Blog Posts: hfcs

Through sector-by-sector evaluation of key trends and drivers, a new report from America's Pledge finds that, despite the unprecedented public health and economic crisis, bottom-up climate action is proving resilient.

If China's non-CO2 emissions were a country, they would be the 7th largest emitter of total GHGs in the world. Here's how China can clean them up.

Barely a day went by last week without a significant new launch or diplomatic breakthrough on the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals.

The United States and India have either created or ramped up 15 bilateral programs on climate change and clean energy over the past two years. The state visit next week is an opportunity to further advance the countries' collaboration in three areas.

The Montreal Protocol, designed to protect Earth's ozone layer, is one of the most successful environmental treaties ever. The time is ripe to use the Protocol to phase down the use of climate-warming hydrofluorocarbons, known as HFCs.

HFCs are as much as 12,000 times more potent than carbon dioxide. New HFC-reduction initiatives, combined with existing actions, are expected to cut global greenhouse gases by the equivalent of more than 1 billion metric tons of CO2 by 2025, as much as would be achieved by taking 210 million cars off the road for one year.

Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), potent greenhouse gases commonly used as refrigerants, are a small but rapidly growing component of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. Fortunately, climate-friendly substitutes exist, and some of these alternatives can even create net savings for consumers.

President Obama reiterated his commitment to combating climate change during this week's State of the Union address.

Mitigating these impacts means turning the many climate commitments of 2014 into tangible action in 2015.

When President Obama addresses the nation later today, climate change is expected to be featured. The president recently said that one of his personal passions is “leaving a planet that is as spectacular as the one we inherited from our parents and our grandparents.” The next two years will determine if his administration can meet this standard.

Yesterday, the Obama Administration released the sixth U.S. Climate Action Report (CAR6) for public review, to be submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in January 2014. The report, which all developed countries are required to complete, outlines U.S. historical and future greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, actions the country is taking to address climate change, and its vulnerability to climate change impacts. This report follows the President’s recently announced Climate Action Plan, which, as the CAR6 report shows, could enable the United States to meet its international commitment of reducing emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020—if it acts ambitiously, that is.

However, as the report acknowledges, U.S. government agencies will need to propose new rules and take other steps to implement the Climate Action Plan. CAR6 factors in this uncertainty and shows that implementation of the Climate Action Plan will result in reductions in the range of 14 to 20 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 (not taking into account land use). As WRI found in our report, Can The U.S. Get There From Here?, the Obama Administration can achieve a 17 percent emissions-reduction target only by taking ambitious “go-getter” action.

Now is a good time to reflect on what the United States has done over the past four years and what still needs to happen across the major emissions sources in order meet the national emissions-reduction goal and curb the effects of climate change.