last updated 27th October 05
by 4ecotips.com

No intention to curb global production of F-gases

MIPIGGs (Multisectorial Initiatives on Potent Industry Greenhouse Gases) is urged MEPs to support the draft regulation on F-gases improved by Environment Committee Raporteur, Avril Doyle. and to ignore special interest lobbying organised for the chemicals industry by the global PR agency Hill and Knowlton.

"It's against the interests of the planet, the public and consumers to allow the F-gas threat to grow", says MIPIGGs coordinator Chris Rose. "The chemicals industry is literally profiting from pollution which will lead to people dying and ecological breakdown as these totally un-necessary potent industrial greenhouse gases super-charge global warming.

"There alternatives for all significant uses - Parliament must ban these gases and give a boost to sustainable products and services instead. Europe should lead: hydrocarbons, ammonia, water based systems and other technologies can be used now and eliminate the fgas risk entirely. The alternatives are also more efficient, producing less associated emissions from generating electricity."

MIPIGGs supports the amendments made by Doyle and believes the regulation on mobile air conditioning should also require rapid implementation of non HFC systems such as CO2, already developed by several European companies.

The lobbying by Hill and Knowlton was exposed in a report by the European Corporate Observatory, Amsterdam. It showed how "a US-dominated F- gas lobby campaign has attempted to undermine EU action on climate change, potentially damaging the credibility of EU environmental legislation.

"The European Parliament's Environment Committee has adopted proposals which reverse the earlier lobbying gains of the F-gas industry, but it remains to be seen whether the parliament will endorse those amendments".

For their European lobbying efforts, the predominantly US based F-gas producers have set up the European Partnership for Energy and the Environment [EPEE] as a sister to the Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, a US based pro-F-gas group. F-gas producers like DuPont and Honeywell have no intention to curb global F-gas production, and are only expanding their F-gas activities.

European refrigeration companies, on the other hand, have largely switched to alternatives. The competitiveness case for the development of green alternatives has been left out of the debate.