US Policy Breakthrough on Super Greenhouse Gases, But Obstacles Remain

The U.S. State Department issued an international proposal jointly with the governments of Canada and Mexico this week to phase down the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) starting as early as 2011.

The move represents a welcome breakthrough for the administration, whose HFC policy has been delayed since May when interagency disagreements stalled U.S. action on the super greenhouse gases.

HFCs, found in small amounts in air-conditioning and refrigeration systems, have a climate warming impact many thousands of times greater than CO2.

Without aggressive action to curb their rapidly growing use in developing nations, their emissions could equal up to 45 percent of CO2 emissions by 2050, under a scenario where CO2 emissions are stabilized at 450 parts per million. They would virtually negate pending international efforts to slash global carbon emissions in coming decades.

The North American proposal throws its weight behind the effort initiated last April by the small island nations of Mauritius and Micronesia to use the existing international treaty mechanism of the Montreal Protocol to accomplish the HFC phase down.

It would be the first time that the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, recognized as a very successful treaty that has stopped the global use of more than 90 ozone-destroying substances in its 20 years, would be deployed to control climate warming gases.

“The North American leaders know a good climate treaty when they see one,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, who has campaigned long and hard in favor of using the Montreal Protocol to control HFCs. "It is a test case for the world in the run up to Copenhagen and demonstrates how to take pieces of the climate challenge and solve them with the most appropriate governance structures."

The North American proposal officially submitted to the Ozone Secretariat of the UN Environment Program was careful to state that deploying the Montreal Protocol to phase down production of HFCs would not remove the gases from the jurisdiction of the Kyoto climate treaty and its successor.

"They're saying if the climate treaty people wants to be in charge of the accounting, that's fine," Zaelke explained. "It's a plug-and-play approach."

But it is in this jurisdictional gray area that obstacles to final agreement between governments still remain. In addition, a trade in HFC credits under the climate treaty runs the risk of substituting HFC reductions for reductions of carbon emissions when the science demands that both must be reduced simultaneously.

The release of the proposal by the State Department comes just a week before President Obama is to give an address on climate change before the United Nations in which it is anticipated that he will enumerate U.S. achievements since he recently took office, and their rapid pace, and underscore America's willingness to lead the world to solutions.

"Once adopted, the proposal would make great strides to achieve President Obama’s call to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050, as well as contribute to multilateral efforts to reduce global emissions 50 percent by 2050," a State Department statement said.

It is a delicate moment as Congress is stalled on federal climate legislation whose weak targets and large loopholes in any case have disappointed governments around the world. In addition to new rules for better auto efficiency, the HFC proposal provides the president with an important initiative to point to.