Refrigerants
Issue 2 — Why is no one talking about them?
From the Dystopia & Donuts newsletter
It could be said that Aqua Net and Air Jordan’s define the bookends of a hilariously over-the-top decade.
Hairspray was used to make up for what the tamer tennis player-ish styles of the early 80’s lacked in volume. Then as MTV became mainstream, synthesizers and hip hop ushered in a neon street savvy world where both parachute pants and stirrup pants were both perfectly acceptable. Towards the end of the decade though, panic over the hole in the ozone layer was also sweeping headlines.
In the late 1970’s cloroflourocarbons (CFCs) were banned from production, most famously in hairspray. Then big hair gave way to hair metal as the hangover from disco faded. In 1987, Nike hired the original influencer, Michael Jordan, to show the world that their magic Air juice could give you lift on the court. It turns out they used Sulfur hexafluoride to do that, another fluorinated compound nearly 22,200x as potent as carbon dioxide. Nike eventually shifted this chemical base to something safer.
Fluorinated chemicals were as synonymous with eighties culture as the Breakfast Club. And they are also a huge part of the climate fight in 2021. But today there are little headlines about it.
Carbon Emissions, Plastics … Refrigerants?
Mother nature is a not typically known for her sense of humor, but the irony of the refrigerant dilemma is hilariously dark. The chemical group that most efficiently conditions air in our internal environments is the number one actor of global weirding. It is 1,000x more potent that Carbon dioxide and last up to 400x longer in the atmosphere. It is also tangled up in a vicious feedback loop where a warming planet will increase the demand for air conditioning. Their use is currently projected to triple by 2050, which is the equivalent to adding 10 new air conditioners every second for the next 30 years.
Refrigerants are the nucleus of cooling systems. Their key components are fluorinated compounds, whose chemical evolution is defined by a series of international bans. The original group of non-toxic refrigerants were chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and then hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), both which have essentially been replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). More than alphabet soup, this evolution represents the shift from Ozone depleting molecules to high global warming potential molecule (but only a tiny amount of ozone depletion).
In closed unit systems (like refrigerators), the chemical phase change from a low-pressure gas to a high-pressure liquid perpetuates a cycle of hot and cold air. It works well, if it were a permanently closed system that did not need to be recharged or weren’t attached to machines that break down. If you have a fridge, AC in your house, or a car, you own and are responsible for refrigerants, and so does everyone you know and don’t know.
Over 72% of the world owns refrigerants, and the appliances are highly distributed. They touch every part of our modern life that we see– from supermarkets, restaurants and beverage machines and that we don’t see — from data centers to storage units to industrial complexes. They are both ubiquitous and disaggregated, making their management as easy as collecting water with a sieve.
Beyond the very high Global Warming Potential (GWP is how the industry refers to the potency of refrigerants) of the molecules themselves, refrigeration and HVAC systems use an incredibly large amount of energy. You can think about this as the indirect emissions of these systems. The refrigeration industry spends over $32B in annual energy consumption, $18.2B in annual facility maintenance cost and contributes to over $990B in global food waste(!!). Combining the magnitude of direct and indirect climate impact, Project Drawdown estimates that solving this problem could be as big as eliminating 17 years of total US emissions.
I find that a problem this big with this much potential to shift our future cannot be ignored, yet we don’t hear about it in the climate news beat.
So how did we change the way hairspray was made? Policy, mainly.
In 1987, the Montreal Protocol was passed on the international stage, effectively cutting production of CFCs and HCFCs by 98% from historic levels and putting the earth’s protective ozone layer on a path to recovery. Estimates vary, but that Protocol prevented roughly 135 billion tons of mtCO2e (metric tons of carbon dioxide is how they contextualize the greenhouse gas effect of any pollutant) from being released.
Scientists, manufacturers, and financiers rallied behind the cause, and over time basically fixed the problem. Like slowing acid rain, it is one of a few environmental victories we can collectively celebrate. Policy can work faster in situations where the crux of the problem is isolated, and in this case, it was a crucial driver of innovation.
Looking ahead, Congress has recently passed the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act which will set the stage for the EPA to begin the phase down of hydrofluorocarbons in the United States. The passing of this legislation was a necessary prerequisite for the new Biden Administration to ask the Senate to ratify the international Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
This ratification would re-establish U.S. global participation in the effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. We are making headway on the policy track, and it will make up a big motivator for change. Unfortunately the situation is more complex and much larger than it was in 1987.
