Earlier this month, President Obama and Chinese President Xi met in California during a weekend “shirt-sleeve” summit, giving them an opportunity to build a personal rapport and address bubbling tensions. While no concrete actions were taken to address hot-button issues like the Edward Snowden controversy and ongoing cyber-attacks, they did manage to agree that hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a potent greenhouse gas, should be phased out.
HFCs are factory-made chemicals that are used in refrigeration, insulating foams, air conditioners and industrial applications. They were created to replace the ozone-depleting chemicals, CFCs and HCFCs, that were phased out by the 1987 Montreal Protocol.
While HFCs are more friendly to the ozone layer, their rapidly-growing use could greatly accelerate the rate of climate change—HFCs are nearly 4,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. According to the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (as cited in a WSJ article), HFCs grew by 6 percent in the United States between 2010 and 2011, and global HFC emissions are growing by 10 to 15 percent annually. If left unregulated, HFCs are projected to have the global warming potential of 20 percent of all carbon emissions by 2050. That’s roughly the same impact as the entire transportation sector.
According to the White House, “a global phase down of HFCs could potentially reduce some 90 gigatons of CO2 equivalent by 2050, equal to roughly two years’ worth of current global greenhouse gas emissions.” The White House and China plan to mandate a phase-out of HFCs by amending the Montreal Protocol, which would gradually reduce HFC emissions and require reporting by all countries.
Eliminating HFCs, while extremely important, mimics our approach to handling the national debt—both offer short-term relief, but do little to alter the destination in the long run. Unlike carbon dioxide, some of which can stay in the atmosphere for thousands of years, HFCs have an average lifetime of just 15 years. Nonetheless, developing substitutes for short-lived pollutants including HFCs could have a huge impact in stabilizing the climate. Research by Scripps Institution of Oceanography (cited in a WSJ article) found that they could cut the rates of global warming and rising sea levels in half.