The European Commission has made the legal clarification it gave to the auto industry and Member States public. The document forbids using partial, component or whole type-approval to fit any new car with a refrigerant with a GWP higher than 150 after 2011.
After months of hearsay within the European auto industry as to a possible delay of implementation of the MAC Directive, the European Commission (EC) has stood its ground and confirmed its commitment to phasing out high GWP refrigerants from European vehicles as of 2011.
No change of date for R134a phase-out
As the EC was made aware that some national type-approval authorities were intending to grant partial or component type-approval to MAC using refrigerants with GWP higher than 150 before 2011 and then fit them in new vehicles until 2017, it concludes as follows:
1. As from 1 January 2011 Member States shall no longer grant a whole vehicle type- approval (EC type-approval of vehicle) if this vehicle is fitted with an air- conditioning system designed to contain F-gases with a GWP higher than 150. This should apply irrespective of the fact whether this air-conditioning system of the vehicle has been type-approved before and the manufacturer thus presents this system type-approval in his application for a whole vehicle type-approval.
2. As from 1 January 2011 Member States shall no longer grant a system type- approval (EC type-approval of a vehicle with regard to emissions from an air- conditioning systems) if the mobile air-conditioning system is designed to contain F- gases with a GWP higher than 150.
3. As from 1 January 2011 Member States shall no longer grant an EC component type-approval if the mobile air-conditioning system is designed to contain F-gases with a GWP higher than 150.
Harmonised European market
In its clarification, the EC stresses the importance of maintaining one harmonised internal market. As such, different interpretations of the MAC Directive would only lead to uneven national type-approval procedures and distort the original spirit of the Directive.
It hence recalls the original objectives of the Directive
"namely to control the leakage of the specific fluorinated greenhouse gases in the air-conditioning systems fitted to vehicles and to prohibit from a certain date air- conditioning systems designed to contain fluorinated greenhouse gases with a global warming potential higher than 150".
The document also insists that such a misreading of the legislation would result in a circumvention of the objectives and delay the phase out of refrigerants with a GWP higher than 150 by 6 years. This delay would thus undermine all efforts agreed to by the EU in 2006 as regards substances that greatly contribute to global warming.
