The United Nations' open-ended working group of parties to the Montreal Protocol, seem to be using common sense in the HFC argument at last, judging by its most recent meeting in Geneva.

The crux of the meeting was about high global warming potential replacements for ozone depleting substances. (In other words, as far as the acr industry is concerned, HFCs replacing HCFCs).

Whilst recognising that ideally we would wish to phase out any substances that have any potential risk at all, the approach by the UN accepts that for some applications the alternatives either do not exist or are not technically feasible at the moment.

Sound familiar anyone?

Of course the F Gas Works industry group has already discussed this issue a couple of months ago and came to the same conclusion - with the F Gas Works campaign being the main outcome.

But it is still heartening to see policy makers slowly waking up to the harsh realities of life in the real world, rather than the closeted laboratories of theory.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all in favour of the academics driving the new technologies forward, as this is how we progress as engineers and as an industry.

However, there has been far too much self interest by certain engineers in the UK and beyond when pushing certain technologies and presenting less than honest data to the policy makers.

For the time being, in some applications, HFCs remain the most efficient, technically and practically feasible refrigerants - especially in small to medium heat pump solutions necessary for working towards our carbon emission reduction targets in 2020.

Of course, there will be concerns about direct emissions of HFCs - which brings me to the next point highlighted by the UN working group.

They state: "Aggregated carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from CFCs, halons, HCFCs and HFCs had been decreasing over the current decade and were expected to continue decreasing as a result of CFC phase-out. After about 2015, however, total emissions were expected to show a slight increase, owing to the extensive use and consequent emission of HFCs."

This is the first official document I've seen that admits the aggregated emissions level has been falling - good news for common sense!

The comment about the expected rise in 2015 is probably the most important in this statement though as it is attributable, they say, to the rise in use of HFCs.

However, as regular readers of this website will be aware, the point of the F Gas Works campaign is to raise the issue of reducing emissions by raising standards and making the F Gas Regulation work effectively.

If common sense can prevail here as well, then we can retain the most efficient fluids where appropriate and buy time to develop the best all round heat transfer fluids for the long term. We can do this in a truly scientific way rather than by knee jerk reaction to short-sighted accelerated phase out.