ENVI amendment seeks to ban product exports
5th March 2023
EUROPE: The European parliament’s environmental committee is looking to ban exports of refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump equipment containing HFCs under its F-gas revision amendments.
The ENVI committee’s F-gas revision amendments, which received a positive vote last week, included a ban on products, equipment and parts scheduled for bans in Annex IV of the European Commission’s proposals. These include certain split air conditioning and heat pump systems, stationary refrigerators and freezers, chillers and transport refrigeration equipment (F-gas concessions fail to pacify manufacturers). In the case of air conditioners and heat pumps, these bans would begin in 2026.
The amendment explains that in the framework of the EU’s global efforts to mitigate climate change, the bans of products and equipment laid out in Annex IV should therefore apply to both the placing on the European market and the export from the EU to third countries.
“As third countries, particularly developing ones, might not have stringent recovery obligations for fluorinated greenhouse gases nor have the appropriate infrastructure to manage those gases at the end of life, exports to third countries of products and equipment containing those gases may result in the release of those gases in the atmosphere,” the ENVI amendment explains.
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