this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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Ozone layer was portrayed as a science issue, not a political issue. Climate change became political quite early. The fossil fuel lobby was also more powerful than the aerosol lobby. Aerosol industry also developed better cooling gasses quite quickly, but few alternatives to fossil fuels that oil industry could quickly pivot to exist.
The solution was even easier than it appears. Industrial and large cooling units already mostly used a non-ODP gas, ammonia. The ammonia cycle dates back to the dawn of refrigeration and was extremely mature.
CFCs were never even necessary, being outperformed in many ways by simple hydrocarbons like propane (R290) and butane (R600a). Non-flammability was literally the only reason to use CFCs, aside from market control and big money for chemical companies.
Ultimately as common refrigeration applications only require a gas that fits into fairly loose specifications, it was easy to replace CFCs with similar HFCs and still have non-flammable gas. HFCs have massive GWP, but hey, that's a slow burn problem compared to the ozone problem, right? Looking back, we clearly should have just gone straight to hydrocarbons as a drop in and CO2 for specialized applications, as lost HFCs now make up a significant portion of the greenhouse effect.
Propellant gas was even easier with modern aerosols containing HFCs, propane or CO2 depending on application.
Fossil fuels on the other hand, have powered our world for centuries and only recently was the need to switch away from them apparent. They are a cheap, dense source of energy and far, far more integrated into all of our industries and supply chains. It's a much bigger problem to solve than swapping out some gases.
Exactly. And now Kigali is sort of trying to right the HFC wrong, but the chemical industry isn't going down without a fight and we'll be left with TFAs everywhere because of the new shitty HFOs. Everyone needs to just use natural refrigeratants.
For anyone reading and wondering what they can do, next time you buy a refrigerator make sure it's R600a (isobutane) and also write your elected leaders or bribe your dictator to mandate natural refrigerants. If you're in the right market, buy R290 monoblock heat pumps. Buy a car with an R744 heat pump if you can. Also make sure any product with refrigerant that you own is disposed of properly.
Fun fact - the Montreal protocol that replaced CFCs with HFCs prevented more warming than the Kyoto protocol, which was explicitly designed to do just that while it was a complete afterthought for Montreal. Refrigerants really matter.