Chilling Realities: The Neglected Climate Impact of Refrigerants

by Louis Potok, Co-founder and CEO of Recoolit

The modern world depends on cooling. As Lee Kuan Yew once said, air conditioning “changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics.” It’s hard to imagine the American South and Southwest in a world without AC. And refrigeration has fundamentally changed the way we eat. As climate change intensifies – not only causing a 1.5 degree average temperature rise but intensifying heat waves around the globe – air conditioning becomes a critical climate adaptation approach. To get a visceral sense of this, I recommend Kim Stanley Robinson’s recent sci-fi novel Ministry for the Future, which opens with an unforgettable depiction of a heat wave in India where untold people die because of a simple inability to escape the rising temperatures. So cooling is here to stay.

But this technology, in its current form, has a massive climate impact that we need to mitigate. This comes in two forms. First, energy use. Cooling accounts for 10% of global energy use today, and overall energy demand from AC is expected to triple by 2050. This is a significant problem in its own right, but today we’re going to focus on a second, much more neglected climate opportunity: refrigerants. Refrigerants are chemicals found in every air conditioner. Inside the device they’re harmless, but when they reach the atmosphere they become super-potent greenhouse gases. Altogether, refrigerants account for 5.6% of global emissions (this is based on the IPCC’s estimate of 2.8 GT CO2e from refrigerants, divided by 50GT per year total CO2e emissions).

How do refrigerants actually get to the atmosphere? This can happen in a few ways. They can leak out while an AC is running. They can leak out from storage containers that are yet to be sold, or from stockpiles full of older, now-banned gases that can’t be legally sold. Or, most commonly, they will be intentionally vented by technicians while performing maintenance or when scrapping an old unit. They do this because they have no other use for the old gas, which is frequently contaminated with acid, moisture, and oils. And this is happening all over the world, every day.

Can we just make ACs without this problem? Well, people are trying! Some history: we’re actually on the fourth generation of refrigerants. (This is a great book on the colorful history of AC if you want to learn more). We started with “natural refrigerants” like ammonia, CO2, and isobutane. These were replaced by a succession of different fluorinated gases: CFCs starting in the 1930s, HCFCs in the 1990s and HFCs in the 2000s. Now, HFCs are dominant but still cause climate change. On average they are 2000x worse than CO2. There are three paths forward that are being explored:

1. New synthetic refrigerants like HFOs. These are controversial, in part because of their potential similarity to toxic PFAS (so-called “forever chemicals”), which are harmful to the environment in other ways.

2. A return to natural refrigerants. This would be great if we can make it work, but there’s a reason we moved away from them in the first place: they’re alternately toxic, corrosive, flammable, expensive or just mechanically inefficient. We’re probably 10-15 years away from seeing these deployed at scale for most use cases.

3. Most radically, can we just find cooling technology that doesn’t use the vapor compression cycle and therefore doesn’t need refrigerants? Such technologies exist but are not widely used and are in the early development stage.

What else is being done? Broadly speaking, there are a few other solutions being explored.

1. Policy. This includes the UN’s recent Kigali Amendment, which will slowly phase out HFCs. It needs to be implemented by national-level policy, such as the US AIM Act. 

2. Replacement technologies. We’ll need to stop using so many harmful refrigerants. As above, this can involve replacement refrigerants, new cooling technologies, and other approaches to reduce the need for cooling (e.g. passive cooling). These technologies need to, in some combination, be researched, commercialized, and then deployed economically at scale.

3. Refrigerant management. Regardless of how well #1 and #2 go, there is a massive stock of installed equipment and there will be a long transition period where the harmful refrigerants are still in common use. We need to address leak rates and reduce the frequency of venting.

Let’s drill into that last solution, refrigerant management. What does it take to keep the existing refrigerants out of the atmosphere? First, we need to reduce leak rates by improving and deploying leak detection technology, the products themselves, and maintenance practices. Second, we need to continue to destroy old stockpiles. Third, and this is where I believe the biggest opportunity is, we need to reduce manual venting that commonly occurs during the end-of-life of these cooling devices. This will entail training and supporting technicians to perform recovery. For example, instead of watching the gas evaporate, they should pump it into a cylinder. 

