Obama's green promise

The US president's most important climate change initiative deals with gases far more powerful than carbon dioxide – HFCs

Oliver Tickell
guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 May 2009 11.30 BST

President Obama was elected on a promise to act decisively on global warming. Today he is on the verge of his first major executive act to this end – to seek a global ban on an entire family of powerful industrial greenhouse gases used in refrigeration, many of them thosands of times more powerful than carbon dioxide. These are the HFCs or hydrofluorocarbons, the chemical industry's current replacement for the ozone-eating CFCs or chlorofluorocarbons, now almost entirely phased out under the 1987 Montreal protocol (pdf).
This initiative to combat global warming will take place not under the Kyoto protocol or its parent Climate Convention (UNFCCC), but under the Montreal protocol – even though it, and its parent, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer (pdf), have no mandate to act on climate issues. The choice of treaty is based on two simple truths. The UNFCCC climate negotiations are bogged down in fine print, square brackets, political posturing and general mistrust. The Montreal protocol has an enviable track record of environmental achievement and international co-operation, and contains proven mechanisms to make a ban on HFCs effective.
Not only is the Montreal protocol succeeding in saving the ozone layer, with a 97% reduction in emissions of gases, it has also achieved far more for the climate than the Kyoto protocol because the CFCs it has nearly eliminated are such powerful greenhouse gases. By 2012 the Montreal protocol will have reduced emissions by the equivalent of 8bn tonnes (Gt) of CO2, compared to estimates of 2Gt for the Kyoto protocol by the same time.
And over coming decades the accelerated phase-out of HCFC gases, the first generation of CFC replacements, is expected to produce further emissions reductions worth at least 18Gt CO2, and perhaps as much as 38Gt.
These enormous projected reductions result from a decision made in September 2007, on the Montreal protocol's 20th anniversary, to phase out the HCFCs a decade earlier than originally planned – principally to secure climate benefits. The HCFCs are weakly ozone-depleting (and thus listed as Montreal protocol gases) but powerful agents of global warming, so this move sets an important precedent – that the Montreal parties are prepared to act in support of environmental benefits well beyond the protection of the ozone layer.
Surprisingly perhaps, the 2007 initiative on HCFCs was supported by the US under George W Bush, despite the administration's hostility to the Kyoto treaty. Now Obama is set to go even further. For while the HCFCs are now being phased out, there remains another category of ozone-friendly but powerfully warming refrigerant gases in widespread and fast growing use, even though environmentally benign alternatives exist (see here and here and here and here and here): the HFCs. Controls on HFCs are taking force in many industrial countries, including the US and the EU, but HFCs are uncontrolled in the developing world, where they are used in ever-increasing amounts in coolers, freezers, and air-conditioning in homes, cars and offices. Some estimates suggest that increases in HFC use could overwhelm all the planned cuts in CO2 emissions by 2040, releasing the equivalent of hundreds of gigatonnes of CO2.
Under the proposals to be submitted to the Montreal protocol, high global warming potential HFCs would be phased out on a global basis, with the industrial countries taking a lead while developing countries would have longer to comply. The developing countries would also be able to draw on a Multilateral Fund to meet the costs of shifting to new technologies, guided by expert advice from a Technical and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP). Although the cost would come to hundreds of millions of dollars, this is a fraction of the cost of using the "carbon market" mechanisms of the Kyoto protocol. Emissions of a single HFC gas, HFC-23, until recently released in considerable volumes as a chemical byproduct, were reduced following a one-off technology investment of $100m – but ended up costing the world 50 times more, a sum of $5bn, once securitised and sold as Certified Emissions Reductions under Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism.
Under Montreal protocol rules the proposals need to be filed today to go ahead in the current round of negotations, and the US administration has been working hard to meet the deadline, a process involving feverish multi-agency discussions and the need to secure a foundation of political support in both houses of Congress. If the administration succeeds, it will represent a first major success for Obama on the global warming front. And far from undermining climate negotiations under the UNFCCC, it will advance prospects for a worthwhile agreement in Copenhagen in December, by restoring much needed trust and goodwill to the process.
But even if the US fails to file its proposal today, all is not lost.
Micronesia, a low-lying Pacific state at risk of total inundation from sea level rise, is ready to step into the breach – and the US can rally round later on in the process. As David Sassoon writes in his Solve Climate blog, "If Micronesia submits the amendment, the US can always join in after the fact, but would cede leadership on the issue to one of the smallest nations on the planet."
And what of the EU, used to playing the role of world leader in climate action and policy? According to Fionnuala Walravens of the Environmental Investigation Agency, the EU would prefer the HFC question to be tackled where it properly belongs, under the UNFCCC.
But she is confident that, with firm proposals to control HFCs under dicussion under the Montreal protocol, the EU would have no real choice but to support them. Meanwhile EU climate and ozone negotiators are to meet shortly, and an EU stakeholder meeting is scheduled for 25 May. As for the UK, the issue will provide a major test for Ed Miliband and his Department for Energy and Climate Change – and a chance for him to demonstrate the triumph of environmental values and practical common sense over free market dogma.