PIGGs shouldn't fly 08 February 05

The relevant factors that we have to look at when making industrial decisions:

1. What is the Global Warming Potential?

2. What is the emission rate from leakage and can leakage be reduced?

3. What is the energy efficiency of using an alternative?

4. What is the effect on the ozone layer from the alternatives?

5. What are the economics of converting to alternatives?

I find it interesting as an engineer how often we think we solve a problem but instead we create another problem. This keeps everyone busy I guess.

HFCs as a replacement to CFCs helped to protect the ozone layer to help it recover. This worked. In addition, the cost of CFCs were increased to help encourage the phase out. The HFC alternatives used slightly more energy than the CFCs did which increased more electricity use and carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. I think that the Montreal Protocol was very successful in mitigating the effects we had on the ozone layer. Unfortunately, as the ozone replenished itself, this in turn created more global warming since ozone is a greenhouse gas.

With respect to the alternatives now being suggested to HCFs, I hope all the factors I have listed are taken into adequate account. The cost of constantly restructuring everything is high.

The importance should be obvious to most but the questions that come up for me are:

1 Will the energy efficiency increase or decrease with respect to the alternative refrigerants?

This is important because, even if the global warming potential is reduced, the increased carbon dioxide emissions from a decrease in efficiency may offset global warming reductions from the alternatives.

2. Since HFCs are never meant to be released to begin with, can leaks be prevented to reduce the amount entering the atmosphere and would this be more economically viable?

Yes, these warming potentials are high, but compared to the incredibly high volume of carbon dioxide and methane releases, could the volume of leakage of HFCs be reduced significantly to make their contribution negligible?

I am not an expert, but more precision on answering these questions is important or we could be diverting funds in creating an expensive restructuring when these resources may be more useful for carbon sequestering or renewable energy development.

My point is that these complexities need to be dealt with in a “prudent” way in order for the desired effect to be achieved at a reasonable cost.

Another point which is relevant is that there are no simple answers.

Only complex ones!

And when I think about the cooling effect from coal-plant sulfur emissions negating the climate warming, or the mercury in compact fluorescents, I am further reminded again of these complexities.

I could mention more complexity such as power factor reduction and how electricity is not metered to account for that but this would start getting too technical for this blog site.

However, I will say this: A 15 watt compact fluorescent bulb actually uses 25 watts instead of 15 watts simply because the meter does not measure the efficiency decrease from how the bulb utilizes electricity from the power plant. This can be electronically corrected but why would the manufacturers bother since it is not charged to the residential consumer by the utility.

For those who are technically curious, do a Google on power factor reduction and see what comes up.

Dan