Article on www.RTCC.org 13 May 2014:
Banning HFCs from 2020 could make big climate impact – study
I am puzzled by this type of headline. Of course banning HFCs as of any point in time will make a big climate impact. They give numbers of what would be achieved if HFCs were banned in 2020 … well guess what? If you ban them in 2019, it will have even MORE of a climate impact. If you ban them today, you’ll have the GREATEST POSSIBLE climate impact! And if we ban cars as of today, guess how many metric tons of CO2 we can avoid? If you reduce pollution, pollution levels go down. Wow.
I don’t know anyone who wants to hold on to high GWP HFCs just because they are enamored with them. We have seen in the US supermarket industry that if lower GWP options are available that perform the same function as the high GWP HFCs, people will switch to them. Voluntarily!!
Instead of talking about the great environmental benefits that can be achieved if we ban HFCs, I’d like to see more time and energy spent in figuring out how to come up with low GWP alternatives to HFCs in areas where they do not yet exist. Even better, because we know that we can get to 90% natural today, in new stores and in existing stores, why not work on figuring out how to make that happen?
There is zero percent chance that HFCs will be banned world-wide by 2020. There IS a chance that we can be 90% there.
I tend to look at these topics from a realistic perspective and a practical point of view. 90% now? Or a lot of talk about what could be achieved in a situation that has no chance of becoming reality and no action?