Refrigerant Compliance Includes Calculating Carbon Emissions
Posted: Sunday, March 22, 2009
by Daniel Stouffer
Earth Phone
If you manage a facility using a refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) system or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC-R) system, it's time to comply with federal and state environmental laws regarding carbon emissions. To help reduce greenhouse gases, the law requires calculating carbon emissions. This means monitoring, collecting data and performing extensive reporting of CO2 sources.
Commercial refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) systems or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems operate on refrigerant gas, which is made up of hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs). When broken down, these substances contain carbon, chlorine, fluorine and hydrogen.
Refrigerant gases are made up of certain chemical compounds that cause them to be ozone depleting substances. By calculating carbon emissions, government environmental agencies will be able to better understand the situation. Companies who fail to report their carbon emissions will be issued a substantial fine.
Various carbon emissions reporting protocols have emerged from the EPA, ISO, World Resource Institute, and Climate Registry protocols. All of these documents define in great detail how organizations must collect data, calculate carbon emissions, and report the results. In short, the monitoring, tracking, and reporting requirements mandate that all locations where refrigerants are being used or serviced must collect, organize, and calculate as part of an enterprise's carbon emissions.
Some volume of carbon is released into the environment by any company with a refrigerant system. Trying to determine how much carbon is emitted is an intricate process. Conducting a carbon audit or a carbon footprint across an organization begins with collecting data related to each location, the assets being used, and identifying high global warming potential gases. From there, a determination on how much of each gas is released must be made. Then various reports that include tracking methods need to be completed and submitted.
Refrigerant management programs can best handle the tedious process of calculating carbon emissions. Across a distributed organization or one with more than a couple of locations and a few HVAC-R systems, a web-based or database driven refrigerant management solution is more effective and less prone to error as are paper log books. A refrigerant management program that includes a solution for refrigerant gas tracking and an automated way to calculate carbon emissions is important. Solutions like this make is easier to handle calculating carbon emissions for all AC/HVAC systems operated by a company.
Many research studies and much scientific debate lead international agencies the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to mandate that organizations to monitor, track, and calculate carbon emission for annual reports. It is an important step to define your organizational boundaries, where you do business, and to identify the refrigerants you own or other sources of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Equally important is to establish a tracking mechanism for determining how much harmful gases are released at any given time. The information and data collected for the emerging refrigerant management programs will enhance and improve atmospheric conditions with specific requirements for reducing carbon (CO2) emissions.
By calculating carbon emissions, companies will be able to recognize the extent of their carbon footprint. For companies with multiple locations using refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) systems or heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, the task becomes even more critical.
But there are many solutions emerging to help these challenging problems. Emerging software provided by clean-tech development firms track carbon dioxide gas emissions across all sites so companies can do their part to ensure a healthy environment for years to come.
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Software provided by Verisae tracks carbon dioxide (CO2) gas emissions across all sites so companies can manage their carbon emissions and work towards reducing their carbon footprint. To learn more effective refrigerant management tactics and the tools, you can research http://www.Refrigerant-Tracker.com
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