EIA responds to criticism of Chilling Facts report

We were genuinely surprised to read in last month’s RAC that we were being accused of a “narrow focus” over our Chilling Facts report (www.racplus.com/news).

The league tables are derived from retailers’ scores in 10 categories, from direct and indirect emissions, to energy efficiency of refrigeration to training. We believe this represents a fairly broad focus.

But EIA does not believe continuing to use HFCs, even at reduced rates, is environmentally responsible.

By promoting the ongoing use of HFCs, many perhaps forget the cost of dealing with these banks of refrigerants once the equipment’s useful lifetime is reached, a factor further adding to the real cost of using HFCs.

A recent report for the European Commission estimates that containment of HFCs and other F-gases, according to the EU’s F-Gas Regulation, is costing the taxpayer €48.50 for every tonne of CO₂ equivalent abated. In contrast, it estimates banning HFCs in commercial refrigeration from 2020 would reduce European HFC emissions by over 12 million tonnes of CO₂ equivalent at less than half this cost.

Tesco has found that using CO₂ systems reduce the Total Equivalent Warming Impact of refrigeration by 75 per cent.

By advocating HFCs, we think Asda sends out a message that the ongoing use of ‘super greenhouse gases’ is acceptable. It believes it can contain these gases sufficiently, but does it expect supermarkets in developing countries to be able to attain reduced leakage rates?

As developing countries begin to phase out HCFCs, it is estimated that by 2020 HFC emissions will rise astronomically to between 2-2.6 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent – that’s three to four times more than the UK’s total annual greenhouse gas emissions today. These estimates take containment into account – thus we believe that adopting containment instead of HFCs phase-out is a doomed policy.

Asda’s reluctance to take its environmental responsibilities seriously is a shame and we think its policy will lead the retailer into a difficult future. Later this year, the European Union will decide whether its current F-Gas Regulation should be revised. Analysis by the EC suggests the F-Gas Regulation has been an expensive failure across Europe, with less then 20 per cent awareness of the regulation among contractors in some countries and low levels of compliance and implementation. To fix this problem will be very costly. In contrast, HFCs can be phased out for 40 per cent of the cost and lead to greenhouse gas reductions many times higher than F-gas hopes to achieve.

Here at EIA, we can see the writing on the wall for HFCs and intend for our work to help others to see this too.

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