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Scientists are now telling us we have at most 6 to 10 years to reduce greenhouse emissions.

The urgency of responding to climate change demands that greenhouse emissions from all sources be reduced as rapidly as possible.

Unfortunately the extremely potent fluorocarbon refrigerant gases (or “F-gases”) that are constantly leaking from refrigeration and air conditioning equipment have been largely overlooked in the popular debate on climate change.

Most people think that the problem was fixed when CFCs were phased out of domestic refrigerators in the early 1990s, and are surprised to learn that the replacement hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, are extremely potent industrial greenhouse gases (PIGGs – there are several others including PFCs, SF6, NI3 and SF2).

A major new development in the science has established the problem is four times larger than previously thought, and the international community now faces an historic challenge to respond rapidly to the science, beginning this week at Montreal Protocol talks in Geneva, and building up to decisions at the end of the year in Eygpt and Copenhagen. Download the Green Cooling Interview with Dr Guus Velders here: Dr Guus Velders Interview 6 July 2009 (115)

Our goal is to promote the adoption of genuinely climate friendly solutions through the use of natural refrigerants and improving energy efficiency of RAC systems.

Unless the world energetically embraces the imperative to make a rapid transition to genuinely climate friendly refrigerants, HFC emissions alone are projected to reach 8% of greenhouse emissions by 2050. Every kilogram of fluorocarbon refrigerant emitted to our fragile atmosphere requires the removal of up to 4 tonnes of CO2 to compensate for the radiative forcing impact of these dangerous gases.

We hope you will find some information of use on the site, and encourage you to explore the links and RSS feeds to the Shecco websites r744.com, hydrocarbons21.com and ammonia.com on the sidebar.

If you’d like to learn more, participate in our Google Group or make a contribution in any way to becoming part of the solutions, welcome to the Green Cooling Association,  we hope you can add your support today.

See below for the Green Cooling Climate Friendly Refrigerant Declaration to achieve fast acting climate change mitigation.

Don Griffiths (GCC President) inspecting Angle Vale Plant Room

Inaugural Coolworld Award - Angle Vale - Refrigeration Installation of the Year

New study finds…

“The large contribution of projected HFC emissions to future climate forcing”

See the news page for news of the second historic Velders et.al. study on the climate impacts of F-gases published Monday 22 June 2009 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the USA

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Climate Friendly Refrigerants Declaration

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Recognising that:

* Fluorocarbon refrigerants and foam-blowing agents including HFCs and HCFCs are a rapidly increasing source of potent greenhouse gas emissions because they have very high Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the global impact of this major emission source is not being sufficiently addressed;

* to avoid fluorocarbon emissions and to achieve substantial, fast acting emissions abatement, the transition to natural refrigerants needs to be rapidly accelerated;

* there are clear and proven solutions; the Danish Government took action from 1996 to phase out HFCs, and within 10 years Denmark achieved clear and positive outcomes both in terms of natural refrigerant technology development and reducing use and emissions of high GWP fluorocarbon refrigerants.

We call on the Australian Government to immediately develop policy measures to:

1  - phase out HFC refrigerants over a ten year period ending not later than 31 December 2020, in order to achieve emissions reductions in the order of 110 million tonnes CO2-e;  (is that figure – conservative,or enthusiastic??)

2  - ensure that energy efficiency strategies for non-domestic refrigeration sectors are based on the recognition that natural refrigerants can be applied with significantly reduced power consumption demand in most applications, and that such policy tools need to explicitly support the policy objective of reducing the use and emissions of HFCs;

3  - support further development of a refrigeration sector able to lead the world in the application of Natural Refrigerants including Air, Ammonia, Carbon Dioxide, Hydrocarbons and Water in recognition that natural refrigerants will be able to perform all necessary refrigeration duties as demonstrated in many applications around the world;

4  - support amendment proposals at the Montreal Protocol negotiations to include consumption and production controls on HFCs in the Montreal Protocol, and to support proposals to immediately phase down, and eventually phase out HFC use and emissions,

5  - actively enforce existing legislation requiring the recovery and destruction of refrigerant gases contained in the bank of existing equipment, and to finalise and implement the review of measures necessary to significantly improve refrigerant recovery and destruction rates in Australia;

6 – to adequately and consistently fund the mechanisms and processes required to achieve this; and

7 - to assist other countries in our region to achieve similar improvements in environmentally responsible management of the existing  “banks” of refrigerant in order to achieve climate and ozone protection outcomes.

Policy responses to achieve these goals need to be developed immediately and implemented as soon as possible.