Market Factors Reinforce CFC Phase-out
August 17, 2011
No Comprehensive Inventory of Chillers Slated for Shutdown
By Barbara Carss
The phase-out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) should be fait accompli in Ontario on January 1, 2012 when a total ban on refrigeration equipment containing designated Class 1 ozone-depleting substances goes into effect. This includes an extensive list of CFCs, halon, hydrobromofluorocarbon, carbon tetrachloride and methyl chloroform, but, in practice, CFC-11 (also known as R-11) is the targeted refrigerant most widely in use in the waning days of its legitimacy.
Equipment owners elsewhere in Canada have until January 1, 2015 to comply with the CFC prohibition since all other provinces and territories subscribe to the deadline set in the federal National Action Plan for the Environmental Control of Ozone-depleting Substances. Laggards everywhere now face extra costs, however, since Refrigerant Management Canada (RMC) recently introduced a new fee to help fund the safe disposal of the surfeit of CFC-11 that the not-for-profit, industry-led stewardship program is handling.
“Our estimates indicate there are as many as 800 to 900 chillers running on R-11 still operating in the country and about one-third of them are in Ontario,” reports Warren Heeley, President of the Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Institute (HRAI) of Canada, who also serves as RMC’s President. “We’re seeing a bubble of R-11 from Ontario that has to be dealt with from now until the end of the year, and probably into the coming years considering the other provincial regulations.”
RMC’s intake of CFC-11 jumped 9% in each of the past two years. Meanwhile, its funding, which is derived from an environmental levy on the sale of hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) refrigerants has been dropping as those products are also phased out of the market. The new disposal fee of $8 per kilogram is expected to cover 50% of the disposal costs.
Large chillers average about 500 pounds or 225 kilograms of refrigerant, translating into an extra $1,800 in disposal costs, which would be a small fraction of the total capital outlay of decommissioning old equipment and installing a new chiller.
“Even with the added fee, it’s probably half the cost of finding a broker on your own to handle it,” Heeley says. “The replacement cost for most chillers is at least $200,000, and the disposal fee is a small amount that the end-user is going to have to deal with.”
Handling CFCs will also become more complicated in Ontario beginning in July 2012 when Class 1 ozone-depleting substances will be designated as hazardous waste, and technicians and other service providers will need the appropriate hazardous waste credentials to deal with them. (Service providers participating in Refrigerant Management Canada’s program will comply with these more stringent requirements.)
Policy intent in Ontario and throughout the rest of Canada generally discourages the refilling of CFC-containing refrigeration equipment, but regulations have provided some leeway to do so. In Ontario, equipment owners/operators typically had to submit a written request to the Ministry of the Environment (MOE) before January 1, 2009 and give further written notice of when the chiller would be converted or taken out of service – a date that could be no later than December 31, 2011.There are also emergency provisions, allowing the refill of a chiller if there is an immediate threat to human life or health, or an immediate danger to crops, plants, animals and/or foodstuffs on a farm or at a food packing, processing or storage facility.
Through this process, the Ministry has obtained a record of chillers still using CFCs in compliance with the existing regulatory guidelines. Knowledgeable observers caution that there are likely many more that haven’t been identified, particularly since equipment owners/operators rarely need to obtain a Certificate of Approval for a cooling system in a commercial or residential building unless there is a noise related issue.
“Certificates of Approval are more of an industrial thing. Most big office buildings wouldn’t need a Certificate of Approval so they aren’t on any list,” notes John Willms, a Partner with Willms & Shier Environmental Lawyers. “When it comes to enforcement in that sector, it isn’t going to be because of MOE’s database.”
The fine under Ontario’s Environmental Protection Act for releasing a Class 1 ozone-depleting substance into the natural environment or the environment of a building can range from $5,000 to $400,000 per day. Owners found operating CFC-containing refrigeration systems after December 31, 2011 would be subject to the same fine schedule.
Ultimately, though, other factors are likely to be an even greater disincentive for would-be scofflaws.
“They might be able to avoid detection until the machine breaks down, at which point there would be significant costs and disruptions,” Willms says. “The enforcement method that will really be most effective is the fact that to refill their chillers with CFCs, people will have to go out to the black market. Effectively, the regulation will be enforced because they can’t obtain refrigerant or get servicing in the [legal] market.”
For more information, see the Refrigerant Management Canada web site at www.refrigerantmanagement.ca.
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