Concluding remarks

Whilst COP-15 in Copenhagen did not come to a decisive outcome on adopting a comprehensive global agreement to tackle the risks of climate change, the Copenhagen Accord although only “noted” by the meeting may, in the future, be seen as a stepping stone towards such an agreement having been negotiated between over 100 Heads of State.

For HFCs, there was considerable discussion within one of the Working Groups under the Ad-hoc Working Group for Long-term Co-operative Action (AWG-LCA) on future control measures and whether these should be under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer or the Kyoto Protocol. Whilst there was no resolution, the text in the final draft documents (which will be further discussed in 2010) is as follows:

“Urges Parties, without prejudice to the scope of the Convention and its related instruments, to pursue, under the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, the adoption of appropriate measures to progressively reduce the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons”.

This paragraph (in FCCC/AWGLCA/2009/L.7/Add.8, paragraph 4) was within square brackets as it had not been adopted and was still open for negotiation.

How the issue of control of HFCs continues is now open to question. Discussions on the control of HFCs within the Montreal Protocol remain more complicated. It was anticipated that the Copenhagen meeting would enable the Montreal Protocol to start the process of establishing an amendment that would control the production and consumption of HFCs. As the Copenhagen meeting failed to take such a decision, this leaves the Parties to the Montreal Protocol with the decision whether to take the action on their own behalf  or whether to “wait” for a decision from a subsequent climate change meeting. One of the key issues that needs to be resolved is to draw a clear distinction between HFC-emissions as a result of their use and those as byproducts in the production of chemicals.

For the climate change negotiations the discussions on HFCs remain a small sub-set of the complex and wide-ranging negotiations on a global climate change agreement and further discussions on HFCs will be determined by how these overall negotiations progress. It must be noted that, in the aftermath of the Copenhagen conference, many commentators have expressed interest is pursuing agreements at a disaggregated level, e.g. through sectoral agreements.

In parallel to these discussions, there will be the start of the review of the F-gas regulation within the European Union as well as the discussions concerning the “cap and allocation” and the separate HFC title within the USA.

EFCTC’s position remains unchanged from above, the need to give industries that are using these important products predictability over their future uses, the need to encourage reductions in emissions and the view that they should remain under the Kyoto Protocol whilst implementation of controls could be managed under the Montreal Protocol.