Policy Update

EEA Fluorinated Greenhouse Gas Emissions 2022 (GEN – 1436.00)

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GEN – 1436.00. The 2022 edition of the European Environment Agency (EEA) report on fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-Gases) has been published. It provides a summary of the production, import, export and destruction of fluorinated greenhouse gases in the EU since 2007.

This annual report of the European Environment Agency (EEA) provides a summary of the information reported on the production, import, export and destruction of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-Gases) in the European Union since 2007 as required by the EU F-Gases Regulation 517/2014 (FGR) and previously under Regulation 842/2006.

The present report presents aggregated trends on production, import, export and destruction of F-Gases based on reporting provided by the companies, as well as data assessments related to trends in the supply of F-Gases and EU compliance with the HFC phase-down schemes under the FGR and under the Montreal Protocol.

Since 2012, the European Commission has given the responsibility for collecting, archiving and evaluating the data reported by companies to the European Environment Agency (EEA). The reporting process is executed through the EEA’s online platform, the Business Data Repository (BDR). Technical support for the F-Gas reporting process as well as data assessment is provided by the EEA’s European Topic Centre on Climate Change Mitigation (ETC CM).

Key messages

  • After a slight increase in 2020, the total supply of F-Gases to the EU continued its decrease in 2021.
  • Refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pumps continue to be key applications for these gases.
  • In 2021, EU consumption of HFCs was at 40% of the maximum imposed by the Montreal Protocol’s Kigali Amendment
  • The EU remains on track under the HFC phase-down of the EU F-Gas Regulation, with the EU-27 having achieved a cut of about one third of HFCs between 2020 and 2021. EU -wide placing on the market of HFCs in 2021 was 4% below the market limit.
  • In 2021, the use of quota authorisations eligible to cover 2021 imports of refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump equipment under the HFC phase-down exceeded the amount of quota authorisations freshly issued in that year. Jointly with the transfer of EU quota authorisations to the UK HFC quota system at the end of the Brexit transition period, this led to a decrease of the reserve of EU quota authorisation by 12%. However, the current size of the reserve still accounts for more than five times the amount of such equipment imported in 2021.
  • Related to the above bullet point, figures on the progress of the EU HFC phase-down (chapter 5) show this amount of quota authorisation available for future use: this could influence the ongoing debate on the revision of the EU F-Gas Regulation.

Figure 1: Bank of authorisations for HFCs in RACHP equipment imports – ETC CM Report 2022/3

Important to note

2021 was the first year after the end of the Brexit transition period. While data collected under the F-Gas Regulation for 2020 and previous years covered the EU-27 and the UK jointly, 2021 data refers to EU-27 only.

This is a challenge to the interpretation of trends between 2020 and 2021 as the underlying dataset (EEA, 2022b) scarcely allows a distinction of UK and EU-27 shares in pre-2021 data. Percentage change trends given in this briefing for the EU-27 scope should thus be understood as approximations rather than exact calculations.

Recommended actions

Manufacturers that are obliged to deal with F-Gas quota are recommended to carefully assess and to take note of the EEA-report.

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