Hacker News Reader

Comment by Tade0 | Hacker News Reader

Common refrigerants are also potent greenhouse gases.

The currently used R32 is equivalent to 675x the CO2, so a typical AC unit will have several tonne equivalents of it inside.

That's still an upgrade over its predecessor - R410a, for which the same figure was 2088x.

Heat pumps have the same problem, which is why the recently deployed 33MW district heating heat pump in Helsinki uses CO2 as a refrigerant:

https://www.man-es.com/company/press-releases/press-details/...

View on HN

It‘s only a problem if the system is not properly installed.

In countries with proper regulation and professional certification this is not an issue.

This is incorrect. Every ounce of that stuff winds up outside eventually. Regulation can only put it off. It's a gas and it has to go somewhere. It's like trying to keep lithium out of landfills.

Please provide a source for this wild claim. Nothing winds up outside, unless it leaks. The gas can and does get reused indefinitely.

Additionally and just to put it in perspective, a typical AC Split-Setup contains around 1kg of R32 which would be equivalent to 677 kg of CO2 _if_ it would leak completely over the 20 years of usage (which it doesn‘t). That‘s equivalent of the CO2 contained in 285 liters of gasoline or about driving 3000 kilometers by car (for cars using 7-8 liters). The expected leakage is 1-3 percent. So that‘s around 30 kilometers by car per year.

In reality, modern ACs are widely used for heating in winter (I am doing this myself) and help to reduce CO2 emissions compared to heating with oil or gas.

edit: I had to edit this twice. Actually the first estimate was correct.

I think the claim that all working fluid put into an AC ends up in the atmosphere is correct for now. Most AC decommissions I heard about involved venting the gas to the atmosphere. Given the high cost of labour everywhere, the zero labour option is the one we must expect.

There's no country AFAIK that sanctions AC equipment owners or anyone else for not disposing properly of all their working fluid at the end of the equipment's lifetime.

In the USA the EPA will fine you for intentionally venting refrigerants to the atmosphere instead of using a refrigerant recovery system for recovery/reuse/disposal.

Pretty good reddit thread about the realities of enforcement: https://www.reddit.com/r/HVAC/comments/ugg89h/people_who_hav...

AC equipment is replaced at the end of its lifetime and picked up by professionals. That's a fact.

And as I pointed out, even if it wouldn't be picked up and leak _completely_, then it would still be 50x less than the average car owner emits in the same timeframe.

Even a single season of heating a house with natural gas already emits more than a complete leak. And who is loosing sleep about that? Maybe those who install an AC for a 20x emission reduction. Not those baselessly claiming that AC are environmentally problematic.

That's illegal. Refrigerant from old A/C units must be collected and disposed of safely, typically through high temperature combustion.

This does release greenhouse gasses, but just normal CO2 not the extremely potent gases originally present.

If it's always reliably collected, why does every old vehicle need its AC unit recharged?

Say 32 oz of refrigerant per car, 675x CO2 equivalence, if your car AC vents all the refrigerant it's like releasing 0.675 tons of CO2.

EPA says an average passenger vehicle releases 5 tons of CO2 per year, so if your AC lasts 10 years it's about 1% of your car's greenhouse gas emissions.

Leaks in a larger building AC would be worse, but I bet all the vibration and getting banged around by potholes makes the car systems a lot more prone to leaks than a stationary unit.

AFAIK Vehicles use flexible rubber pipes because the rigid copper pipes of fixed split ACs would not withstand the vibrations of a car. The downside of these more flexible pipes is that they leak more.

Well I live in the USA and know PLENTY of people who either DiY to save a buck or hired some yahoo who just cuts the lines and did whatever because they were cheap to hire. Money will corrupt any regulatory illusion you have.

Problem is tradesmen want to charge too much.

The tradesmen charge what it costs to run a sustainable business. Unless all the tradesmen in your area are driving Lamborghinis and live in multimillion-dollar homes?

All those regulations make running a business a chore so something has to give.

How about this one? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator

Far as damaging the environment, I'm a contrarian. If people tell me "blah blah we're forcing you to help the environment because we think that's a good thing you should be doing" I'll do the opposite. At least for me they need to be saying "we're going to pass a law that forces you to pollute because our opinion is that is what you should be doing" and it is at that point that I would try to save the environment

Reply on news.ycombinator.com