The Montreal Protocol that banned ozone-damaging gases from aerosols, hair spray and air conditioners was one of the modern environmental movement’s great victories.
Ratified by every country in the United Nations, the 1987 protocol outlawed ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and was hailed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date.” The much feared hole in the ozone layer is now shrinking.
But almost 30 years later, the parties to the Montreal agreement are trying to fix one of the protocol’s biggest unintended consequences.
Earlier this month, 150 countries met in the Rwandan capital of Kigali to strike ban on hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the gases that largely replaced CFCs following the Montreal agreement.
HFCs are among the fastest-growing forms of greenhouse gases, increasing at around ten per cent per year. While HFCs do not deplete the ozone, they are a greenhouse gas many times more potent that carbon dioxide (CFCs are stronger still, however). The use of HFCs is entering an alarming feedback loop as demand for air conditioning grows in emerging economies.
HFC use is also on the rise in Canada.
According to an Environment Canada analysis, HFCs are expected to account for more than a third of all greenhouse gas (GHG) emission increases from the commercial building sector between 2012 and 2020. In B.C., commercial buildings accounted for 2,632 kilotonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2014—around four per cent of the provincial total.
“HFCs are among the strongest GHGs and some HFCs are up to 14,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. This implies that even a small increase in HFC use has a significant impact on emissions,” Environment Canada found.
Earlier this month, Environment Minister Catherine McKenna indicated Canada would sign onto the Kigali agreement, saying the HFC ban would prevent a .5 C increase in global temperatures. Unlike the Paris agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees, the Kigali agreement would be legally binding.
“This is a really good deal,” McKenna told the Globe and Mail. “We’re really bending the curve [on the use of HFCs]; it’s a real practical example of how we can work together on climate action.”
By Jonny Wakefield, 27 October 2016