A Fast hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) Phase Down is Less Expensive than Slow!

20 October 2025 - Montreal Protocol insiders and scholars from Brazil, China, Costa Rica, Ghana, and the United States have authored a new paper documenting how fast phase down of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) greenhouse gases will be less expensive than the existing schedule. The paper, HFC Phasedown Under the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol Is Less Costly If Fast Than If Slow, highlights how:

• Companies marketing cooling equipment where HFCs are already being phased down have the manufacturing capacity to supply all markets worldwide.

• The European Union is already requiring exports of cooling equipment to satisfy domestic requirements for lower global warming potential (GWP).

• Bulk procurement and buyers clubs can lower the purchase, installation, and ownership cost of new cooling equipment with smaller life cycle carbon footprint.

• Stopping the dumping of energy inefficient cooling equipment with obsolete high-GWP refrigerants avoids the high cost of servicing with increasingly scarce HFCs and the savings in electricity cost are spent locally on goods and services supporting quality of life and community jobs and prosperity.

Authored by Stephen O. Andersen, Jianxin Hu, Pengnan Jiang, Suely Carvalho, Richard Ferris, Xiaopu Sun, Kofi A. Agyarko, Ziwei Chen, and Marco González.

Available for download here.