It might seem surprising to find the world's chemical companies on the front lines of preventing climate change, fighting to disrupt their own industries.
But in a sweeping accord reached on Saturday in Kigali, Rwanda, companies including Honeywell and DuPont were among the most active backers of a move away from a profitable chemical that has long been the foundation for the fast-growing air-conditioning and refrigeration business.
The companies were driven less by idealism than by intense competition, and a bet that they could create more environmentally friendly alternatives. Still, some environmentalists say the aggressive move away from hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, provides a template for other industries to follow.
"They learned that without a rule change, their new products couldn't compete," said David Doniger, director of the Climate and Clean Air Programme at the Natural Resources Defence Council, based in Washington, DC. "They woke up and said, 'The science is real.'"
"We wanted them restricted for purely environmental reasons. The companies wanted them restricted for many other reasons," including profit, Doniger said. "But the point is that they had a certain common interest with the international community."
The chemical industry's response stands in stark contrast to the foot-dragging, and in many cases the outright obstruction of climate regulations, by the big oil companies.
Exxon Mobil, Chevron and others have been criticised for lobbying against rules to curb greenhouse gases for decades, even though their own researchers have warned of the risks of climate change. Some environmentalists contend that the chemical companies were allowed to have too much input into the Kigali deal. They also say the deal could have been more ambitious in timing and scope.
And there are concerns that many producers in countries will not profit as quickly, consolidating the power of the world's biggest companies. Much of the resistance to the agreement came from China and India, which feared that some of their chemical manufacturers would be shut out, or that their consumers would face higher prices.
"Although we welcome the outcome and there is progress, it's being dictated by the industry," said Paula Tejón Carbajal, the global business strategist for Greenpeace in Amsterdam.
The Kigali deal is the latest chapter in what has been at times an environmentally disastrous role played by the air-conditioning and refrigeration industry.
For decades, a class of chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, were used widely in air-conditioners and refrigerators, as well as in aerosol sprays and cleaning products. But scientists warned that CFCs deplete the ozone layer, which protects the earth from the sun's ultraviolet rays. Chemical companies first resisted, saying that alternatives were not economically viable. "They were awful, just like the coal industry," Doninger said.
But consumer concern about the chemicals led to slumping sales, and a handful of countries banned CFCs. In 1987, the Montreal Protocol agreement was created to completely phase out those chemicals.
The alternatives available at the time, HFCs, were greenhouse gases with 1,000 times the heat-trapping potency of carbon dioxide. Concerns over those chemicals spurred campaigns by environmentalists to phase out HFCs as well.
This time, chemical producers raced to get ahead of any new round of regulations. Even as the switch to HFCs was taking hold in the early 2000s, Honeywell and several other companies began research and development programmes to study alternatives with far lower warming potential.
Europe tightened its regulations in 2011, with stricter laws aimed at phasing out HFCs in car air-conditioners. Regulators in the United States gave credits to domestic automakers for switching to HFC alternatives.
In 2012, Honeywell set up a production base just north of Shanghai to make a more environmentally friendly HFC alternative known as HFO-1234yf.
The company followed with a second plant north of Tokyo, and is set to open its largest production base in Geismar, Louisiana, early next year. It has spent $900 million on its alternative coolant programme.
©2016 The New York Times News Service
