Ozone Depleting Substances

The EU Ozone Regulation also sets licensing requirements for all exports and imports of ozone-depleting substances and regulates and monitors not only substances covered by the Montreal Protocol (over 90 chemicals), but also some that are not covered (additional chemicals called ‘new substances’). One of these ‘new substances’ Halon 1202 is not covered by the Montreal Protocol, but is included in Annex I and controlled in by the same measures as other Annex 1 substances (as listed by the Montreal Protocol.  Annex II substances (‘new substances’) are not controlled under the Montreal Protocol but are subject to reporting requirements under Regulation 2024/590.  Annex I substances are subject to a licensing system.

The regulation is available at https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/590/oj/eng and an overview of the ozone layer and actions to protect the ozone layer, including this regulation is available at https://climate.ec.europa.eu/eu-action/ozone-layer_en

The European Environment Agency (EEA) provides an annual update for ozone depleting substance, with the 2024 version available here.

Use of Ozone Depleting Substances as feedstock

Article 6 also sets out that the Commission shall, where appropriate, adopt delegated acts to supplement this Regulation by establishing a list of chemical production processes for which the use of ozone-depleting substances listed in Annex I as feedstock shall be prohibited on the basis of the technical assessments carried out under the Protocol, in particular the quadrennial reports prepared by the assessment panels under the Protocol, that include assessments of available alternatives to existing feedstock uses and of emission levels of existing feedstock uses. It also allows the Commission to make its own assessment where there are no technical assessments under the Montreal Protocol.

The EEA 2024 update provides a summary of the production and use of ODS as feedstocks. “A number of ODS serve as feedstock for the manufacture of other products such as refrigerants, foam blowing agents, polymers, pharmaceuticals and agricultural chemicals. In 2023, feedstock use amounted to 130,112 metric tonnes, a 17% decrease compared with 2022. Feedstock availability was 129,561 metric tonnes in 2023, down by 17% from 2022. Overall, feedstock availability, which is calculated as the sum of the production for feedstock use inside the EU and the imports for feedstock use inside the EU, was therefore at a comparable level to feedstock use, indicating that the EEA reporting systems covers all relevant undertakings from the supply as well from the production side. In 2022, the emission rate from feedstock uses was 0.04% of the reported make-up. The 2023 average emission rate was slightly higher than the emission rate in 2022 and also marginally higher than the average emission rate obtained from earlier years (2016 to 2022).”