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MIPIGGS Newsletter To be added to the MPIGGs mailing list, or to unsubscribe, contact secretary@mipiggs.org
CONTENTS * Action Alert * Contact your MEP – a vote is about to take place in Brussels on the EU draft regulation on f-gases This from ENDS Daily February 11 (www.environmentdaily.com – free trial available):
Note: MIPIGGs encourages MEPs to vote for amendments which:
European parliament environment committee and committee member amendments EDITORIAL - Very Bad News From Brussels ? HFCs are firmly on the road to becoming the new CFCs. Recently revealed measurements from the Norwegian Arctic show HFC levels climbing rapidly (below) – and Europe looks about to bow to US pressures to let HFCs rip throughout the car market. Sad to relate, it looks as if the spending of large amounts of dollars has paid off for the US chemical (fluorocarbon) and US-owned (eg Volvo, Ford, Rover, Jaguar) car manufacturers. Members of the European Parliament are about to vote on the draft European Union regulation on f-gases such as HFCs. The Commission acknowledges that emissions (mostly HFCs) 'are forecast to increase to around 98 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2010, representing 2 to 4% of total projected greenhouse gas emissions'. The proposed regulation is modest. It requires no use of alterantive technologies. It doesn't introduce 'essential uses' or concrete bans on HFCs in refrigeration, even though there are proven alternatives. The only specific controls it suggests are on HFC use in cars and other vehicles. But this has proved enough to mobilise the lobbyists of EPEE, Ford and others who preserve HFCs in the notoriously leaky application of mobile air conditioning (MAC). Probably as a result, the rapporteur MEP, Robert Goodwill, broadly supports the European Commission's initial draft, 'with the main exception of its proposed quota system for HFCs in vehicle air conditioning systems'. [ENDS Daily 11 February 2004] On this, he supports the car manufacturers who want a ban only from 2012. Last year 17 companies involved in an alternative technology – CO2 based MAC – met in Brussels. The general consensus is that non-HFC air conditioning for cars could be commercialised within two or three years. As former UK Environment Secretary John Gummer put it during a British Parliament debate in January "if it [the car industry] can suggest a ban in 2012, we know that it can do it a darn sight earlier than that". Yet the UK (see below) rules out alternatives as unavailable. Bird-watching green Minister Elliot Morley, regarded as a good thing by environmentalists on many other counts, seems taken in by the industry line. Morley says that CO2 systems might explode because they are under pressure. But other systems under the bonnet are under even more pressure, like power steering (strange that the auto industry seems fine with that). And what about ultra-high pressure hydrogen fuel tanks – held up by the UK Government as the part of a future 'Hydrogen Economy' ? Likewise many officials repeat the f-gas industry propaganda that hydrocarbon alternatives would be dangerous. Yet there are over 300,000 vehicles using HC MAC in Australia and many in the USA. There are now over 100 million accident-free fridge-years of operation in European domestic HC 'greenfreeze'. The talk of risk is simply spin from the US-based f-gas industry. It is an irony that chief among the manufacturers of alternatives is the Anglo-Dutch Calor Gas, purveyors of hydrocarbon mixtures, who do not promote hydrocarbon MAC. Yet the charge for a hydrocarbon system is 150 grammes, whereas some 50 litres may be held in a pressurised tank of LPG (which Calor make and the UK Government blesses) – and that's seen as perfectly safe. This debate has nothing to do with real safety issues and everything to do with lobbying by American industry. In the case of the UK government, it has done a u-turn on HFCs in order to accommodate the new position (see below). MIPIGGS believes that the regulation as drafted is slack, complacent in the face of the growing f-gas threat, and full of loopholes. It should - Hindsight on HFCs Conservative MP Ms Caroline Spelman said in a debate in the UK House of Commons on 14 January "with hindsight, the decision to replace CFCs with HFCs was a dirty deal". Outrage on HFCs On 27 January Spelman's fellow UK Conservative John Gummer MP asked "What about the Government's estate? ... it is an outrage that the Home Office, contrary to what it promised, has installed hydrofluorocarbons in its air conditioning in its new building. Can the Government be listened to if that is how they allow their procurement to operate? ... With