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AIJ Buzau

HCFC-22

 

Rather different political coalitions created the Montreal and the Kyoto Protocol.  When the latter was negotiated, parties assumed that the two coexist well because the gases are not the same.  Suddenly in 2001, three years after Kyoto, a link of such strength appeared that the integrity of the Kyoto Protocol became doubtful.  A frenzy of negotiation then led to a safeguard that is in vigour since.  The whole underlines Sebastian Oberthür’s observations for relations between regimes.

This link occurs in the production of a refrigerant chemical “HCFC-22”, where for reasons of chemical reaction kinetics, a small amount of an intermediate product “HFC-23” appears and is vented.  Reduction of HFC-23 emissions is eligible under the Kyoto Protocol (a GWP of 11,700) and the production of HCFC-22 had expanded through the Montreal Protocol.  In other words, Montreal created a pseudo solution that can reduce the effectiveness of emissions trading with CDM.  The environmentalists’ critique of the Kyoto Protocol by Wara, most prominently, is based on a flawed assessment of this link because HFC-23 CER never affected the market signals of CDM emissions trading.
The link has led to stalemate for HFC-23 within the Kyoto and stalemate for HCFC-22 in the Montreal Protocol.  The HCFC-22 negotiation dynamic is described in German:

HCFC-22 und das Montreal Protokoll Regime

The CDM stalemate is due to the impossibility of weighing benefits between China and other non-Annex B countries.  The current situation can continue indefinitely and the geometry “China against the other South” is not explored.  HCFC-22 is a typical issue of a BRIC - type that does not fit into a 1980s North - South framework such as the Montreal Protocol.

HFC-23 CDM

Following its crude accounting focus, the Montreal Protocol deals with the replacement of HCFC-22 in terms of technological choices, for example in the following text.  That accounting focus was appropriate for very large, diffuse and wide-spread substances such as R-11 and R-12, less so for HCFC-22 at present at an earlier state of diffusion.

Replacing HCFC-22 with Natural Refrigerants

 

 

Oberthür S. 2006, Institutional interaction in global environmental governance, Mass.: MIT.
Wara M. 2008, A Realistic Policy on International Carbon Offsets, Stanford University, Working paper 74.


Thomas Grammig

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