The Biden administration has sent the Kigali Amendment to the Senate for approval.
The Kigali Amendment, a lesser-known global climate deal compared to the Paris Agreement, calls for the phasedown of potent greenhouse gas refrigerants known as hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs.
President Joe Biden’s move Tuesday to seek Senate ratification, which requires the backing of at least two-thirds of the chamber, is long-anticipated and could pick up the support of some Republicans.
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Last year, Congress passed a bipartisan measure setting domestic HFC restrictions in line with the Kigali Amendment. This year, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized rules to implement them.
In June 2018, 13 Republican senators wrote to former President Donald Trump in support of the HFC agreement, asking him to send the deal to the Senate for a ratification vote, which he never did.
A broad coalition has backed the Kigali Amendment, including most of the appliance-makers and chemical companies that would be subject to its restrictions and typically Republican-leaning groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. More than 100 countries have already ratified it.
“It’s long past time that we join the rest of the international community in addressing HFCs and taking the kind of bold, transformational climate action that this moment demands,” said Democratic Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
Business groups supported the HFC phaseout because companies collectively have spent billions of dollars researching a replacement coolant for use in air conditioners and refrigerators.
Like the Paris Agreement, the Obama administration helped negotiate the Kigali Amendment, which would set the United States and the world on a path to phase down the refrigerants over the next several decades. If governments meet the Kigali Amendment’s targets, it could help to avoid up to a half-degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century.
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Kigali was brokered as an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, the global treaty crafted to close the hole in the ozone layer in the 1980s.
The Obama administration never sent the Paris Agreement for Senate ratification because it is centered on voluntary emissions reduction pledges from governments. The Kigali Amendment, by contrast, has some enforcement teeth in the form of trade restrictions for nonparties.
