Busan City Leads Greenhouse Gas Reduction by Managing Refrigerants in City-Owned Cooling Equipment

Establishment of 'Cooling Equipment Refrigerant Management Plan'

Busan City has established the 'Busan City-Owned Cooling Equipment Refrigerant Management Plan' to efficiently manage refrigerant-using devices and take the lead in reducing refrigerant emissions, which are a major cause of greenhouse gases.

Busan City Hall.

'Refrigerant (冷媒)' is mainly used to lower the temperature around air conditioners and refrigeration/freezing equipment. It is one of the substances that cause climate and ecosystem changes by destroying the ozone layer and contributing to global warming. Currently, three types of refrigerants?CFC (production halted), HFC (production and consumption banned by 2030), and HFC (80% reduction by 2045)?are regulated worldwide.

In South Korea, refrigerants in facilities with a cooling capacity of 20 RT or more are managed under the Atmospheric Environment Conservation Act. However, facilities below the legal scale lack management measures and fall into a blind spot for regulation.

One RT (Refrigeration Ton) refers to the daily refrigeration capacity or the ability to convert 1 ton of 0℃ water into 0℃ ice over 24 hours.

To address this blind spot and efficiently manage refrigerant-using devices, the city has prepared this plan and will implement it starting July. The plan aims to proactively and strictly manage refrigerant emission reduction, recovery, and disposal for refrigerant-using devices owned by the city that fall below the legal scale.

To this end, the city first conducted a full survey of refrigerant-using devices (3 RT or more) owned by Busan City, its direct agencies, and business offices. A total of 2,324 units across 79 departments were confirmed as management targets (1,565 units owned by the city, 215 units by direct agencies, and 544 units by business offices). Among these, 17 units are subject to legal management (20 RT or more), and 2,307 units fall below the legal scale (under 20 RT).

Starting in the second half of this year, to properly manage the refrigerants of these surveyed devices, the city will ▲ designate and educate refrigerant managers in cooling equipment management departments, ensuring compliance with refrigerant management standards through the preparation of refrigerant management logs by these managers, ▲ have the Carbon Neutral Policy Division oversee the management of refrigerant usage status in each department and conduct inspections of aging refrigerant-using devices to reduce refrigerant emissions, and ▲ actively propose to the Ministry of Environment, which is responsible for system improvements, the establishment of management measures for facilities under 20 RT.

Mayor Park Hyung-jun stated, “Refrigerants are substances that severely contribute to global warming by destroying the ozone layer, so proper refrigerant management is the starting point for reducing greenhouse gases. First, by proactively and strictly managing refrigerants in refrigerant-using devices owned by our city but previously unmanaged due to being below the legal scale, we will take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.