Cooling technologies are vital for a functioning society – refrigeration for food and medicine, air-conditioning to adapt to a warming planet and heat pumps for decarbonised heating. But the refrigerants inside these technologies can exacerbate climate change, some of them hundreds or thousands times worse than carbon dioxide over a short time frame. Fortunately, there […]
Ten years ago, on 12 December 2015, 195 governments adopted the Paris Agreement at the 21st UN Climate Change Conference (CoP21). A decade on, it is time for both reflection and renewal.
To mark UK Heat Pump Week, EIA Climate Campaigner Adam Aucock shares his experience of getting a climate-friendly natural refrigerant heat pump installed in his home. Within a few months of my recent house move, a major leak in our hot water system left us with some very wet carpets and in need of […]
It’s almost 100 years since Thomas Midgley Jr. first synthesised chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). It was 1928 and he was working for General Motors, looking for a safe refrigerant to avoid using flammable or toxic alternatives. General Motors and Dupont soon began producing ‘Freon’ chemicals, which quickly dominated the market for refrigerants and also found wide use […]
In April 2008, the Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) released a landmark report, Environmental Crime – A Threat to Our Future. The report brought together key evidence across a range of crime types – from illegal logging and wildlife trafficking to pollution and climate crimes – highlighting the role of corruption and the critical need for […]
Saturday (22 March) is the 40-year anniversary of the signing of the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer, an achievement which has stood for four decades as an inspiration for multilateral environmental action. The Vienna Convention was established in response to scientific evidence that man-made chemicals, particularly chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), were causing significant […]