EPEE promotes rules and regulations that ensure refrigerants are carefully looked after during their entire lifecycle, whether that is through better monitoring, labelling and training, or EU phase down schemes.
Fluorinated gases (F-gases) are used as refrigerants in refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump equipment. All of these technologies will enable us to decarbonise the heating and cooling sector and achieve the 2050 climate neutrality target laid out in EU Green Deal, and the international obligations enshrined in the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol.
The Montreal Protocol is the most successful international climate treaty. It started by focusing on protecting the Ozone Layer, but now it also tackles the climate change aspects of refrigerants when its mission was updated by the Kigali Amendment.
EPEE has supported the EU F-Gas Regulation, as well as the Kigali Amendment, through a series dedicated informative initiatives.
We also partnered with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) for the development of the HFC (hydrofluorocarbon) Outlook modelling tool, which helps governments assess pathways towards achieving the Kigali Amendment. For the EU and UK, EPEE has developed the HFC Outlook EU model to project pathways for the refrigerant transition in view of the EU F-Gas Regulation. If you want to find out more about HFC Outlook EU, click here.
By 2030, the EU Commission expects to further reduce F-Gas emissions by two thirds from 2014 levels. This makes the F-Gas framework probably one of the most successful climate related policy measures in Europe.
EU REGULATION
The F-Gas Regulation is an EU Regulation directly applicable in all EU Member States, and aims to control emissions from fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-Gases). The original F-Gas Regulation was published in 2006 and was revised in 2014. The new F-gas Regulation Revision replaces the 2014 regulation.
The European Commission published in May 2022 its revision proposal of the F-gas rules. On 5 October 2023, co-legislators agreed on a common ambition for the new F-gas Regulation and the new provisional agreement is now available online. The initial goal of this revision was to ensure the framework’s alignment with the common 2030 and 2050 climate targets under the European Climate Law and the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol. However, during trilogues, the negotiations went further and have led to more prescriptive product bans. The F-Gas Regulation (EU) 2024/573 was published on 20 February 2024, and entered into force on 11 March 2024.
EPEE and its members are fully committed to achieve the EU’s climate goals, in relation to the strengthening of its successful requirements to all refrigerants, in a coherent, sustainable and harmonised manner.
History of the EU phase down:
The video can also be viewed in French, Spanish, Italian, and Japanese.