In a huge win for the environment and American businesses, the Consolidated Appropriations Act that was signed into law on 27 December 2020 phases down potent greenhouse gases HFCs. Reducing HFC refrigerants could avoid up to 0.5°C of future warming. Climate benefits could double with parallel improvements in energy efficiency of cooling equipment.
Much of the world is awash in unsustainable public and private debt, made significantly worse by the COVID-19 crisis. Efforts to relieve the debt crisis provide opportunities to advance climate protection, health, and economic goals together, specifically through debt-for-climate swaps, building on the success of debt-for-nature swaps.
Coordinated international action on energy-efficient, climate-friendly cooling could avoid as much as 460 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions – roughly equal to eight years of global emissions at 2018 levels – over the next four decades.
Environmentally Harmful Dumping of Inefficient and Obsolete Air Conditioners in Africa details the extent of the problem across ten countries in Africa, ultimately providing policymakers with a set of solutions to encourage a transition toward highly-efficient, sustainable cooling technologies.
As the world warms up, the growing use of ACs and other cooling equipment will accelerate, and the extra energy needed to power the equipment will itself increase global warming. Two authoritative reports published this week grapple with how to break this vicious circle, and keep people cool without heating the planet.
In the run up to the Montreal Protocol’s 30th anniversary Meeting next week, this afternoon Sweden became the 20th Party to deposit its instrument of ratification to the Kigali Amendment, which ensures that the amendment will enter into force 1 January 2019.
Warming caused by one of the six main greenhouse gases will be taken out of the climate system through the Kigali Amendment agreed in the early morning hours today in Rwanda. The amendment to the Montreal Protocol to phase out HFCs is the largest temperature reduction ever achieved by a single agreement.
