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Bosch, one of the world’s leading manufacturers of refrigerators, has
decided to abandon HFCs, the chemicals industry’s preferred substitutes
for ozone-destroying CFCs, opting instead for chemicals such as pentane
and isobutane. The German company’s decision will be a serious blow for
the chemicals industry, which has invested millions of dollars in HFCs.

CFCs are used to make the plastic foam that insulates refrigerators,
and as coolants. Under the Montreal Protocol to protect the ozone layer,
CFCs will be banned by the end of 1995. The chemicals companies that make
CFCs want refrigerator makers to switch to HFCs, which are similar to CFCs
but do not contain the chlorine that destroys stratospheric ozone. ICI has
spent £250 million on safety tests and production facilities for HFC
134a. The US firm Du Pont has spent $500 million on CFC replacements, about
half of it on HFC 134a.

But while HFC 134a does not damage the ozone layer, like CFCs it is
a powerful greenhouse gas. Environmental campaigners argue that simple hydrocarbons
such as pentane and butane should replace CFCs in fridges. Several companies
have made prototypes that use hydrocarbons, but Bosch is the first to opt
for them in almost all its models.

Bosch replaced the CFCs in its foam insulation with pentane last year,
and began to use HFC 134a as a coolant. But last week Bosch announced it
would drop HFC 134a in most models. By the end of the year, more than 80
per cent of Bosch fridges and freezers will have pentane as the coolant.
Only frost-free models, which are more difficult to convert, will use HFC
134a. Gunnar Pautzke of Bosch says the company is working on eliminating
HFCs in these models as well.

The German manufacturer Liebherr is likely to follow Bosch’s lead. Both
companies tested the market with isobutane models last year, using advertisements
that stressed the greenhouse dangers of HFCs. Pautzke says the new fridges
will cost ‘about 5 to 10 per cent more, to pay for changing the plant’.

Bosch’s adoption of a CFC replacement that will contribute nothing to
global warming could nip the market for HFC 134a in the bud. Both the US
and Britain plan to limit HFCs to ‘essential uses’. The US Global Warming
Action Plan, published last October, says the government will ‘narrow the
scope of uses allowed for HFCs with high global warming potential where
better alternatives exist’.

Britain’s plan for tackling climate change, as required under the Climate
Change Convention, says that bringing emissions of greenhouse gases, including
HFCs, down to 1990 levels by the year 2000, poses ‘difficulties’, as HFCs
were barely being produced in 1990. Britain will therefore seek voluntary
agreements to ensure that HFCs are used only where emissions are avoidable
and ‘safe, practical and more environmentally acceptable alternatives are
available’. Emissions from old refrigerators are unavoidable unless manufacturers
set up expensive reclamation schemes.

An in-house briefing note circulated by ICI last November said HFC 134a
was unlikely to be ‘singled out’ in national climate strategies, as its
‘contribution would be too small to make any difference, scientifically
or politically’. It said the restrictions on HFCs in the US ‘would not affect
the substitution of CFCs . . . by HFC 134a’, and ‘should leave plenty of
room for the expected market growth in HFCs’.

But the US plans to allow HFCs only when there is no climate-safe alternative.
CFCs contribute around 24 per cent of the increased greenhouse effect in
the atmosphere. HFC 134a has half the warming potential of the most common
CFCs. With refrigeration the fastest-growing industry where CFCs must be
replaced, widespread introduction of HFC 134a would contribute significantly
to the greenhouse effect.