In Violation Of Montreal Protocol, 14,000 Tons Of HFC23 Released In 2023 - Equal To GHG From 48 Million Cars
EDIT
HFC-23 is produced as an unwanted byproduct in the manufacturing of other chemicals, including those used to make Teflon. Pairing HFC-23 concentrations in the atmosphere with meteorological models, the researchers were able to tease out how much of the gas was released and in many cases where it came from. Air samples collected at Gosan, a remote air monitoring station on a South Korean island facing the East China Sea, suggest China continued to emit large volumes of HFC-23 after ratifying the Kigali Amendment in 2021. That possibility was first reported by Inside Climate News in 2023, based on preliminary data.
A small number of chemical plants, including just two dozen factories in China, are widely believed to produce the majority of all HFC-23. The amendment requires them to destroy rather than vent the waste gas. Doing so is one of the most cost-effective ways to combat climate change. Incinerators installed and properly operated at chemical plants can destroy 99.9 percent of waste HFC-23 at little cost. However, 14,000 metric tons of the pollutant were released globally in 2023, according to the December study.
The emissions are five times higher than the annual releases that countries reported to the United Nations in recent years. The pollution is equal to the annual greenhouse gas emissions of 48 million automobiles or 55 coal-fired power plants, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s greenhouse gas equivalency calculator. “There is a powerful greenhouse gas that countries are, for whatever reason, not destroying, even though they should and have the means to, and that’s quite concerning,” said Ben Adam, a researcher in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol and the lead author of the study.
Emissions estimates in the current study are similar to those published by the Montreal Protocol’s own Scientific Assessment Panel in September. “The science is pretty clear,” said David Fahey, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s chemical sciences laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, and a co-chair of that panel. “We kind of put it on the table for the [countries’] delegates to decide, is this important enough to do something about?”
EDIT
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21052025/chemical-plant-hfc-23-emissions-likely-violate-international-climate-agreement/