The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday expanded its ban on a set of chemicals used in refrigeration and air-conditioning, its latest step toward implementing the president’s broad climate change agenda.
“In support of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan, this action will not only result in significant reductions of harmful greenhouse gases, but it expands the options for safer alternatives available on the market,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said.
The new proposed rule would reduce the use, and emissions, of some of the “most harmful” hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, in appliances, which are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide, said McCarthy. At the same time, it approves “safer, more climate-friendly alternatives” to HFCs to protect public health and the environment, she said.
Carbon dioxide is often blamed by the majority of climate scientists for being the source of manmade climate change. But HFCs, although less plentiful than carbon, do more harm to the Earth’s climate.
The rule would expand the list of “acceptable substitutes and prohibit the use of certain chemicals in the U.S. that significantly contribute to climate change where safer, more climate-friendly alternatives exist,” according to the EPA.
The agency says the proposal is the latest step in a series of actions under President Obama’s broad climate agenda that aims to reduce HFC emissions.
The emissions avoided from this new proposed regulation are estimated to be up to 11 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2030, “which is equal to the emissions from the energy used by approximately 1 million homes for one year,” says the EPA.
