Up in the Air

By Bill Polits
While the big news that HB 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 calls for HFC's be reduced under a cap and trade scheme, Delaware Online reported that on April 29 the Obama administration was preparing to ask the 195 nations that ratified the Montreal Protocol to enact mandatory reductions in hydrofluorocarbons (HFC's) under the aegis that agreement.

HFCs can have a global warming potential up to 10,000 times higher than carbon dioxide. Currently they account for only about 2 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, but due to their wide-spread use in the developing world as refrigerant gasses, their rate of use is growing at nearly 9% per year, according the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Scientists say that eliminating the use of HFCs would reduce greenhouse gas emissions equal to a third of all CO2 in the next 2 - 4 decades.

Environmentalists, as represented by this Greenpeace article, are on the side of those who want to expand the Montreal Protocol to eliminate HFCs, as it is expected that reductions brought about by this method would be swifter and more effective than as set forth in HB2454. Industry, however, would be firmly on the side of keeping HFCs out of the Montreal Protocol's more rigid structure and would rather deal with the looser restrictions offered by HB 2454's cap-and-trade scheme.

Since the White House put the idea forward during the period when preparations for HB 2454 were being made and we haven't heard much about it since, it may have been an idle threat. We'll see. Stay tuned...