Global Cooling Pledge at COP28: How refrigerators and ACs contribute to global warming

Subject: Environment

Section: Int Convention

Context:

Sixty-three countries, including the US, Canada, and Kenya, signed up to the world’s first-ever pledge to drastically cut cooling emissions at the ongoing COP28 climate summit.

Global Cooling Pledge:

It commits the countries to reduce their cooling emissions by at least 68% by 2050 and outlines several strategies to tackle them.
These kinds of emissions now account for 7% of global greenhouse gas emissions and are expected to triple by 2050.

Cooling emission and global warming:

Generated from refrigerants, used in appliances like ACs and refrigerators, and the energy used for cooling.
- Electricity, used for refrigerators, is generated from fossil fuels, that contribute to global warming.
- The energy consumption for space cooling (the process of cooling indoors) has more than tripled.
Earlier, most of the cooling appliances used chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) as refrigerants.
But since the 1987 Montreal Protocol– an agreement signed by nearly 200 countries to freeze the production and consumption of ozone-depleting substances, including CFCs- CFCs were largely replaced by two groups of chemicals, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs).
HFCs and HCFCs don’t damage the ozone layer but they are powerful greenhouse gasses, and hundreds to thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2) per unit of mass.
- HFC-134a, a form of HFC and most commonly used in domestic fridges, has a global warming potential of 3,400 times that of CO2.

Sources of HFC

Steps taken to reduce HFCs:

In 2016, over 150 countries signed the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, agreeing to reduce HFC consumption by 80% by 2047.
If achieved, this could avoid more than 0.4 degrees Celsius of global warming by 2100.
Natural refrigerants, such as ammonia, certain hydrocarbons, and CO2 can be used in cooling devices. These chemicals have lower or zero global warming potential.
Proper management and reuse of potent refrigerant gases could slash 100 billion gigatons of global CO2 emissions between 2020 and 2050.

Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC):

It is an international body working to reduce powerful but short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), including methane, black carbon, HFCs, and tropospheric ozone.
Launched in 2012, by the governments of Bangladesh, Canada, Ghana, Mexico, Sweden and the United States, along with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).