I USED to jokingly suggest that the answer to the quest to find a suitable non ozone depleting, non global warming, non toxic, non flammable refrigerant, probably lay somewhere unexpected – like liquid fudge! Little did I realise that a piece of European legislation designed to limit the effects of refrigerants on the environment, could one day be described as just that – a fudge.
Last month’s compromise agreement between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers virtually rubber-stamped the implementation of the F-Gas regulations and, amazingly, left both sides claiming victory.
The reality is that nobody “won”: the “greens” were forced to compromise their desire to protect the environment by ditching its proposals to ban HFCs outright, while those seeking to bring to book the likes of Denmark and Austria for their unilateral bans on HFCs, were similarly undone.
The compromise/fudge will effectively allow existing stricter national measures to be maintained until at least 2013 and makes a mockery of the principles of the supposed “common market”.
The commercial refrigeration and air conditioning industry had already heaved its collective sigh of relief when earlier amendments to ban HFCs had been overturned.
Not so the car air conditioning industry, where HFCs have been under sentence of death since the F-gas regs were first mooted. Initial confidence in some quarters suggested that CO2 would be the most suitable replacement for R134a when it is banned in new vehicles in 2011. Early work was carried out in this area, particularly by Denso in Japan, but since then things have gone somewhat quiet.
Still, it’s good to know that Europe has looked after its ozone layer and is now tackling its global warming. In developing countries and other signatories to the Montreal Protocol, they’re only just starting to get out of CFCs. As far as car ac is concerned, R12 will soon be ditched (well, in six year’s time, anyway) in favour of....... R134a! So, just as Europe begins to phase out R134a from car ac, the rest of the world will be phasing it in. That will make all our efforts worthwhile.
Neil Everitt
Editor