Weakening F-gas proposals will attract imports
26th March 2023
EUROPE: Environmental NGOs have warned manufacturers that weakening the F-gas revision proposals will open the door for foreign-subsidised HFC heat pump imports.
A position paper, signed by eight NGOs in advance of this week’s European Parliament vote on the F-gas revision proposals, argues that while EU manufacturers are currently global leaders in HFC-free heat pump technologies, a weakening of the Annex IV bans would open the door for Chinese and US subsidised imports.
The NGO group includes the Brussels-based European Environmental Bureau, the German environmental and consumer protection association Deutsche Umwelthilfe, the Environmental Coalition on Standards (ECOS), Italian environmentalist association Legambiente and Spain’s ECODES foundation for ecology and development.
It claims that German heat pump manufacturer Viessmann told members of the European parliament in January that F-gases are no longer needed for residential heat pumps up to 70kW and urged support of the EC proposal. It also lists other manufacturers already developing, “natural”-refrigerant-based hydronic heat pumps, including AIT, Auer, Ecoforest, Bosch, Daikin, Hautec, Hoval, Panasonic, Samsung, LG, Mitsubishi, Vaillant, Nibe, Wolf, Midea and Clivet, “as well as many SMEs from Spain, Portugal, Italy, Czechia, and Greece”.
Many of those companies have, of course, already indicated that the F-gas amendments and the quoted time-scales will negatively impact their ability to meet European heat pump installation targets.
The NGOs argue that it is “merely” a question of scaling-up production, which they insist can happen quickly. As an example, they cite the switch to lower GWP R32 from R410A in single-split air conditioning from near zero to 80% market penetration having been achieved in just four years.
RePowerEU
The group also dismisses arguments that the proposals will jeopardise the RePowerEU targets, claiming that the EC has provided detailed modelling and analysis to parliamentary legislators to show compatibility between the two measures. Additionally, the NGOs argue that equipment manufacturers have a 70MtCO2e bank of unused quota authorisations available – almost double the entire annual quota allocation for 2027.
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