In order to determine the causality of refrigerant destruction projects, we must consider the following:
- Are refrigerants successfully converted into less harmful substances?
- Would refrigerants have been released into the atmosphere in the counterfactual?
- Does destruction of refrigerants lead to additional production of harmful gases to replace the refrigerants?
- What is the carbon footprint of the destruction activities?
We tackle each in more detail below.
Conversion of refrigerants into less harmful substances
Refrigerant destruction projects reduce GHGs by incinerating the refrigerant gases. While measuring the exact amount of gases destroyed is straightforward, converting this into the amount of CO2-equivalent gas removed requires understanding the “global warming potential” (GWP) of both the refrigerant and the byproducts of refrigerant incineration. Although there is considerable debate around the exact impact of specific gases, a table of GWP has been established by the IPCC.2 Depending on the gas being destroyed, incinerating refrigerants can lead to thousands of times less warming over a hundred years than simply letting the gases escape.
Establishing the counterfactual of refrigerant release into the atmosphere
If not destroyed, would refrigerants have been sequestered indefinitely in canisters and appliances, or would they leak into the atmosphere and cause warming? Even under the best conditions, many refrigerant storage containers will slowly leak, and improper maintenance or end-of-life disposal of appliances can result in complete release. Offset certifiers have standard assumptions for leakage over time. For instance, the Verra protocol allows projects to claim 100% of destruction to be additional when refrigerants are recovered from appliances at their end-of-life, and 25% when they are recovered from canisters that could be sold into the market and or sit unused in a warehouse. We believe these are reasonably conservative assumptions and accept them for offset projects that we analyze.
Demonstrating minimal leakage by ensuring that the destruction of refrigerants does not lead to more production of harmful gases
We may worry that destroying refrigerants might cause similar chemicals to be produced to meet the demand for this type of gas. The production and consumption of many refrigerants is either banned or must be phased out in all countries under the Montreal Protocol and subsequent Kigali Amendment.3,4 While this implies that the production of these gases must decrease, destroyed refrigerants might be replaced with other substances that also have warming effects when released into the atmosphere.
Accounting for the carbon footprint of the removal activities
Finding and incinerating refrigerants can require travel and shipping which, in turn, can lead to CO2 emissions. However, these life cycle emissions are generally taken into account by the offset certifier when calculating the total emissions reduced.
Project-level and marginal additionality
There is no other market for refrigerant destruction. Additionality is much more straightforward to establish for refrigerant projects than for other carbon offset sectors. Most countries do not have any regulations on the use and destruction of existing refrigerants, even if production of many refrigerants is banned or being phased out under the Montreal Protocol. Since no market exists for the destruction of these gases apart from the carbon offset market, refrigerant destruction projects have to rely on offsets to survive.
2 Human-made PFCs, HFCs and SF6 are very effective absorbers of infrared radiation, so that even small amounts of these gases contribute significantly to the RF of the climate system.” Changes in atmospheric constituents and radiative forcing. IPCC. https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/ar4-wg1-chapter2-1.pdf
3 Montreal Protocol. https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%201522/volume-1522-i-26369-english.pdf
4 Kigali Amendment. https://treaties.un.org/doc/Publication/CN/2016/CN.872.2016-Eng.pdf
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