Refrigerant Management

Project Drawdown defines refrigerant management as controlling leakages of refrigerants from existing appliances through better management practices and recovery, recycling, and destruction of refrigerants at the end of life. This solution replaces conventional refrigerant management practices.

Refrigerants are used as working fluid in commercial refrigeration systems; in household appliances such as air conditioners and refrigerators; in refrigerated containers used for carrying perishable goods; in air conditioning systems onboard cars, trains, aircraft, and ships; in industrial cooling systems; and more. There are various classes of refrigerants.[1] Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are ozone-depleting substances and have been phased out under the Montreal Protocol. Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) are also being phased out. Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which do not deplete the ozone, emerged as an alternative to HCFCs and have grown to extensive use. All refrigerants have a high global warming potential, and their release into the environment contributes to climate change. Considering the large impact which the release of refrigerants has on global warming, world leaders agreed to phase out HFCs and replace them with natural refrigerants with much less warming potential under the Kigali Accord in October 2016. Refrigerants are emitted into the environment during the production process, from refrigerant banks[2] due to leakages, and during end-of-life disposal of appliances.

Methodology

Measuring the refrigerant management solution requires generating a total addressable market forecast of the refrigerant gas emissions for the period 2020–2050 (in kilotons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions per year), forecasting an adoption of management measures and the resulting decreased emissions from those measures for each year from 2020 to 2050, and then comparing the difference in emissions from the total market and the adoption scenarios. 

Refrigerant management can be undertaken in five main ways:

1. lower the demand/use of appliances and thereby production of refrigerants
2. replace refrigerants with low-warming HFCs/new cooling agents/non-HFC substances
3. increase the refrigeration efficiency in appliances, thereby lowering the use of refrigerants
4. control leakages of refrigerants from existing appliances by good management practices
5. ensure recovery, reclaiming/recycling, and destruction of refrigerants at end of life.

This drawdown solution models the lasts two options.

Total Addressable Market

The model uses available projections for the size of refrigerant banks after considering the adoption of alternative refrigerants (another drawdown solution), which reduce the size of HFC banks. It then estimates the leakages from these banks using historical leakage rates for various subsectors such as commercial, industrial, domestic, and stationary air conditioning systems. This is the total addressable market.

Adoption of good practices to control leakages is modeled as a part of the solution. The solution also models the accompanying costs from the application of these measures. Additionally, the solution considers the destruction of refrigerants at end of life: Some of the refrigerants are recovered and destroyed at this point. The current quantity of refrigerants that are recovered and destroyed is estimated by using historical data on equipment retirement rates, recovery efficiency, and destruction efficiency. For 2014, this value is estimated to be around 30 kilotons of refrigerant, which is approximately 3.4 percent of the total quantity emitted. This is the current adoption.[3]

This solution models the potential of capturing a higher portion of this refrigerant stream. Estimates of refrigerant banks in the future are used to calculate the end-of-life banks based on the expected lifetime of the equipment. Thereafter, higher recovery efficiencies are assumed based on the technical feasibility of recovery from various subsectors. Assumptions regarding increased destruction efficiencies are then used to estimate the refrigerant that can be destroyed in the future along with cost implications. The two parts of the solution are then combined to calculate the total impact.

Adoption Scenarios

Impacts of increased adoption of refrigerant management from 2020 to 2050 were generated based on three growth scenarios. These were assessed in comparison to a Reference Scenario, in which the solution’s market share was fixed at the current levels.

[Office1] Emissions Model

In the conventional case, direct emissions from refrigerants that leak during the lifetime and at end of life contribute to global warming. These depend on the quantity of refrigerants emitted into the environment and their respective global warming potential. For the refrigerant management solution, it is assumed that all emissions are from a standard refrigerant that has a potential of 2326.

Modest amounts of electricity are consumed when refrigerant destruction facilities are operated. This is quantified for the solution as energy, in kilowatt-hours per kilogram.

Financial Model

For financial consideration, Project Drawdown decided to consider only the operating cost factor for this solution. No direct up-front costs are applicable for control of leakages from appliances (Purohit and Isaksson, 2016). However, there are operational and maintenance costs per unit of refrigerant for adopting these measures. Only costs of collection, recovery, and destruction were used as operational costs per ton of refrigerant. The annual costs multiplied by the estimated emissions avoided give the total costs and the average annual costs per unit of HFC avoided for different years.

The total costs for end of life recovery, removal, and destruction are calculated in a similar way.

Results

The total carbon dioxide-equivalent reductions that can be achieved from 2020 to 2050 in Scenario 1 are 57.8 gigatons, with a net operating cost of US$610.7 billion. Scenario 2 optimizes recovery factors and destruction rates, showing an identical reduction of 57.8 gigatons from 2020 to 2050.

Discussion

Refrigerant management is difficult to implement because the appliances are distributed. Weak regulations control leakage of refrigerants, end-of-life recovery, and refrigerant. Further, there are no economic incentives for the recovery of refrigerants. Funding, training, technical, and informational barriers are also some of the limitations for adoption of the solution.

In order to increase adoption, policies and regulations on recycling/management of refrigerants need to be formulated and implemented. Strong regulations such as a complete ban on venting of refrigerants and accountability of refrigerants must be introduced in national legislation. Economic incentives for recovery, recycling, and destruction of refrigerants, such as the issue of carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol, would help increase the adoption in developing countries. Capacity-building in these countries, including technology transfer, would help aid faster adoption of the solution.