Finding non-fluorinated alternatives to fluorinated gases used as refrigerants
Juliane Glüge, Katharina Breuer, Armin Hafner, Christian Vering, Dirk Müller, Ian T. Cousins, Rainer Lohmann, Gretta Goldenman, Martin Scheringer
Abstract
emissions due to higher energy consumption during the use phase. The present study investigates the available non-fluorinated alternatives to fluorinated refrigerants and shows that a transition to non-fluorinated refrigerants, in general, is possible and has happened in many sectors already. Technically, there are only slight barriers to overcome in order to replace fluorinated refrigerants in almost all newly developed systems conforming to existing standards. Additionally, we show that alternatives are available even for some use cases for which derogations have been proposed in the EU PFAS restriction proposal and suggest making these derogations more specific to support a speedy transition to non-fluorinated refrigerants in all sectors.