Turning Down the Heat: The Montreal Protocol & HFCs

The Montreal Protocol ozone treaty is arguably the most successful environmental treaty, having phased out 97% of almost 100 ozone-depleting chemicals over the past 20+ years. Because many of these substances were also found to be greenhouse gases, the ozone treaty is also the most successful climate change treaty to date, delaying climate change by 7-12 years. Now, the Montreal Protocol has another important opportunity to help tackle climate change by virtually eliminating one of the six greenhouse gases hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs. These are super greenhouse gases, many with hundreds to thousands the warming potential of CO2. Phasing down production and consumption of HFCs would result in avoiding over 100 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions by 2050 (for comparison, the Kyoto Protocol is only expected to achieve 10 billion tonnes of CO2-eq. in mitigation at the end of its first commitment period in 2012).

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• COP15
• Copenhagen
• climate change
• environment
• Montreal Protocol
• global warming
• HFCs