ANALYSIS
Sustainable HFC alternatives sought as F-Gas Regulation impacts lubricant industry across Europe
Catherine Grainger, Electronics Materials Solutions Division, 3M
The fluorinated lubricant industry across Europe now seems to be impacted in earnest by a regulatory phase-down that has been years in the making. The Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) phase down in Europe under the F-Gas Regulation is well underway and is driving users to consider more sustainable alternatives to HFCs - potent greenhouse gases used across multiple industries including air conditioning, refrigeration and fire protection, in addition to use as dilution, cleaning or deposition solvents. Developed in the 1990s to replace halons and other ozone depleting substances, HFCs are not themselves ozone-depleting, but they have high global warming potential (GWP), which would make their continued growth a major contributor to climate change.
The F-Gas Regulation states that by 2030 only 21 per cent of the HFC volume placed on the market between 2009 and 2012 should remain, putting users of HFCs under increased pressure to find sustainable alternatives in the next few years.
Building on the Montreal Protocol The F-Gas Regulation is actually building on a historical agreement, the Montreal Protocol, which first came into force in January 1989. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone
20 LUBE MAGAZINE NO.147 OCTOBER 2018
Layer was designed to reduce the production and consumption of ozone depleting substances in order to reduce their abundance in the atmosphere, and thereby protect the earth’s fragile ozone layer.
2018 marks a significant step down for HFC usage in the European Union. Source: Official Journal of the European Union,
https://eur-lex.europa.eu
The original Montreal Protocol has subsequently been adjusted six times1
. The most recent revision came in
October 2016, when delegates from 197 countries reached a landmark deal to phasedown use of HFCs at the 28th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol in Kigali, Rwanda. The newly-amended Montreal Protocol required more developed countries like the United States to start cutting HFC use by 2019, and allowed less developed countries and
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