The U.S. EPA has agreed to grant a petition filed by several NGOs to withdraw the agency’s approval of the super greenhouse gas HFC-134a for air conditioning installed in new automobiles.
This will be followed by a formal "notice and comment" rulemaking to set the phase-out schedule.
The NGO petition was filed as part of a worldwide campaign to eliminate HFCs, one of the six greenhouse gases included under the Kyoto Protocol.
HFCs are the fastest growing greenhouse gas in the U.S. and many other countries.
HFC-134a has a global warming potential 1,400 times greater than carbon emissions.
EPA approved the use of HFCs for mobile air conditioning under the Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) Program at a time when safer alternatives were not available, and when fast action was needed to replace an even more climate damaging chemical, CFC-12.
Now there are climate-safe alternatives, so there’s no reaons not to remove dangerous HFCs from the market.
Revoking approval for HFC-134a for mobile air conditioning will spur further development of alternatives in other industries.
In Europe, chemical companies announced six safe alternatives just weeks after a directive set the schedule for phasing out HFC refrigerants from mobile air conditioning in the 27 European Union countries.
Energy efficient emerging technologies would rapidly replace HFC and HCFC greenhouse gases in insulating foam products.
"Reducing all HFCs can produce a Planet-saving 100 billion tonnes or more of CO2-equivalent in climate mitigation. We can get 30% of this by outlawing 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 7 years for new cars as required in Europe, or in as little as three years if automakers get serious about improving their cars," says Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.
EPA’s decision "will encourage a rapid market transformation using the best available technology, selected by industry, just in time to allow American automakers to sell their cars everywhere in the world," says Stephen Andersen, who organized the Mobile Air Conditioning Climate Protection Partnership (MACCPP) during his time at EPA. He added, "Those outside the auto industry may think this is just more regulation, but it is actually government at its best helping industry move in concert on new technology the world needs to prosper."
At the Cancun Climate Summit last year, 400 companies announced they would start phasing out HFCs in 2015.
In the absence of strong carbon reduction targets worldwide, numerous groups are attempting to reduce greenhouse gases (GHG) by going after HFCs, which the world agreed to phase out under the Montreal Protocol. HFCs are much more powerful GHG than carbon.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which the world has yet to agree on, hundreds of countries signed on to the Montreal Protocol, which has been successfully reducing the ozone hole in the atmosphere.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) took the lead on this petition, and was joined by the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, and the Environmental Investigation Agency.
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