On 4 July, a law ruling the treatment and recovery of fluorinated gases in stationary air conditioning, heating and refrigeration became effective in all EU countries. However, not all governments and industries have done enough to comply.
The EU regulation ruling high-global warming fluorinated gases, mainly hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) in all kind of stationary applications, entered into law on 4 July 2007. Many of the EU Member States, being obliged to transfer the provisions into national law, still haven’t fully implemented the legislation. They claim that EU-wide consistency, technical complexity, or complicated market mechanisms are still issues of concern to stakeholders who seem to be over-challenged by the complexity of the issue.
Given the deadline and the limitations for using HFCs, natural low-global warming refrigerants, such as CO
2 (R744), emerge as the best option to avoid compliance with the provisions. Key stakeholders, including governmental and industrial sources, are already calling for the use of R744 in supermarkets to avoid environmental burdens and legislative restrictions.
The EU legislation
The European Union's F-gas Regulation No 842/2006, from 2006, imposes obligations on all operators of stationary refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump equipment to limit the emissions of fluorinated gases (F-gases). To reduce the output of high-global warming gases, the law sets down requirements for the containment, use, recovery, and destruction of F-gases, their labeling, and their treatment by certified servicing personnel. It applies to all pure F-gas refrigerants and blends, such as R-134a, R-404a, or R22 used in commercial refrigeration and other stationary applications.
Natural refrigerants best option
Despite the fixed deadline, Member States are not progressing fast enough to transfer the EU regulation into national law. As an example, Germany’s Federal Environment Agency (UBA) has indicated that it would still need to work on the interpretation of ambiguous provisions in the EU text. Having received numerous inquiries from stakeholders, the UBA has now moved to answer the most pressing questions on its website. Facing 3.3 million tons of CO
2 equivalents released to the atmosphere only from leaking F-gases every year, the federal agency has been calling for the urgent use of CO
2 in supermarket refrigeration. This, the agency estimates, would lower total emissions from commercial refrigeration by 50%.
In the UK, the implementation of the EU F-gases regulation has also met resistance from industry stakeholders claiming that the regulation is too complex and lacks transparency. For this purpose, the Department for Environment (Defra) is currently holding a public consultation to establish penalty schemes for operators not complying with the legislation. All major UK food retailers had already declared in February that they would intensify investment in natural refrigerants, including R744, to avoid penalties for failure to comply.
Reaction
"All of our main clients are aware (of the regulation), and now we are interested to see how this will be policed," said UK refrigeration consultant Richard Shepherd-Barron, before adding: "But there are those who bury their heads in the sand. They need to open their eyes to what is going on and they need to listen."
