Standards are technical sets of rules and requirements, primarily developed by industry, that companies must meet in order to sell products that are considered safely designed. Unfortunately, many standards-setting organizations have not kept pace with the changes in technology that allow for HFC-free refrigerants to be safely used in many kinds of refrigeration and air conditioning systems.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is charged by the President’s Climate Action Plan to allow climate-friendly, HFC-free refrigerants and products to enter the U.S. market. However, existing out-of-date standards have remained a prohibiting factor by preventing market acceptance of products that use HFC-free refrigerants that the EPA has listed as acceptable. The majority of these products that are currently blocked due to out-of-date standards in the U.S. are already in use throughout Europe and other countries around the world. The result is that the current standards in the U.S. are acting as a false barriers to market penetration of HFC-free products and are effectively preventing the replacement of HFC-based products.
Our goal is to accelerate the process of publishing and adoption of new, smart standards by the key standards-setting organizations: the International Electrotechnical Committee (IEC), Underwriters Laboratory (UL) and International Organization on Standardization (ISO). This work is essential to ensure that sufficient HFC-free alternatives will be available on the market in order to enable a quick and ambitious HFC phase-down under the Montreal Protocol.
Key goals of this work include:
Convene technical experts to further the discussion of changing or updating standards through workshops and new working groups within standards organizations to examine data and research on new safety mechanisms and other relevant topics on HFC-free refrigerants.
Replace HFC-134a with climate-friendly hydrocarbon refrigerants in the approximately 9 million new household refrigerators sold in the U.S. every year, eliminating nearly 3 million metric tons CO2e emissions annually resulting from the disposal of this equipment at the end of life.
Replace HFC-410A with hydrocarbons and CO2 in hundreds of millions of small and medium-sized household air conditioners and heat pumps sold around the world each year, mitigating hundreds of millions of CO2 equivalent annually.
Create standards for the use of natural refrigerants in commercial and industrial refrigeration and air conditioning applications based upon modern technologies, safety equipment, and training.
Ensure existing standards allowing the use of HFC-free refrigerants are maintained and/or improved, where needed.
