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.
The Montreal Protocol Out-Kyotos Kyoto
The Montreal Protocol Parties agreed in September of 2007 to speed the phase-out of hydroclorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), the gases which are used in a variety of equipment and fire fighting foams, by providing up to 16 billion tons or more of CO2-equivalent (CO2e) in climate mitigation by the year 2040. What is so striking about this agreement is that it will achieve significantly more than the Kyoto Protocol sought to achieve during its entire first commitment period. Moreover, in July of this year, less than a year later, the leaders of the world’s 17 major economies pledged to continue these Montreal Protocol-based efforts, recognizing the need for urgent action and committing to act without delay to strengthen the Montreal Protocol for climate benefits. At about the same time, the Montreal Protocol parties met in Bangkok to follow on the major economies' endorsement of Montreal as, in effect, a “climate treaty” while still furthering the ozone layer protection goals of the original Montreal agreement. At the July meeting, Argentina, Micronesia, and Mauritius proposed strengthening the Protocol to reduce the 7.4 billion tons of CO2e that will be emitted by 2015 from discarded products and equipment if not properly recovered and destroyed.
Just two months from now, in November, critical negotiations on Montreal Protocol climate actions will take place in Doha, Qatar (November 16-20). In connection with these upcoming negotiations, Durwood Zaelke, the President of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development, whose board I chair, stated that “the world’s leaders ...understand that the Montreal Protocol can deliver immediate climate benefits as it has been doing for the past 20 years.” For once we would do well to follow our leaders. The chief Montreal negotiator for Mauritius went further. Sateeaved Seebaluck said that the Montreal Protocol has been “the world’s life-preserver,” keeping us from passing tipping points for abrupt and irreversible climate change.
The Montreal Protocol story is instructive for other climate initiatives. For example, it sheds a different light on the much-maligned idea of using the Clean Air Act for climate protection purposes. Implementation of the stratospheric ozone protection provisions of the CAA pursuant to the Montreal Protocol contributed to the global Montreal climate agreement in 2007. Global emissions of fine particulate black carbon or elemental carbon, which scientists are now saying is second only to CO2 as a global warming source, dramatically alters the reflectivity (albedo) of the earth, particularly its ice and snowfields. Black carbon is not covered by either the Kyoto or the Montreal Protocol. But according to EPA and the Office of Management and Budget, fine particulates, PM 2.5, are the Clean Air Act's most damaging criteria pollutant, and EPA estimates that over 5 percent of US fine particulate emissions are black carbon. (Black carbon will be the subject of a future blog). The CAA may be an appropriate vehicle for controlling black carbon emissions, with Montreal-like payoffs for greenhouse effect reduction.
How to add hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs), both potent non-ODS families of Kyoto gases, to the Montreal regime is a topic for another day.
For more information see:
19th MOP HCFC Adjustments to Enter into Force May 2008
UNEP DTIE OzonAction Branch HCFCsNews
EPA Honors Montreal Protocol Champions for Protection of Climate