each new or refurbished building, the Government should take the necessary steps to combat global warming. We should ban HFCs and give industry an opportunity. With modern technology, it is perfectly possible for refrigeration and air conditioning to operate without the use of HFCs". HFC Warning Labels For Cars ? In January UK Liberal Democrat MP Sue Doughty asked Minister Elliot Morley "Are there any plans to ensure that it is common knowledge that chemicals in the air conditioning of cars are harmful to the environment?" [ Controls on Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases European Standing Committee A Wednesday 14 January 2004] Environment Minister Elliot responded "that is a reasonable point ... will give it some thought". MIPIGGS has written to Morley repeating the call and asking if he has now thought about it. UK Government Car Policy U-Turns Over HFCs Once upon a time, UK policy had it that some uses of HFCs were essential for phasing out CFCs or HCFCs (Ozone Depleting Subsatnces, ODS), otherwise they were to be avoided. Now all that seems to have changed. Current policy is just to try and minimise leaks of HFCs and accept them – as in mobile air conbditioning - even though they have no role at all in substituting for CFCs. This is a significant u-turn. Policy Denounced By Friends of the Earth Friends of the Earth yesterday denounced the UK government position. Roger Higman, director of FoE's energy and transport programme said: "Hundreds of millions of people in the poorest countries of the world stand to lose their lives or livelihoods if dangerous climate change isn't stopped. But the car companies and the HFC industry are putting their profits first. They should be ashamed of themselves - and Ministers should be ashamed for listening to them". Higman joins calls by MIPIGGs for the policy to be reversed. Climate Network Europe told MIPIGGs: "Assuming sales of some 20 million cars per year, every year that phaseout of 134a is delayed leads to lifetime emissions of around 40 MT CO2 emissions. CO2 systems have negligible direct emissions impact and are more efficient than HFC-134a systems. On a lifecycle basis, CO2 systems are estimated to have 20-40% less climate impact than HFC-134a systems" How The UK U-Turned In its December 2004 Briefing Notes for MEPs, reiterated in a debate in the House of Commons on 14 January, the UK Government called for the EU regulation not to ban HFCs but instead to 'require the use of enhanced HFC-134a systems', as a cheaper option. (It also wanted Article 95 (single market) legal base as well as an environmenatl one and backed car industry calls to slow introduction of rules from 2005 to 2007). On 12 February MIPIGGs wrote to Elliot Morley MP, Minister for the Environment and Agri Environment at DEFRA saying: 'We are alarmed that you appear to have reversed the previous presumption against the use of HFCs, powerful greenhouse gases, which was clearly stated by your predecessor Michael Meacher, supported by John Prescott, and indeed is still the policy stated in the UK Climate Change Programme.' 'In 2000 Michael Meacher said We recognise that HFCs are necessary replacements for ozone-depleting substances in some applications, but we are concerned that emissions from these sources are forecast to grow strongly in the near future. This trend is unsustainable in the longer term and action needs to be taken to limit the projected growth. Our position would allow HFCs to continue to be used where they are necessary, but we recognise that the successful phase out of ozone-depleting substances is being achieved with a range of technologies.' This, said MIPIGGs, 'clearly rules out use of HFCs where they are not necessary as replacements for ozone depleting substances'. In 2000 John Prescott, Deputy Prime Minister launched the UK's draft action plan on implementing the Kyoto Protocol, saying it included "a clear signal to industry that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) have no long-term future". MIPIGGS says 'That is not the signal being sent now, if you support use of HFCs in car air-conditioning, instead of an early ban'. The 2001 UK Climate Change Programme states (Annex F): the Government concluded voluntary agreements with the five key sectors that use HFCs as alternatives to ozone-depleting substances –refrigeration and air conditioning, mobile air conditioning, foams, fire protection and aerosols. These agreements set out strategies to minimise emissions but recognised the need not to take action which would undermine efforts being taken to phase out the use of ozone-depleting substances This repeats the logic of what Mr Meacher stated in the House of Commons. It clearly puts 