Hydrocarbons in the California, USA
The California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32) established an Air Resources Board to determine and implement a statewide greenhouse gas emissions level of 431 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent to be achieved by 2020. This process also includes a drastic reduction of HFC cooling liquids.
Hydrocarbons in Europe
In April 2014, the European Union announced a ban of all non-hydrocarbon-liquids (EU_517/2014) by 2020 for new cooling systems, also known as F-gas-regulation. This is performed by a step-wise reduction of the annual amount of newly produced or imported non-hydrocarbon-liquids in Europe. Producers as well as importing bodies of HFCs received reference quantity values based on their averaged annual quantities brought to market based on 2009 to 2012 (Article 16). These allocated quotas are reduced annually from 2015 (100 % reference value) on. The major reduction of HFCs down to 50 % will be achieved until 2020 by adapting newly produced cooling instruments to HCs. From 2020 to 2030, the cut-down of HFCs will be slower as new production of cooling instruments will be limited to HCs and the reduction is driven by phasing-out older instruments and therefore less servicing of these.