Chilling effects of economic externalities
Cradle to grave production and consumption models still underpin global economics.
In this linear model, the effect of “waste” (in this case, HFCs) is treated as an economic externality, or a by-product, of the entire system. Basically, it is not incorporated into the cost of the product. Furthermore, the EPA claims that less than 10% of fluorinated chemicals are actually recovered and properly recycled. The rest are leaked into the atmosphere or discarded even though there is a stiff fine of $37,500 to the owner, operator, or service technician for doing so. The accounting and oversight of these regulations is lacking.
Additional climate and societal externalities are as abundant as freezer burn.
Inefficiencies in the gaps in cold chain storage cause significant food waste (another well-defined cause of climate change) … almost 20% of the global food supply according to the IIR. At a time on earth when global hunger is on the rise yet we are technologically advanced enough to be in a race to Mars, these food waste facts and the inability to focus innovation, capital, and mobilize around fixing this problem make me grit my teeth.
Although not directly mentioned, academics link the impact of cooling to the UN sustainable development goals in a way that is impossible to ignore. For example, think about how conditioning school buildings effects student performance in hot countries, or starts to reduce the pressures of gender equality and poverty worldwide. Getting girls and women into classrooms is another top 10 solution of climate change, and refrigerants play a part.
In the US, the end of Freon production (HCFCs) in 2020 is forcing the price for fixing leaky HVAC systems so high that residents with old systems who live from paycheck to paycheck are faced with the decision to buy a new unit or pay high price per pound (and fines to boot) to cool off.
All of these people being left out in the heat made me think about the bigger picture of this problem through the framework that drives it — economics. If a manufacturer of the appliances or systems is forced to be fiscally responsible for cleaning up refrigerants (i.e. waste product) over its lifetime, it is strips away at the manufacturers profit and is considered a drain on GDP. But if the government pays a third party to clean it up or reclaim it, like through an incentive or grant program, then it essentially increases GDP by flowing money into jobs. However in the case, as we have discovered, the government is not cleaning up very well.
Incorporating externalities into production boundaries is traditionally not accepted in economic accounting. This narrow-gauge logic allows the manufacturer to deny the responsibility of assuming the cost for the institutional failures of society. With a problem as embedded as refrigerant management with solution so critically lacking, we have to move beyond 20th century economics and incorporate the cost of end use higher up the supply chain.
Does that look like manufacturer owned service franchises? Wholesaler reclamation centers? Some solutions like this exist, but not near enough at scale.
Frosty efforts towards reclamation
Thirty years after Michael Jordan made Nike a household name, the company registered their averted use of Ozone Depleting Substances on the voluntary carbon market, claiming nearly 8 million offsets by switching to a less bad alternative. This worked well as an incentive for Nike as the pollutant source was contained in production facilities, and the money garnered from the averted emissions eased the cost of transition.
Because of how spread out refrigerants are over space and time, its difficult to implement economic incentives to recycle them (lets call these carrot solutions). Up until last month, the voluntary carbon markets provided a meager pay back (for service companies large enough to have the privilege of enjoying paperwork) by generating carbon offsets from a tracked amount of refrigerant reclamation. But sadly only a small percentage of all offsets registered on these markets were for Ozone Depleting Substances. The carrot was not big enough.
And as “additionality”, or the logic of averted emissions, was based on the regulatory surplus test (read: the lack in comprehensive federal regulation), the American Carbon Registry has suspended their protocol as of this month as new regulations have come online through the AIM act. Now enter the stick solution, where fines and regulation will increasingly effect those who are bearing the brunt of this economic burden — the service technicians.
Most AC companies are independently owned small businesses that try to cram as many service visits in a day as possible to cover their bills. Comprehensive reclamation would require a huge culture shift, which has traditionally led to low market adoption. Basically, reclamation slips through the regulatory and systematic cracks.
Sad news continues as we find the recovery and reclamation process has its own technical problems. There is a low threshold for contamination and waste (it doesn’t take much to ruin a batch), and this makes the process even more expensive. Project EARTH (Environmentally Applied Research Towards hydrofluorocarbons) is headed by a guy at the University of Kansas with a guilty conscious. He was a part of a team who helped invent them back in 1987 and is now studying to solve the inefficiency of the reclamation process, which I will not attempt to describe. Moreover, the software technology needed to comprehensively track refrigerant use and manage leakage is more focused on compliance schedules than true material accountability.
