The “green” wave at all costs is advancing in Europe
After the houses, boilers and cars also the refrigerant gases of the air conditioners must be emission-proof. Thus the EU has decided to ban the so-called fluorinated gases with a refrigerant effect in favor of the production of air conditioning systems with natural gas.
The new rules are heavy and would put 100,000 jobs at risk. It also means forcing families, companies, businesses to throw away 8 plants out of ten of the current ones. With the prices of the plants ready to go up by 40%. Negotiations are underway on the new rules between the Commission, Parliament and the European Council given that the air conditioning market is worth between 5 and 8 billion euros a year and between 0.3 and 0.5% of the Italian GDP.
Industry associations say they are concerned
They believe that the F-gas regulation represents too ambitious a challenge and penalizes the industry. According to what the EU is developing, the newly produced air conditioning systems and heat pumps should in fact use only natural gases such as propane and ammonia.
Gases which, in addition to being more expensive than those already in use, are more dangerous because propane is highly flammable and explosive, and ammonia is potentially toxic. Moreover, these gases are already banned in hospitals, hotels, cinemas and other public spaces. So it will be necessary to understand how to refrigerate these spaces without endangering the safety of citizens.
Plus there’s the usual paradox
The F-Gas regulation only concerns Europe while America and Asia (China, India and the USA are the major polluters on the planet) will continue to produce, sell and market plants with fluorinated gases. Not only: European companies will be cut off from world exports which, alone, are worth 50% of the entire supply chain given that there will be a ban not only on the sale but also on the production of traditional air conditioning systems. Rule that will favor the giants of Chinese and American air conditioning.
Among the many proposals already included in the EU text is that of starting the reduction of the diffusion of these gases as early as 2024 and a ban on the use of F-gas air conditioners as early as 2028.
“A regulation – he said Luca Binaghi president of Assoclima – which forbids the use of synthetic refrigerant gases would entail not only a higher installation cost but, in some cases, also the impossibility of creating an air conditioning system. The EU regulation, unclear and excessively ambitious, if adopted, would put many companies in our sector in difficulty”.