A new study published by the National Academy of Sciences confirms that HFCs pose an unforeseen threat by worsening global warming. Leading author Guus Velders from the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency has been interviewed by Brent Hoare of the Australian based Green Cooling Association, to explain main results of the study. In the part of the interview outlined below, Velders shares his thoughts on whether there is enough time to respond to the paper in time for the November Meeting of the Parties and his hopes regarding the impact the paper may have.

Hoare: Could you explain what your study has to tell the world about the climate impacts of HFCs?

Velders: Our study is a follow up from the previous study two years ago when we looked at the benefit of the Montreal Protocol, not only for the ozone layer but also for climate, when you phase out ozone depleting chemicals other chemical will come onto the market, like the hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs. In this study we wanted to see what could happen to the HFCs up to the middle of this century because the only previous scenarios, the 2005 IPCC TEAP Special Report, ran up to 2015 and the IPCC SRES scenarios which were at least 10 years old ran up to 2100. There were no new scenarios up to 2100 or to 2050. Recent new scenarios were not available, so we said let’s use the same assumptions as the IPCC SRES scenarios with updated information we had from the last 10 years about the uses of HFCs, especially in the developed countries. If we were to see the same growth in usage of HFCs in developed countries as we saw occur in developing countries you could see a large growth in usage and emissions of hydrofluorocarbons, and in 20-50 they could amount 10-20% of the emissions of CO₂ in CO₂ equivalent terms of course.

Hoare: Do you think the paper received as much attention as it is likely to or could it snowball from here and get bigger?

Velders: With the meeting in Geneva last week it could create extra attention, and also of course in the next 6 months from now until the discussions in Copenhagen. All climate issues will get more and more attention. It’s hard for me to say whether this paper will get more attention or the subject of HFCs will get more attention, that’s a really political discussion, but it definitely could.

Hoare: What hopes do you have for the impact your paper may have?

Velders: From the scientific point of view, we just hope we put something on the agenda that you should not forget about the HFCs and we hope that people will use our paper as a good scientific basis to take actions on. What sort of action it’s not so important for me, if they use the information, one way or the other we will be very pleased.

Hoare: Why do you think people are so surprised by your paper?

Velders: What we showed is based on the best new information we have now in the past years. You see a large growth in not only the use of refrigeration and air-conditioning systems, but also of the halocarbons. Especially in developing countries, where you see a huge growth in the use of HCFCs, you see a growth rate of 20% per year in the use of these compounds. Of course that large growth is part of the offset because of the decrease in the use of the CFCs, but still you see a large growth in there. We used that large growth in HFCs as a starting point and compared that with the current uses of the HFCs in developed countries. When you combine those two elements you see a large growth in developing countries especially, and but that is of course associated with the rapidly growing populations and the growing economies in developing countries like China and India. And that was a big surprise to most people. They thought it was a small problem and that it would be fixed without doing anything, or without taking specific action.

Hoare: How important is it that the global policy making community respond to your paper quickly?

Velders: If you look at climate change and the discussions around it, you have to take a lot of actions, and take actions soon to avoid the most serious problems. You cannot avoid climate change altogether because it is happening now, and there is a lot of committed climate change already by the emissions of the past few decades. So we can’t completely prevent it but we can maybe mitigate it, and mitigate some of the worst problems if we take fast action.

This might be an opportunity for fast acting climate change mitigation measures, because especially in developing countries, they use very little HFCs there currently because they are still in the phase out of ozone depleting chemicals. For me it seems the right moment to take action to prevent large projected growth there. If you wait 20 years and everyone has HFCs in their refrigerators and their air-conditioning equipment, it is much harder to phase it out.

Hoare: Do we have enough time to respond to the paper in time for the November Meeting of the Parties?

Velders: If you look at what happened in 2007 with our previous paper in the accelerated HCFC phase out, and I’m not saying our paper was the only thing that accelerated the phase out, but I heard people say at least it contributed to it. There was quite a short time frame of a couple of months in which they decided to accelerate the phase out. Of course the complicating story is now that there are also ties to the Copenhagen discussions for the climate treaty, and you can’t see one as being separate from the other. If it was a separate discussion it would be more simple and they might be able to reach an agreement under the Montreal Protocol, one way or the other, but with the connection to the Copenhagen discussions it might be much more complicated.

Hoare: How would you characterise the core message of the paper for the policy-making community?

Velders: Policy makers should remember that HFCs are not a done deal. They need to pay close attention to HFC emissions to avoid problems with their lifetime contribution in this century. That should be the take away message for them – don’t ignore this.