General Motors said this week it will cut out a climate-destroying chemical from its car air conditioners by 2013, in a first for an industry seeking greener auto coolants. The car giant will stop using HFC-134a -- a "super greenhouse gas" -- in all new Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC models made in the United States, and replace it with a climate-friendlier coolant. Environmental advocates heralded the move. "It's a major step forward toward a global mobile air conditioning partnership that takes its environmental and sustainability obligations seriously," Durwood Zaelke, president and founder of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD), a non-profit group, told SolveClimate News. Zaelke said he expects other U.S., European and Japanese automakers to follow suit. Alexander von Bismarck, executive director of the Environmental Investigation Agencyy (EIA), a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit watchdog, called the decision "the beginning of the end for an entire class of greenhouse gases." 'Biggest Climate Opportunity' HFC-134a is 3,830 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, with a lifetime of 14 years in the atmosphere, according to scientific research published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).  The GM alternative, called HFO-1234yf, has a global warming potential that is four times that of CO2 and exists for only 11 days. Also known as "super" greenhouse gases, HFCs were developed to replace ozone-eating gases that were banished under the 22-year-old Montreal Treaty, signed by 196 nations.  So far, the treaty has retired some 100 chemicals linked with ozone destruction; but it has also stoked the production of HFCs, which are safe for the ozone but are extremely powerful greenhouse gases. If left unchecked, the man-made HFCs could account for 28 to 45 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, warns the PNAS findings. In the U.S., they are the faste ...

less than 45 day(s) - Wednesday July,28 2010 @ 01:46 PM
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