Earth Equity News

U.S. Wants Control HFCs by Amending Montreal Protocol. By John Heilprin, AP, April 30, 2009. "The Obama administration, in a major environmental policy shift, is leaning toward asking 195 nations that ratified the U.N. ozone treaty to enact mandatory reductions in hydrofluorocarbons, according to U.S. officials and documents obtained by The Associated Press... The change -- the first U.S.-proposed mandatory global cut in greenhouse gases -- would transform the ozone treaty into a strong tool for fighting global warming. 'Now it's going to be a climate treaty, with no ozone-depleting materials, if this goes forward,' an EPA technical expert said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because a final decision is pending. The expert said the 21-year-old ozone treaty known as the Montreal Protocol created virtually the entire market for hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, so including them in the treaty would take care of a problem of its own making. It's uncertain how that would work in conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol, the world's climate treaty, which now regulates HFCs... Because they do not affect the ozone layer, HFCs broadly replaced CFCs as coolants in everything from refrigerators, air conditioners and fire extinguishers to aerosol sprays, medical devices and semiconductors. But experts say the solution to one problem is now worsening another... HFCs can be up to 10,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide as climate-warming chemicals, according to U.S. government data. Currently they account for only about 2 percent of all greenhouse-gas emissions, but the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned in 2005 that use of HFCs was growing at 8.8 percent per year."