Can We Slow Global Warming By Phasing Out Super-Pollutant HFCs?
4 46"There's one big bright spot in the fight against climate change that most people never think about," reports the Washington Post. "It could prevent nearly half a degree of global warming this century, a huge margin for a planet that has warmed almost 1.5 degrees Celsius and is struggling to keep that number below 2 degrees..." [M]ore than 170 countries — including the U.S. — have agreed to act on this one solution. That solution: phasing out hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a group of gases used in refrigerators, air conditioners and other cooling systems that heat the atmosphere more than almost any other pollutant on Earth. Pound for pound, HFCs are hundreds or even thousands of times better at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
Companies are replacing HFCs with new gases that trap much less heat. If you buy a new fridge or AC unit in the United States today, it'll probably use one of these new refrigerants — and you're unlikely to notice the difference, according to Francis Dietz, a spokesperson for the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, a trade group representing U.S. HVAC manufacturers... But that invisible transition is one of the most important short-term tactics to keep Earth's climate from going catastrophically off-kilter this century. HFCs are powerful super-pollutants, but the most common ones break down in the atmosphere within about 15 years. That means stopping emissions from HFCs — and other short-lived super-pollutants such as methane — is like pulling an emergency brake on climate change.
"It's really the fastest, easiest and, some would say, the only way to slow the rate of warming between now and 2050," said Kiff Gallagher, executive director of the Global Heat Reduction Initiative, a business that advises companies and cities on cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The only other solution that comes close to the speed and scale of slashing HFCs would be dimming the sun, a much more controversial and potentially dangerous option... [P]hasing out HFCs now "would buy us a little bit of time to develop other solutions that maybe take longer to implement," said Sarah Gleeson, a climate solutions research manager at Project Drawdown, a nonprofit that models how much different strategies would slow climate change. It could also keep the planet from crossing dangerous climate tipping points this century.
4 comments
Re:Every reduction in greenhouse gas emissions hel (Score: 5, Informative)
by tragedy ( 27079 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:13PM (#65961770)
Also also, the replacements for HFCs... what are their heat-trapping properties? 50x carbon dioxide? 90? 3? A half? Math matters.
Well, one of them, R-744 refrigerant is 1X CO2 (a GWP of 1). That's because it's just CO2. It works just fine as a refrigerant, but it does require some high pressures in the heat ranges it needs to work in, so the equipment has to be fairly heavy duty. Then there are things like R-1234yf which is a Hydrofluoroolefin (HFO) rather than an HCL. Its GWP is just 4, so it is 4X CO2 (technically, it actually produces a strong greenhouse effect, but the GWP is also based on duration, and it breaks down really fast in the atmosphere). It would be really great since it has similar efficiency to R134A (which it is targeted towards replacing, except for the slight downside of being flammable (not terribly so, though). The GWP of R-290 is even better than R-1234yf and just 3, but since it's propane, it has maybe a little bit worse of a flammability issue. Then there's R-32, which is an HCL, but has a GWP of only 675 ("only" being relative of course since it is hundreds of times the others, and is also a bit flammable. The refrigerant it aims to replace, R-410A has a GWP of 2088, so R-32 is an improvement there, plus, slightly less of it is required than R-410A, so that also reduces the leak potential (which also means less global warming potential than R-410A, but that is not captured in GWP, which measures heat trapping potential over time per unit mass).
Then there are blended refrigerants like R454B, which is just R32 and R1234yf mixed in about a 2/3rd to 1/3rd ratio with a GWP of 466. The point of it is mostly economics, with a bit of efficiency gain. R1234yf itself is more expensive, and so are the compressors needed for it. So the blend allows for cheaper gas and cheaper equipment while still hitting a lower GWP target than the R-410A it is intended to replace.
I should note that, out of those, while the R744 (CO2) technically has a GWP of 1. If the gas comes from the atmosphere in the first place and the power to extract it comes from a non-fossil source, the virtual GWP for it should be 0. I note that because I also want to note that one of the unknowns for the other refrigerants is what the environmental cost is to produce them in the first place. For example, propane has a GWP of 3, but it is a product of natural gas extraction and refining, and a heck of a lot of methane is just dumped into the atmosphere in that process. Methane has a GWP an order of magnitude higher than propane, and it is difficult to even figure out how much methane dumping should be attributed to every gram of propane. Same goes for the other refrigerants. There are some externalities that may affect their real GWP.
Also, I should mention that the GWPs for these should be based on a 100 year scale from what I can find. There is a 20 year scale and a 100 year scale that these are normally measured on and the numbers can be different. Some of the gases can linger well past 20 years and some are basically completely gone from the atmosphere in a matter of days.
Old news (Score: 5, Informative)
by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @02:04PM (#65961242)
Of course it would help. Just look at a refrigerant chart for global warming potential. A lot of the older ones have already been phased out to reduce ozone depletion potential, but their replacements were almost as bad in terms of global warming potential, which we weren't as worried about at the time.
For example, R-12's high ozone depletion potential also had an extremely high global warming potential, but its replacements like R22 and later R134a are still relatively high for global warming potential. These are being replaced with R600a (isobutane, which is flammable) and R1234yf, which is a blend of gases that have very different maintenance requirements due to partial pressures (one gas can leak out over time but leave the others, making the mixture less efficient and then you'd have to purge and replace the entire charge, not just top it up). It's a complex issue.
As we know more about these gases, hopefully we can resolve this... Obviously the sooner, the better.
Re:Thought this was done... (Score: 5, Informative)
by ClickOnThis ( 137803 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @02:38PM (#65961298)
It was CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) not HFCs that were destroying the ozone layer. And yes, the human race stopped using them after the 1987 Montreal Protocol was created, and the ozone layer recovered. HFCs don't destroy ozone, but they are greenhouse gases.
Re:There Will Always Be a Super Pollutant (Score: 5, Interesting)
by tragedy ( 27079 ) on Saturday January 31, 2026 @07:39PM (#65961808)
Freon or CFC-12. It was non-flammable, efficient, nominally non-poisonous and safe, and easily made
Bit of a caveat on the non-flammable and non-poisonous. Like you said, it was nominally non-poisonous, until exposed to fire. At that point it became phosgene gas.
Also, your central argument is a bit dubious. We are talking about factors of up to thousands in terms of global warming potential and you pointed out yourself the relative cheapness of r12. If your question is why we can't just let economics steer us to ecologically better refrigerants, it seems like you answered your own question. Anyway, it turns out that CO2 itself makes a very good refrigerant and it is very cheap and widely available. It just requires heavier duty equipment to use. Sometimes, industry needs a kick in the form of regulations to move away from problematic materials. Heck, industry has frequently shown that it will follow the sunk cost fallacy and frequently not adopt new technology that would significantly reduce its costs and increase profits.