'necessary' use of HFCs in the context of a phase-out of CFCs or other ODS, ozone-depleting substances. Yet in the case of car air-conditioning, there are no 'efforts being taken to phase out the use of ozone-depleting substances'. Morley acknowledged as much on 14 January 2004 when he noted: "modern car systems do not have CFCs in them" (European Standing Committee A debate). Nor, in the UK and Europe, did older cars. Until recently car air-conditioning was almost unheard of in Europe. Now it is growing rapidly and f-gas industry sources put HFC growth at 3 – 6% a year. As of 1997 only 9% of new cars sold in Europe had air-conditioning yet it was forecast that 90% would do so by 2001. Unlike in the United States, this is not a CFC or ODS replacement issue at all, but an entirely new use of HFCs so they ought not to be used. MIPIGGS pointed out that 'in a letter to us on 26 January your Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King wrote': "the Government's general position on HFCs remains the same as stated in UK Climate Change Programme. That being HFCs should be used only where other safe, technically feasible, cost-effective and more environmentally acceptable alternatives do not exist; that HFCs are not sustainable in the long term; and that continued technological developments will mean that HFCs may eventually be able to be replaced in the applications where used". This 'general' position makes no mention of a phase out of ODS. Does this mean, MIPIGGS asked Morley, 'that the criterion of need in relation to phase out of ODS has been dropped? Or that it remains but is not stated? Either policy has changed or supporting HFCs in car air-conditioning contradicts it.' For there to have been no change in UK policy and for HFCs in car air-conditioning to be consistent with it, one would need to argue that HFCs can be used as 'an alternative' to CFC uses which have never existed, rather than a replacement for actual uses. This would make a Kafka-esque mockery of environmental policy and would permit almost any HFC uses which industry can dream up. 'Is this your intention?' MIPIGGS asked the Minister. It continued: 'For Government to now sanction large scale use of a powerful greenhouse gas, HFCs, just as a consumer extra, permits an environmental abuse as feckless as when official policy backed CFCs aerosols. It simply puts car sale incentives over the environment.' MIPIGGS described the hope that 'enhanced' HFC systems would not leak and the gases would be recovered, as 'speculative' and contrary to experience with fridges (see below). Even modern car systems lose their entire charge to the atmosphere in 5 – 10 years. Loss of 10% or 80 grammes of HFC 134a is equivalent to driving the average European car 403 miles (650km), the distance from London to Edinburgh. It urged the Minister to 'revert to the previous position of promoting alternative technologies and practices that avoid the use of HFCs and other f-gases altogether'. It pointed out that Sir David King had recently described the threat of global warming as worse than terrorism, and that the UK Prime Minister recently described climate change as the greatest long-term threat to humanity. MIPIGGS called for the UK to drop support for 'enhanced', or any use of HFCs in mobile air-conditioning, and to call on European partners 'for a ban on HFCs at the earliest date, together with a fast-track programme to commercialise the alternative technologies (eg CO2 based) demonstrated by Toyota and others'. It said: 'You have praised the Government advertising campaign "doing your bit" which aimed for an 'increase in awareness about the link between individual car and energy use and climate change' as "very useful". It should now be extended to avoiding HFCs in cars and other consumer goods. 'A vigorous Government public awareness information campaign should advise drivers to avoid buying cars with HFC air conditioning, and to demand alternatives. The example of greenfreeze, praised by the Prime Minister, shows the capacity of industry to rapidly comercialise such technologies. As former Environment Secretary John Gummer said in the House on 27 January, "if it [the motor industry] can suggest a ban in 2012, we know that it can do it a darn sight earlier than that". Above all, concluded MIPIGGs, 'the UK and other Governments must adopt an aggressive substitution policy and start seeing HFCs as a problem in the same way that it saw CFCs as a problem, otherwise we will end up with another f-gas atmospheric disaster'. They Could Be Saving Money Jason Anderson at Climate Network Europe (jason@climnet.org) points out that "more efficient air conditioning systems save fuel: this not only has an impact on GHG