Your heat pump can be an environmental and climate culprit!

Your heat pump can be an environmental and climate villain! The high electricity price lately has meant that these villas with direct-acting electricity have been in a greater hurry to convert to heat pumps and in general we see a very high pressure both in Sweden and perhaps even more so in Europe.

Since electricity prices skyrocketed, homeowners' interest in getting a heat pump as a way to reduce electricity costs has increased. The demand is very large and it is of course triggered by energy prices. The demand is very high and is of course triggered by the energy prices.

A heating or cooling system such as a heat pump or air conditioner contains a refrigerant. This is a chemical to help heat your home or car or to cool it down.

Both a heat pump and a cooling machine are basically the same thing. It's just that you use different sides of the hot or cold so all these machines use a refrigerant that you evaporate and condense.

In the past, a type of ozone-depleting refrigerant known as freons was used, avoiding the risks associated with the previous natural refrigerants. Propane was combustible, carbon dioxide required high pressure, but after the discovery that freons damage the earth's ozone layer, their use was stopped in the 1980s and they were completely banned in Sweden in the 1990s.

Freons were replaced by so-called F gases, fluorine-containing gases in many heating and cooling systems. But the climate crisis highlighted the fact that several F gases are powerful greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming. Gunilla Söderström, who works on F gas issues at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency, describes how these F gases can leak.

It is partly in daily use that most equipment has a small leak. Then they can break down and leak very much, a great risk of leakage in waste management, so it is important that it is handled correctly and that on all occasions trained personnel do the work, and then there is less risk of leakage.

In the EU, it is estimated that nearly forty thousand tons of F gases are leaked every year, as many of them are very strong greenhouse gases, the effect is many times worse than if it were carbon dioxide.

An ordinary domestic heat pump contains about 1 kg of F gas and if it were to leak out, the greenhouse effect would in the worst case be about the same as driving Stockholm, Gothenburg, round trip 20 times. With a diesel passenger car.

In the EU, F gas emissions are equivalent to almost 80 million tons of carbon dioxide, about 5 times the annual emissions from domestic transport in Sweden.

This is not only about leaking refrigerators and heat pumps, but also partly about industrial emissions.

So the gases could significantly exacerbate global warming at a time when, according to scientists, emissions need to be urgently curtailed, which is why the EU is now negotiating to phase out much of their use.

But while trying to address fluorinated gas emissions, other serious environmental problems have emerged in the search for replacements.

They do not have much impact on the climate. However, there may be so-called PFAS, there is a risk of removing one problem and introducing another instead.

Some of the F gases belong to the PFAS group of chemicals, which are among the most persistent and troublesome environmental pollutants known, while others form PFAS molecules as residues when they break down. PFAS are stored in water and organisms and their levels are increasing in the environment.

In January, the European Chemicals Agency proposed a ban on PFAS.

The decision is still pending, but in practice the F gases could soon be banned in new cooling and heating installations.

The industry is now considering reverting to the natural chemicals used before synthetic F-gases, namely propane, ammonia and carbon dioxide. When you have several reasons to find sustainable alternatives.

The natural step will be to go back to where we were before these synthetic refrigerants were invented and start using natural substances again.

Nevertheless, they continue to sell and install domestic hot water pumps with harmful emissions, and product development is not keeping up.

It takes time to develop new products and develop all components, so the industry is working hard to make this transition and you can see in some segments such as the refrigeration side in stores and so here in Sweden we have already managed this.

So everything new that is installed is with natural refrigerants today. However, there are other segments, such as residential heat pumps, where we haven't really come as far. Still today, but development is moving very, very fast.

But it makes you a little sad to think that you are actually putting in something that is not good. Well then you can look for a heat pump or a cooling machine with natural refrigerant and you can be sure that you won't have that problem in the future.

It does not exist everywhere and it does not exist in all segments.
But in most places you can probably find something.

There was a reason why we once stopped using propane and carbon dioxide, for example, which are flammable or work at high pressure. But this can be solved.

PROPANE similar to what we have in our gas grills. you need to manage it of course if it is to be placed indoors, you need to manage it and you will do so with ventilation.

Source: P4 Sveriges Radio