The days of high GWP (global warming potential) refrigerants such as R404 have been long numbered, but now they’re up.
On 14 April 2014, the Council of the European Union approved a number of revisions to the F-gas regulations, drawn up as part of the EU’s ongoing efforts to tackle climate change. The new legislation, which will come into force from 1 January 2015, introduces product, service and maintenance bans and an HFC phase-down timetable.
In practice, a very high percentage of refrigeration equipment currently in use will need to be modified to accept greener refrigerants, or replaced altogether. Either way, it means a substantial investment.
To summarise the regulations, there will be bans on commercial refrigerators and freezers containing HFCs with a GWP of 2,500 or more from 1 January 2020, and for those containing HFCs with a GWP of 150 or more from 1 January 2022. There will be similar bans on stationary refrigeration equipment and centralised refrigeration systems from 2020 and 2022 respectively.
These deadlines may seem like a long way off, but businesses need to take action now! The legislation will have the most impact on users of back-of-house systems. Cold rooms are replaced less frequently than plug-in refrigerators simply because they’re more expensive and have a longer operational life. Many operators will put off buying a new system until the old one literally breaks down.
Our fear is that there could be a last-minute panic as businesses rush to update their equipment when it suddenly dawns on them that their equipment is about to become illegal. Large supermarkets, with all their resources, have long-established initiatives to reduce their carbon footprint. They are well aware of the new rules and their responsibilities, but the average SME may not be.
Don’t buy in haste and repent at leisure; be careful what you buy from now on and make sure it’s compatible. Plan your own phase-out programme and budget for it.
Operators of front-of-house systems will be less affected as, for example, chiller cabinets typically have a life cycle of up to 10 years. If equipment can’t be adapted and has to be replaced, the financial burden will be less significant than replacing or retrofitting an entire cold store. All the same, it represents a sizeable investment for a small business, so it’s just as important to plan ahead.
The new regulations present a challenge to suppliers as they seek to provide updated products that offer equivalent cooling performance using different refrigerants.
Viessmann has long been developing products – cold rooms, cold stores, chiller cabinets, display counters – that use more environmentally friendly and energy efficient refrigerants.
All Viessmann remote units are available with R744, and the majority of plug-in units are also available with R290, which used to be prohibitively expensive, but can now be offered at the same price as previous refrigerants. Notably, Viessmann is in the process of converting every product in its display equipment range to R290.
Viessmann is also leading the way with patented technology such as air curtains, and other innovations including LED lighting and energy-saving controls for chiller applications.
These solutions and others are being developed in close partnership with customers in the dairy sector and other industries to help them reduce their total life cycle costs and investment payback periods, as well as to ensure compliance with all forthcoming legislation.
Worth considering is how the revisions to the F-gas regulations in the 1990s saw harmful ozone-depleting CFCs like R12 banned. Industry was slow to change and the transition costs became prohibitive, astronomical even, and businesses carried on using banned refrigerants because it was cheaper than the penalties.
There’s no room for complacency if the same mistakes are to be avoided now during the switchover to lower GWP refrigerants.
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