emissions, it saves money. CO2 systems are estimated to save an average of around 50 litres fuel/year: that's an annual savings of about €50 that never enters into the calculations on this issue". Consumers, says Anderson, "can stand to save hundreds of euros over the lifetime of their vehicle". Car Emissions Eat Into Kyoto Action In 2003 the Wuppertal Institute reported that air conditioning is now fitted in 80% of new cars sold in Germany. It projects a 31-fold increase in vehicle air conditioner-related greenhouse gas emissions between 1995 and 2010. This rise will effectively cancel out over one-fifth of the cuts in vehicle carbon dioxide (CO2) being targeted by the EU over the same period, it estimates. [ENDS Daily 14 August 2003] Norwegian F-gas Measurements The measurements are carried out by the Norwegian Institute for Air Research (NILU) and are financed by the Norwegian Pollution Control Authority (SFT) at the Zeppelin Station near Ny-Ålesund on Svalbard. They reveal 'increasingly high concentrations of most greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, with results showing a rise of about 20 per cent in the concentration of the two most commonly used HFCs (125 and 134a) from 2001 to 2002'. Details at www.sft.no/english/news/dbafile10953.html New Gas New Threat The electronics industry in the UK is moving away from PFCs to the unregulated nitrogen trifluoride. This industrial greenhouse gas has a staggering 13,100 stronger warming effect than CO2 over 100 years but is not covered by domestic law or the Kyoto Protocol. (ENDS Report 346, November 2003). A study by AEA Technology shows that in 1995, base year for reporting f-gases under the Kyoto Protocol, emissions were about 2.5% of the UK's total greenhouse gas releases. Car air conditioning sources had grown faster than expected. UK Falls Down On Fridge Recycling Despite the UK basing current MAC policy on hopes of future recovery and recycling of car air coinditioning, the evidence from its existing fridge programme shows such schemes fail. Small recyclers, builders, householders and others are simply cutting pipes to vent gases and not recovering f-gases from foam. The UK has over a dozen such operations and only two, in Lewes and Swindon, are thought to 'employ state-of-the-art technology supplied by German company SEG which meets the German RAL standard for fridge recycling' [ENDS Report 346 November 2003]. As a result, in November 2003, the RAL Quality Assurance Association's UK office director Jeff Weeks claimed that the Government could not say what quantity of CFCs has been recovered to date or how well recycling plants are performing because the Environment Agency is failing to enforce the new system. "We may appear to have got rid of the 'fridge mountains', but where have all the CFCs gone?". Or the HFCs now in fridges and foams ? Two-thirds of the fridges going to Sims Metal's plant in Newport had broken circuits, whether through damage in transit or deliberate de-gassing. In January 2004 former Environment Secretary and Conseravtive leader Michael Howard signed an 'Early Day Motion' (calling for a debate) in the UK House of Commons thus: That this House notes the alarming rate of CFC leakage from end-of-life fridges; recognises the hugely detrimental effect of these gases on the environment; deplores the Government's inability to provide figures for the quantity of CFCs recovered from these fridges; notes that figures from Wales suggest a leakage rate of over 50 per cent.; and calls on the Government to publish figures for the whole of the UK as soon as possible, and to take action to reduce the rate of leakage as soon as possible Cool Unilever - Tales from the Unilever website: Unilever food group has operations in around 100 countries and products are on sale in 50 more. It's a leader in use of alternatives to f-gases. It says: Our ice cream business has had a policy since 1995 to buy refrigerants free from chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) for ice cream freezer cabinets. At the end of 2002, approximately 25% of our ice cream cabinets still used CFCs. This proportion is reducing year by year as we phase in new cabinets. We have clear policy guidelines on the disposal of cabinets, including specialist extraction and disposal of the refrigerant. HFCs are the main refrigerant used in Unilever ice cream cabinets but in 1995, the company changed to hydrocarbon (HC) as the preferred blowing gas for insulation, and in 1997 began to explore the use of HC as a refrigerant. In April 2003 in Denmark, it launched our first HFC-free ice cream cabinets (now 800 installed), following trials in Denmark and at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. From 