FRENCH AFCE POSITION PAPER STRESSING THE CONTINUED IMPORTANCE OF HFCS IN REFRIGERATION

03-03-2010

In a recent position paper on HFCs and refrigeration industry, the French AFCE (Alliance Froid Climatisation Environnement) asked regulators not to limit the use of HFCs in applications where technically, industrially, environmentally and economically proven alternatives do not practically exist.

Although alternative fluids, like hydrocarbons, ammonia, CO₂, can be used in specific applications, because of technical limitations, of poorer energy efficiency, of safety concerns or of local regulations, their introduction cannot be easily envisaged in all the many fields where the use of HFCs is established.

AFCE remind us that middle to high cooling power units in the range of 100 kW and higher, which are present in the food or the chemical industry, the health sector, or in district cooling, refrigeration units are built for a lifetime of 15 to 40 years. Modifications are not easy without a considerable loss in energy efficiency. This would be detrimental to the climate, since the effective CO₂ impact due to their energy consumption represents 5 to 10 times the potential CO₂ impact of any HFC release from an ill-maintained unit.

France and the EU have put in place the F-Gas Regulation aiming at strongly reducing all HFCs emissions, and it would be premature to introduce different or stronger regulations before having assessed the effectiveness of its implementation.

The British ACRIB (Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Industry Board) has reacted similarly, saying that, by focusing on restrictions on one specific refrigerant fluid, there is a risk that the industry will be forced into making system design decisions which compromise system efficiency - and therefore contribute to increased carbon emissions in the long term.