However, if the producer or distributor instituted a buy-back program through wholesalers, these entities have the power to implement more strict management of recovery and also can create the financial motive for service companies. Increasing the programs already in place to scale, like Hudson Technology or AGas can become the stop gap for the next decade of reclamation necessary before the regulatory halting of production kicks in.
Honey, we need a new fridge
Forget Mars. The race to replace low impact refrigerant solutions is on. Propane is used in many systems now and requires only slight component adjustment for replacement. Brine can supplement current systems as a secondary refrigerant. Ammonia is a good commercial solution but its flammability prevents it from being distributed widely. Carbon dioxide based refrigerants, or R-744, were used over 150 years ago and they are the frontrunner. Yet the indirect effect of these systems are still understudied.
Several of these replacement options are gaining popularity, especially in Asia and the Pacific. But remember the indirect effect of these systems is energy usage? In fact, 20% of the total electricity used in buildings around the world goes towards air conditioners and electric fans. While IoT and other tech advances will surely reduce this drag over time, all remaining solutions still have a global warming potential above 1, i.e. they still have a significant impact. So while we are here evaluating the problem, let’s turn the temperature up and rethink the entire system.
Three innovators in the technology space are challenging old paradigms :
- Turn Tide Technolgies is disrupting our 19th century technology approach to analog motors. The dynamic motors they have created basically take the concept of Eco mode on a Nest Thermostat and install it at the engine level. They claim that if every motor in the world was dynamic, we would see the net carbon effect of adding in seven more Amazon rainforests.
- ThermoRail technology questions air cooling all together. Its technology for immersion cooling and direct liquid cooling are used in data server farms, drastically improving efficiencies and costs.
- Phononic is taking on solid state innovation and harnessing the thermoelectric power of photos. They are essentially redesigning compressor technology and revolutionizing the idea of heating and cooling anything through a microchip.
What about looking at the way nature does it?
- Transpiration is a process in which water evaporation creates a layer of cool air, which can be directed and controlled.
- A 3D printed, portable passive cool brick inspired by the Muscatese Evaporative Cooling window is based on techniques that go back centuries.
- Carlo Ratti, an architect at MIT, was tasked to come up with a cooling system for tropical desert climates (who else knew that was an ecosystem zone?) which essentially pairs a precise mister with a motion sensor, making an efficient use of water and evaporative cooling techniques, which are most effective in desert climates.
- Built environment advances can greatly address the indirect energy used by HVAC systems. Dynamic glass, smart thermostats, and insulation advances are scalable examples of isolated components that reducing the energy load of buildings.
- Pay-per-use model for the service of heating and cooling — Caas Initiative — distributes the cost of heating and cooling with innovative financing and servicer agreements, a real possible solution for third world countries with rising demand.
- We could look at a predictive temperature control under dynamic, real-time pricing that functions on an algorithm based on a consumer discomfort tolerance index.
- Or maybe a wearable biosensor communicates with the load control, monitoring not only your temperature but also other important indoor air pollutants along with typical health metrics.
- This lost idea takes the resistance heat generated by computers and proposes to use it to heat homes, essentially using every watt that goes into a computer and turning it into a watt of heat. Instead of designing a computer framework that mitigates heat, it would be built larger and release heat intentionally.
Conclusion
Looking at both direct and indirect GWP of refrigerants, across domestic and commercial levels, there is opportunity to change current systems now and innovate for the systems of the future. 90% of direct emissions of HFCs in use right now happens when the appliance or HVAC system is broken or discarded, making reclamation crucial. But global accountability and asset tracking systems tailored to refrigerants are in their infancy. Incentive based programs are lacking, policy is slowly tracking, and capital is ingrained into a legacy industry with deep, linear roots.
Corporate pledges from Walmart to Coke are vowing the transition to low impact refrigerant over the next 20 years, as international agreements slowly nudge them in that direction. A combination of regulations, information (think Energy Star), and incentives, can slowly and steadily win the race.
Yet a faster solution could sweep the industry and simultaneously relieve both direct and indirect emissions. To do this we need more corporate level adoption to drive investment risk down to a digestible amount. We need more deployment of capital into new system ideas, more innovators working with the left and right brain to break down the barriers of the industry, and more alignment of large corporate commitments to research and development in this space. We need more innovation to commercialize out of design and chemical labs. We need artists and engineers working on a new kind of solution, together.
One thing is for sure. We need to talk more about refrigerants.
