The big black section on top of this unit is a heat pump. Any new domestic water heater over 50 gallons now has them.
Posted on 11/25/2017 4:40:51 AM PST by Pinkbell
A career State Department official speaking at a conference Thursday on behalf of the Trump administration backed a climate policy then-President Obama pursued shortly before he left office.
The policy phases down powerful greenhouse gases found in a range of everyday appliances. This is the most explicit and public the Trump administration has been about supporting it.
The big picture: The conference, held this week in Montreal, is about a recent amendment to the Montreal Protocol, a global treaty created 30 years ago to fix the hole in the Earth's ozone layer, which is now it's achieving its goal. World leaders, led by the Obama administration, agreed in October 2016 to the Kigali amendment, which would phase down emissions of powerful greenhouse gases in refrigerants called hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). HFCs are used in many appliances from air conditioners to refrigerators.
Quoted: "The United States believes the Kigali Amendment represents a pragmatic and balanced approach to phasing down the production and consumption of HFCs, and therefore we support the goals and approach of the Amendment," said Judith Garber, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department's Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs.
What's next: Rhetorical backing for the amendment is one thing, but to have it actually take effect, the administration needs to send it over to the Senate so it can vote on its official ratification, as the Senate has done on other amendments and the original treaty 30 years ago. "There is no timeline currently determined for these steps, but we have initiated the process to consider U.S. ratification of the Amendment," Garber said.
(Excerpt) Read more at axios.com ...
Fast facts: The Montreal Protocol is a treaty about the ozone layer, but this latest amendment from Kigali represents an evolution to concerns about climate change. The 2015 Paris climate deal, which is a non-binding treaty that didn't require congressional input, is mostly about cutting other greenhouse gases from energy and land use. It's wholly separate from the Montreal Protocol.
Congress will have to ratify this. There is support from those in the industry "which include chemical makers like Honeywell and Chemours." Apparently some in the industry had lobbied for this because they already spent a lot of money trying to become compliant with it.
A separate article with more info and rationale here:
https://www.axios.com/industry-to-trump-keep-obama-climate-policy-2485673850.html
Smokin ‘em out. Its a lot easier to expose them when they wear dayglo ID tags.
It is not the Trump Administration that is pushing the anthropogenic climate change argument, it is the Deep State operatives that have not yet been removed, and might never be complete cleaned out. Bureaucracies have a life of their own, a reality that has been noted by others and elsewhere.
Bad science has been compounded with greed on the part of officials seeking new sources of taxation, not for the purposes of revenue (high tax rates equals decreased total revenue) but for the purposes of assigning winners and losers. Free enterprise is anathema to this kind of clannish thinking.
The regulation of these chemicals has nothing to do with global warming AT ALL, and the subject should not even be mentioned in the article.
Thanks to this type of thinking we have toilets that require multiple flushes per movement, dim lightbulbs full of mercury that require a hazmat team when one breaks, dishwashers and washing machines that don’t clean. Now we can have refrigerators and air conditioners that don’t cool.
Most new appliances I see are using R134A, same as cars.
R12 and R22 are already outlawed so maybe this is about the other 100+ countries? I’m sure China will jump right on it. Right after the smog lifts from their industrial zones and they quit eating dogs, shark fin soup and create a democracy of NK.
Didn’t we take care of HFCs a long time ago.
Freon patents ran out. Replacements force use of inferior chemicals so large corps have monopoly again. Everyone wins, government gets taxes, environmentalists think they accomplish goals, middle class gets screwed.
I have to agree, in that my experience with high efficiency washing machines they don’t get the clothes clean. In my search for a previous style agitator washer, I learned that government had nothing better to do but to pass laws to control how much water your machine uses.
We took care of CFC’s a long time ago and replaced them with HFC’s.
But you are probably right there are probably patents at stake again, but I don't know the status of any HFC patents.
Classic government meddling. This is costing supermarket chains millions upon millions every year.
My brother works in the commercial refrigeration field. he says its “musical refrigerants”. When they get done upgrading to one, the government makes them change again.
Some have done thousands of dollars worth of damage per store to existing systems.
Manufacturers are also in on the collusion to obtain market share.
Electric water heaters over 50 gallons have already more than doubled in price due to the requirement that it must be equipped with a heat pump unit.
Complete waste.
They have still not learned that man-made “greenhouse gases” are a fiction.
They must hate my on-demand tankless water heater!
What heat pump unit?
Water heater prices were increased as the result of the requirement for additional insulation. As a result, the diameter was increased and package size also increased.
When they switched over from CFCs to HFCs it often took awhile to get the new appliances using it to become as efficient as they were with CFCs,but the immediate effect was a big price increase in refrigerants. CFCs weren’t banned altogether,but weren’t supposed to be produced any longer. Where there was some existing stock(and I think you can still find some)the price increase for that was astronomical. Conversion in an existing A/C unit to HFC(R134)didn’t always work out. Ozone in the upper atmosphere is created naturally by the sun(as I understand the process)and is said to be what protects us from excess UV radiation from the sun.. The ozone levels in the atmosphere are constantly changing. CFCs were said to be destroying ozone molecules in the upper atmosphere & that is supposedly why production was stopped on them. CFCs are heavier than air,so how did they get into the thin upper atmosphere? This has never been explained to my satisfaction.
The big black section on top of this unit is a heat pump. Any new domestic water heater over 50 gallons now has them.
This new ban is to ban the cheap replacements for.Freon namely R134a that you can get ay Wal-Mart for $5 lb. The replacement is patented and cost $70lb and is also toxic and slightly flammable and.most importantly not compatible with existing equipment so every AC and refrigerator that is using R134a is instantly obsolete. Now you know why industry is behind it they will get a windfall as every current unit is marked for obsolescence well before it’s designed life.
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