Obama Administration Targets Greenhouse Gases That Are Up To 10,000 Times More Potent Than CO2

First published on ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, which was recently named one of Time magazine’s Top 25 blogs of 2010.

The Obama administration has announced new efforts to reduce the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases that are used in refrigerators, air conditioners, aerosols, and foam products.

The White House announcement outlines commitments from private sector companies to reduce their use of HFCs, a class of gases that can trap 10,000 times more heat than carbon dioxide. It also includes commitments from the government, such as plans from the Department of Defense to equip its new class destroyers and amphibious transport dock ships with low-emissions refrigeration and air conditioning. The DoD also announced that it would provide $3 million for research into HFC alternatives that won’t contribute so much to climate change.

The White House estimates that, over the next 10 years, the commitments from companies and government agencies will cut HFC emissions by the equivalent of 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. The’s equal, according to the White House, to removing 210 million cars from the road for one year.

HFCs are a type of fluoridated gas that became common in certain industries after chlorofluorocarbons, which were once used in refrigerators and air conditioning and whose use led to a hole in the ozone layer, were banned. Banning CFCs is helping the ozone repair itself, but it also opened the door for HFCs as a replacement. HFCs are potent greenhouse gases that leak into the atmosphere during maintenance of A.C. or refrigeration units, and also escape when these appliances are thrown away. Without efforts to limit their use, the White House estimates that their emissions will triple in the U.S. by 2030.

But just as HFCs replaced CFCs, new, less potent gases will need to replace HFCs if the phase-out is to be successful.

“The challenge is, how do we transition away from these to other chemicals that can do just as well?” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said Thursday.

Luckily, there are already some alternatives that work effectively in the place of HFCs and don’t cause the same degree of warming. As part of the effort, the EPA plans to expand its list of low global warming potential gases that can be used as alternatives to HFCs — a list known as Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) program. Next spring, according to the NRDC, the EPA is set to come out with a new set of SNAP rules that create deadlines for replacing HFCs in cases where more climate-friendly alternatives are available.

And also on Thursday, the Department of Energy released a report that tested HFC alternatives in high-temperature environments. The report found that “several viable replacements exist for both HCFC-22 and HFC-410A in those environments for mini-split air conditioning units.”

The world’s action on HFCs has come in stages. In 2013, the U.S. and China announced that they would work to phase down the use of HFCs. And last year, India, China, and other developing countries agreed to discussions on phasing out HFCs. As residents in developing countries like India become wealthier, they buy more air conditioners and refrigerators, which means the possibility of phasing out HFCs in those countries will be key to reducing emissions. China could overtake the United States as the largest consumer of electricity for air conditioning by 2020, and India is among the countries expected to see the planet’s largest increases in A.C. demand.

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