This requires not just access to recovery tools, but a way for the technicians to get rid of the collected gas, and a reason for them to go through all this hassle to do so. Broadly speaking, the collected gas can either be recycled and reused, or destroyed. In either case, the technician will need to be incentivized for their time and effort. That financing can come from a few sources. Businesses can earn revenue recycling gas and reselling it, government programs can fund buybacks, and extended producer responsibility (EPR) mandates might require AC manufacturers to try and address this, or other innovative business models. For example, my startup Recoolit leverages the voluntary carbon markets to finance a first-of-its-kind buyback program in Indonesia. This allows us to support AC technicians with tools, training, and financial incentives while collecting granular chain of custody data through our app, all leading to high-quality credits with built-in transparency.

Overall, we need to move to a world where cooling is available to all, and where global adoption of AC doesn’t make climate change worse. Not all of these solutions I’ve mentioned will work out at scale, but some combination of policy changes, technological innovation, and better refrigerant management will do the trick. This multilevel approach – involving governments, the UN, researchers, industry incumbents, startups, and even HVAC technicians around the world – is a great microcosm for all climate change. Opportunities to have climate impact are everywhere, but silver bullets are few and far between.

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🍿 The Lean Back

Check out this burning discussion about megafires with Jessica Morse, Deputy Secretary for Forest and Wildland Resilience at the California Natural Resources Agency.

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🎙️ My Climate Journey Podcast

🌊 Dr. Julie Pullen, Founding Partner and Chief Scientist at Propeller, joined Cody for a special conversation celebrating World Oceans Week. They covered the major challenges faced by our oceans today, Propeller’s focus on ocean-based solutions, its different investment categories, the importance of benthic environments, and tons more. Dive into the full episode here.

💸 Jason talked to Rick Zullo, Co-founder and General Partner at Equal Ventures, about the firm’s origin story, what makes them different, its strategy and approach, investment criteria, and how Equal fits into the broader landscape in climate and beyond.

🔥 Yin talked to Brandon Smith, a wildland firefighter and Co-founder and CEO of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program. They discussed the history of incarcerated people in firefighting, building the firefighting talent pipeline, bringing more awareness to the field, and getting more people involved. Listen here.

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👩‍💻 Climate Jobs

For more open positions, check out the #j-climatejobs channel in MCJ Slack as well as our MCJ Job Board.

• Robotics Software Engineer at AMP Robotics (Louisville, CO)

• Computational Scientist at Avalanche Energy (Seattle, WA)

• Program Manager at Bloc Power (San Jose, CA)

• Senior Software Engineer at Climate Club (Remote)

• Chief of Staff at Dispatch Goods (Bay Area, CA)

• Director, Development (Solar & Storage) at Euclid Power (Remote/New York)

• Manager of Customer Success, Data Solutions at LevelTen Energy (Remote)

• Performance Marketing at Mill (San Bruno, CA)

• Carbon Development Global Manager at Pachama (Remote)

• Sales Development Representative at Runwise (New York, NY)

• Sales and Marketing Business Systems Analyst at Sense (Remote)

• Chief People Officer at SPAN (San Francisco, CA)

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✨ Community Highlights

MCJ x NY Climate Tech Happy Hour event. S/O to citizenM hotels for the hospitality.

MCJ Boston x SVB Happy Hour event

MCJ Colorado hiking meetup. Excellent views + tasty brews! S/O to our organizer, Zach Friedland.

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🗓 June Events

Click the event title for details & RSVP info. For more climate events, check out the #c-events channel in MCJ Slack.

⚓️ MCJ AMA: Zach Gallant - Fleetzero: Zach is Vice President of Marine Operations at Fleetzero. Listen to his episode with Yin on our Skilled Labour Series and RSVP for the AMA here. (6/14)

🇨🇦 MCJ Toronto Climate Series - Renewable Energy: Join us for networking and to learn from Aanchal Kumar, Paul Martin, and Mallory Baker. Hosted by Peak Power. (6/14)

🍻 Minneapolis / St. Paul Meetup: Monthly gathering for the local climate community. (6/15)

👋 MCJ Community Welcome Call: ​Connect, share and learn with members. (6/15)

💡 Monthly Idea Jams: Two presenters will pitch their ideas to the group, and attending community members will provide their feedback. (6/16)

🌇 MCJ San Francisco Climate Tech meetup: Casual meetup with no set agenda. Come and meet likeminded folks in climate tech! (6/22)

☕️ Seattle Climate Tech Coffee Crawl: We will be visiting 6 locations in the area. The full route will be emailed to you after you register. (6/24)

👭 Women in Climate Meetup: Monthly meetup for women who work in, or want to work in, climate. (6/28)

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