2005, we aim to purchase only cabinets using hydrocarbon refrigerants for all new ice cream freezer cabinets, where this is commercially viable and legally permitted. Unilever has worked with the Danish Technological Institute and Greenpeace to introduce the new technology. Evidence suggests that greater energy efficiency is probable when using HCs. Although HC refrigerants have been available in household freezers for some time, Unilever is one of the first companies to use them on a large scale for commercial freezer cabinets. We successfully trialled 50 hydrocarbon freezers at the 2000 Sydney Olympics in response to Greenpeace's campaign to 'green' the games. We continue to explore new refrigeration technologies. We are currently working on projects involving thermoacoustic (sound wave technology) and solar-powered refrigeration. Refrigeration in our manufacturing In 1996, we banned the use of CFCs in new refrigeration systems in factories and committed to minimise their use in existing systems, when and where technology permits. The main ozone-depleting refrigerant used is now HCFC R-22. Although R-22 has less impact on the ozone layer than CFCs, our long-term aim is to use substitutes that have no ozone-depleting potential. In our ice cream and frozen foods factories we use ammonia for industrial refrigeration. This refrigerant does not contribute to either ozone depletion or global warming. The data show our ozone-depleting potential (ODP), expressed as tonnes of CFC R-11 equivalent, for refrigeration and air conditioning systems at our manufacturing sites only (not our ice cream freezer cabinets or uses in transport).Source - www.rtcc.org/html/articles/refrig/unilever-r.htm Australian Shop Fridges Go Green Oz retailer Coles Myer plans to open two environmentally friendly supermarkets using naturally occurring gases to power their refrigerators and slash their greenhouse gas emissions. Michael Bellstedt, a consultant on the Coles project and president of the Natural Refrigerants Transition Board, said "Industries which don't switch over are not only emitting more gases but they are spending a lot more buying them," . Dr Bellstedt said the alternative is to capture carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. "While carbon dioxide is a global warming gas it's a naturally occurring substance, and by reusing it the net effect is zero," he said. The Coles Myer stores - one in Melbourne and the other in the outer Sydney suburb of Winmalee - will be unveiled as environmental flagships later this year. (Source: Way cool: Coles fridges are going green Some Good News From The UK Earthcare Products has recently completed a number of major projects completely based on the use of hydrocarbon (HC) refrigerants including installing two 180kW chillers at Horsham Arts Centre and a 330kW chiller for the Forensic Science Service in Birmingham. Alan Colbourne's Warwick-based SRS Components has recently completed a large secondary refrigerant project at Cooplands Bakery in Doncaster. CARE 45 hydrocarbons were selected as the primary refrigerant because of excellent thermodynamic properties, high COP (coefficient of performance) and low density, which means only small amounts are required to deliver relatively large cooling capacities. In the case of Cooplands, only 18kg of refrigerant was required to provide 88 kW of freezing capacity for up to 200 tonnes of freshly baked produce in refurbished blast and storage freezers. And, director William McIlroy had assumed he would have to arrange for increased electrical capacity to the site when raising the amount of refrigeration for his bakery, but in fact electrical consumption fell despite a large increase in cooling input. Sunday Excess ? Over Christmas the UK Sunday Express carried a story "no more white Christmases" about how the UK won't get any real snow because of a wraming climate. The second half was how that damnable European parliament was going to play Scrooge and ban fake snow (quoting Robert Goodwill) – that nice stuff produced with the propellant HFCs. Leaky UK The UK's annual consumption of refrigerant gases is 9,000 tonnes and rising. As much as 60% of refrigerants sold are used to top up leaking systems. A 10% loss of gas charge can push energy consumption up by 20% and nearly a third of all systems are operating with a depleted refrigerant charge. This adds to the power generation problem, which is responsible for 75% of all CO2 emissions. This is not mentioned by the UK Government which is running national advertisements about wasting energy. PFCs The only manufacturer of PFCs in the UK is British Nuclear Fuels – another first for BNFL. |
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