Move Over CO2. HFC-23 is the New Suck.
It’s Earth Day again and I’m overwhelmed (or, moreover, underwhelmed) by the mainstream media’s coverage of all things green.
So, what do I do? I go in search of something that’s been scratching at the back of my skull for some time now. To give it a name: HFC-23.
Alternately known as Trifluoromethane and Fluoroform, HFC-23 is perhaps the baddest gas of them all. Thing is, very few in today’s eco-press spill much ink in its name, so you’ve probably never heard of it.
Then again, I wouldn’t have known about HFC-23 had I not crossed it in one of my far-ranging and often lackadaisical journeys deep into the interweb. But there it was, buried several pages back in my black little book: HFC-23 / trifluoromethane - 12,000 times as strong as CO2 as a GHG. WTF!?
So, instead of reading every bloviating piece of Earth Day eco-fluff today, I decided to further educate myself about the elusive gangster of greenhouse gases, HFC-23. Won’t you join me?
From an October 2007 Evolution Markets executive brief (emphasis mine):
HFC-23 has 11,700 times the global warming potential (GWP) of carbon dioxide (CO2), with a long atmospheric lifetime of 260 years and a sizable capacity to radiate heat back towards the earth’s surface (radiative efficiency = 0.19Wm-2ppb-1). It has the highest GWP (Global Warming Potentials) of all hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and the second highest among the 6 greenhouse gases covered under the Kyoto Protocol…
…HFC-23 has industrial uses in plasma-etching processes in semiconductor manufacturing and as a blend component in fire suppression. However, the bulk of HFC-23 generation occurs as a byproduct of the production of HCFC-22, which is used primarily as a refrigerant and as a feedstock for manufacturing
synthetic polymers. HCFC-22 itself is an ozone depleting substance which has been scheduled for phase-out by 2030 under the Montreal Protocol.
Oh, but it doesn’t end there. You see, not only does HFC-23 wreak havoc on the environment, but by it’s very own destructive nature HFC-23 has been exploited by players within the nascent emissions markets.
Due to its GWP of 11,700 compared to CO2’s base of one (1), projects that reduce emissions of HFC-23 earn an absurd amount of offsets within the market for Certified Emissions Reduction(CERs) – the product of the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). With their low cost of production, as well as elimination, HFC-23 reductions were the proverbial low-hanging fruit of the CDM market. That was, at least, until people began to game the system in search of high profit margins.
An article in Scientific American argues that getting rid of HFC-23 entirely should have only cost about $136 million. So far, firms have been able to earn $12.7 billion for partial elimination. The authors of the article suggest that simply paying for the $136 million worth of equipment would be far more sensible than allowing firms to exploit the price difference between the value of emission reduction credits and the cost of eliminating HFC-23.
Furthermore, the authors of the Evolution Markets executive brief go on to note that:
…because of these incentives, HFC-23 reduction opportunities on existing HCFC-22 facilities have been largely exhausted in CDM eligible countries.
In and of itself, large profit margins are not the issue. As long as projects have an additional benefit to the environment, the question of profit should be irrelevant. However, there is now concern that the large profit margins associated with HFC-23 projects could encourage investment in new HCFC-22 production capacity, not as a response to a demand for refrigerants, but simply in order to implement reductions projects and collect and sell CERs.
This scenario has been labeled as a “perverse incentive”since it encour-
ages managers in developing countries to ramp up production of HCFC-22
and HFC-23 in hopes of being paid for subsequent reductions. While fears
regarding this scenario are reasonable, it is difficult to identify specific individual projects in which it has been played out.
Hmm, would people really produce unnecessary amounts of super-destructive greenhouse gases just so that they can capitalize on a market that receives high profit margins and scant public scrutiny…again?
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
Happy Earth Day 2008 everyone.
Shout out to Milan Ilnyckyj for blogging intelligently about HFC-23. You were one of the few Milan. Good stuff.
Curtiss P. Martin grew up in a geodesic dome on the side of a mountain in Southern Appalachia. Now he serves as ScribeMedia's clean technology editor in a tall building in downtown Manhattan.
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