Refrigerants are managed by an array of legal, regulatory, educational, technical and other measures at corporate, national and international levels. Many of these descend from the Montreal Protocol, the UN treaty which successfully controlled the earlier generation of refrigerants that were destroying Earth’s ozone layer. 

International work to improve refrigerant management is ongoing. The long-term way forward is to substitute less potent refrigerants – ideally natural ones – for F-gases, so that regulation becomes less necessary. Meanwhile, European regulation is ahead of the game in terms of actual reduced emissions. The UK Parliament’s overview of “reducing F-gas emissions” gives more details about this wider aspect of things and about UK progress too.

The world’s current problem is that such measures are still nowhere near effective enough to minimise damage to the climate.

Thus there is scope for community action to set an example and hence make a real difference.