New US rules on refrigerants could lead to a massive increase in leaky trucks

Everyone is talking about the supermarkets, but there is a much bigger story lurking on the road.

The headlines all say things like “Trump eases refrigerant rule in a bid to address surging grocery costs.” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a press release that “Our actions allow businesses to choose the refrigeration systems that work best for them, saving them billions of dollars. This will be felt directly by American families in lower grocery prices.” After all, “Profit margins for grocery stores are slim, so EPA expect the billions in savings delivered by the actions to be passed directly to American consumers.” Of course they will!

The President claimed, among other things, that “we ended the anti-refrigerant movement.” What the rule change actually did was extend the deadline to ensure that new supermarket refrigeration systems were charged with refrigerants with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of less than 300 (times worse than CO2) by five years.

Oh, and they also changed the GWP limit from 300 to 1,400, which, I am sure by total coincidence, is just slightly higher than Chemours Opteon blend refrigerant, which comes in at 1,397. Chemours and Honeywell both produce HFO (Hydrofluoroolefin)/HFC blends, which were designed to have lower GWP, but are still way above “natural” refrigerants like R-290, or common propane, with a GWP of 3.

Propane is a common refrigerant in European refrigerators, but its approval in the USA continues to be slow-walked, and is now limited to 500 grams in open supermarket units and 300 grams in closed units. State and local building codes also need to be revised, so it could take years before they are common. What this rule change does is give Chemours and Honeywell at least 5 extra years of sales of expensive proprietary refrigerants. With the change to the GWP limit of 1400 and the continued resistance to propane, it could be decades.

If anything, it will increase the price of food. The Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute says much the same thing about it being a gift to Big Chem, telling PBS:

"This rule works against basic supply and demand," said Stephen Yurek, the group's president and CEO. By extending the compliance deadline, the EPA is maintaining and even increasing demand in the market for existing refrigerants while supply continues to fall under the AIM Act. So, instead of falling, refrigerant prices are likely to rise, resulting in higher service costs, and higher costs for consumers.”

But while everyone is talking about the supermarket refrigerators, there is a much bigger, more egregious story being ignored. According to the press release:

“EPA is also proposing to exempt all road refrigerant transport appliances from HFC leak repair requirements established in the 2024 ER&R Rule, removing burdens for owners and major U.S. operators of these appliances. The Biden Administration made an error in its final 2024 rule, subjecting the refrigerant transport sector to these leak requirements, even though it presents a low risk to human health.”

The so-called “error” by the Biden administration was considering climate change an environmental problem worth regulating, or a danger to human health. The EPA under Zeldin denies that climate is a regulatory concern, so of course it was an error.

“These transport appliances were swept into the leak requirements despite posing minimal risk to human health and the environment, making the regulatory burden disproportionate to the benefit.” -the benefit being, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which the EPA considers harmless, a minimal risk.

The EPA claims “Up to $1.5 billion in projected savings for transporters of refrigerated goods under the proposed ER&R technical fix if finalized.” That’s bigger than the purported savings at the supermarket. Follow the money.

Our food system runs on two things: the Interstate Highway System and refrigerated trailers (reefers). It’s hard to find exact numbers, but there are probably 500,000 reefers in the USA, each carrying between 14 and 17 pounds of refrigerant, and their units leak as much as 25% per year. They are usually filled with R-404A, with a GWP of 3,922. Multiply those numbers, and you have 3.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent leaking each year from the reefer fleet.

Biden’s rule wasn’t even very tough; it only required that if a reefer unit lost more than 10% of its refrigerant per year, it needed to be repaired. Now, they can leak to their heart’s content, because refilling is cheaper than fixing or replacing.

Bonus: Why we should keep the cold chain as short as possible

I have written many times here and in my books that the refrigerant loss from the transport industry and the cold chain is hugely underestimated. According to the United Nations Environment Programme document Sustainable Cold Chain and Food Loss Reduction, transportation accounts for up to 7% of the world’s hydrofluorocarbon emissions due to “high refrigerant leakage and poor end-of-life disposal”.

And here we are today, with Trump’s EPA getting rid of one of the few attempts to regulate it. This is a much bigger deal than the supermarket fridges.

There are no changes to the rules on data centre cooling; they still need to use low-GWP refrigerants as of next year, with a GWP under 700, and the EPA considers enforcement “a low priority.” In Europe, data centres are cooled with propane and CO2, with respective GWPs of 3 and 1. I will follow up with a post about this when I find more information.