Louis Potok on LinkedIn: 90 gigatons!
Refrigerants are the most overlooked climate solution out… (original) (raw)
Louis Potok’s Post
Cofounder/CEO at Recoolit - preventing refrigerant emissions
1y Edited
90 gigatons! Refrigerants are the most overlooked climate solution out there. Even if we stop selling high-GWP refrigerants tomorrow, the refrigerants that have already been deployed in existing units total 34 gigatons of CO2e -- almost one full year of global emissions. Most countries around the world are seeing rapid growth in AC adoption, and even under the UN's Kigali Amendment, 60 gigatons CO2e in refrigerants will be produced + emitted by 2050. Proper lifecycle management, including leak management and end-of-life recovery, is a solved technological problem. But this is still a critical missing piece in existing efforts. (And by the way carbon offsets are the best way to pay for this, at least in the short term.) A fantastic new report by Environmental Investigation Agency, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development (IGSD) puts some numbers to this problem, and emphasizes what the US can do -- but this is a truly global problem. I started Recoolit to solve this problem -- it's amazing that 5 years after Drawdown called this the number 1 climate opportunity, there's still so much missing energy and investment in this space. (link in comments)
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