Refrigerant Calculator - Öko-Recherche

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Since the Montreal Protocol entered into force in 1989, production and consumption of ozone depleting substances (CFC, HCFC, halons) have decreased by more than 97 percent.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) have been introduced as ODS substitutes and are mostly used as refrigerants in the refrigeration and air-conditioning sector. While these substitutes do not harm the ozone layer, they have a very high global warming potential (GWP) or CO2 equivalent (CO2e), which exceeds the climate-damaging potential of carbon dioxide (CO2) by 1.400 to 15.000 times. The Kigali Amendment, which came into effect in January 2019 and extended the scope of the Montreal Protocol to include HFCs, aims to reduce the production and consumption of these climate-damaging substances by 85% by 2045.

The GWP or CO2 equivalent represents to which extent a substance – over a time period of 100 years – contributes to global warming, using CO2 as a reference substance with a GWP = 1. A variety of more climate-friendly refrigerants is already available on the European market, ranging from HFCs with lower GWP, hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs), HFC-HFO-blends to natural refrigerants (e.g. ammonia, propane, CO2, water, air).

However, the discussions about the climate impact of refrigerants are often characterized by a certain abstraction. To address this, a simple calculation tool – a “refrigerant calculator” – was developed to illustrate the climate effect of certain refrigerants and to compare them to the effects of some everyday applications such as driving, flying or the energy consumption of an LED light bulb.

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