UK: While broadly supporting the recently published F-gas revision document, the UK government has admitted to having issues with the control of use and bans on certain gases in specific applications and has some concern with the possible affects of a ban on pre-charged equipment.
Speaking to a meeting of the cross-party European Committee looking at the F-gas revision proposals, Richard Benyon, the parliamentary under-secretary of state at DEFRA, said the government was considering the revision proposals carefully and assessing their potential benefits and impacts.
'A balance needs to be struck between seeking further regulation and allowing existing regulations to take effect,' he said.
'We will also need to be mindful of the good progress made by key sectors in the UK in reducing HFC emissions and must seek to avoid excessively interventional approaches.'
He praised the efforts businesses had made to implement the existing regulations, the efforts of the air conditioning and refrigeration installation, service and maintenance engineers, in particular, and those of the supermarket industry in minimising leakage. 'Business needs certainty,' he said. 'They need to be confident that investment now is investment for the future, not the short term.'
He said the government broadly supported further action and, in principle, supported a phase-down of HFCs but had areas of concern with the proposed revisions. 'The main one is the control of use and bans on certain F-gases in specific applications,' he revealed, a concern which he maintained was shared by other member states.
The proposed HFC phase-down timetable was considered achievable. 'Whilst the early step-down phases are quite steep, the later ones are less demanding,' he said.
Richard Benyon told the committee that the government also needed to ensure that the proposed revisions did not have disproportionate costs for business. When pressed to give a practical example of a business that could be so affected he said, confusingly, 'We have some concern about a requirement to only import equipment pre-charged with F-gases.'
Margaret Branson of DEFRA later corrected the minister's statement, pointing out that what he meant to say was 'a requirement to only import equipment
that had not been pre-charged with F-gases'.
She told
ACR News: 'A broad range of potential concerns have been raised with DEFRA by business and this [the proposed pre-charged equipment ban] is an element of the proposal that requires further analysis, to determine the extent to which it will result in additional costs or cause practical or safety issues and if it will have any disproportionate effects.'