Our planet’s fragile ozone layer is on a path toward full restoration by about 2050. But there’s a hitch: the success has hinged largely on replacing ozone-depleting substances with hydrofluorocarbon (HFCs) – chemicals we now know are highly damaging to the environment. It is time to reduce these pollutants.

Air conditioning, refrigeration, and insulation often contain factory-made HFCs. They are greenhouse gases that can be hundreds or thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide in damaging our climate system, yet their global use is rapidly increasing every year.

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It was the 1987 Montreal Protocol, one of the most successful environmental treaties in history, which led to HFCs replacing ozone-destroying pollutants. On 1 November, at the international meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol in Dubai, the United States will make a powerful case for better management of HFC pollution worldwide. Because of the importance of taking aggressive action on these chemicals to achieve global climate goals, I will be leading the United States delegation at that meeting.



President Obama’s Climate Action Plan pledges to reduce HFC emissions both at home and through international leadership; and the United States is delivering on that promise. Over the past year, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has completed four separate actions that both expand the list of safer alternatives to HFCs and prohibit them from certain uses in the refrigeration air conditioning, foam, and aerosol sectors where safer alternatives such as hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs), hydrocarbons and lower-polluting blends are available.

We’ve issued proposals that will take us even further down the road to reducing these pollutants. And the US Department of Defense is leading by example through installation of next-generation technologies that rely on carbon dioxide refrigerant instead of HFCs in parts of its fleet and military bases.

America’s private sector is also stepping up. In 2014, and again this month, more than 20 business leaders made commitments to reduce HFC use and emissions by incorporating climate-friendly technologies into their air conditioners, refrigerators, foams and other products. Innovative technologies and new HFC alternatives are making this progress possible.



Commitments already made by the US government and private sector will reduce cumulative global consumption of these greenhouse gases by the equivalent of more than 1bn metric tons of CO 2 through 2025 – that’s equal to taking 210m passenger vehicles off the road for an entire year.

Today, better solutions are available to replace ozone-depleting substances with safer alternatives. Global innovation has brought cutting-edge technologies and alternatives to market that can be used in the products we rely on without damaging our ozone layer or our climate system.

Altogether new technologies include foams blown with HFOs or methyl formate, and transcritical CO 2 – a refrigeration technology already used in supermarkets. And newly optimized alternatives from long ago, such as water, ammonia and hydrocarbons, are also available.



Solutions are here, and it’s time to amend the Montreal Protocol to reflect that.

Countries that are ready to act on climate have come to the same conclusion. There are already 40 nations that have put forward proposals to amend the Montreal Protocol, with even more expressing support for such measures to phase down HFCs.

Amending the Montreal Protocol would phase down the production and consumption of potent HFCs worldwide, bringing genuine progress to fight climate change. Such an amendment could avoid half a degree Celsius of warming by the end of the century, according to a study in the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics.

But success in Dubai would propel us even further. It would set the stage for an ambitious and durable global climate agreement in December, when nearly all nations on Earth will come together in Paris to advance an unprecedented opportunity to protect our planet.

An ambitious climate agreement in Paris would unlock the path to a global clean energy economy and avoid the worst climate change impacts that loom over our children and grandchildren.

President Obama has taken step after step to curb emissions domestically and has set an ambitious economy-wide target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2025. But we can’t meet the global climate challenge alone. Nations around world must cooperate.

Our immediate task is to formalize a global commitment to an HFC phasedown under the Montreal Protocol. Our broader charge is to come together as a world community and lay the foundation for a global agreement in Paris that will protect generations to come.

Nations that are serious about fighting global climate change need to come to the table in Dubai with a sincere intent to negotiate a global agreement to phase down these harmful chemicals.