6 billion more to the 20-year benefit total. These rough estimates are just that; they can be substantially refined by the vehicle manufacturers, research institutions, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and EPA, but for an initial indication of benefits of selecting HFC-1234yf, these “back-of-the-envelope” estimates show that significant benefits would accompany the switch in refrigerant.
What stands in the way of selection of HFC-1234yf? A number of issues need to be addressed, including EC REACH and US state approvals, some regional bans on flammable refrigerants, anti-trust concerns (cured if governmental agencies play a leading role), technology licensing to ensure competitive supply, “not invented here” syndrome, and ensuring leak-tight systems designed for high energy efficiency. But none of these problems is insurmountable, and great good can be achieved by not having to go as promptly to the fourth generation selection of a refrigerant because the third generation selection was not carefully done.
Perhaps what is most needed is for an appropriate entity -- perhaps the Transatlantic Economic Council is the place to start -- to convene the global vehicle manufacturers from the US, the EU, Japan, and perhaps India and China, as well as the relevant governmental agencies in these countries and California, environmental NGOs, and other key stakeholders, to seek prompt agreement on this solution.
