Attorney General Bonta and CARB Oppose Trump Administration Proposal to Ease Restrictions on Highly Potent Greenhouse Gas

OAKLAND — California Attorney General Rob Bonta and California Air Resources Board (CARB) Chair Lauren Sanchez today led a multistate coalition of 17 attorneys general and the City of New York in filing a comment letter opposing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rulemaking that would weaken certain requirements designed to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) — chemicals used for refrigeration and cooling that are the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the United States and around the world. By extending compliance deadlines by several years and allowing for greater global warming potential (GWP) limits, the proposed rule would significantly undermine EPA’s current regulations under the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act of 2020 (AIM Act), which are designed to phase out HFCs by 85% by 2036. In the comment letter, the attorneys general argue that EPA fails to recognize how States and industry rely on the current regulations and that the new rule is contrary to law.

“At a time when the world is facing record heat and devastating wildfires, rising sea levels, and extreme weather, going backwards is not an option. Increasing HFC emissions will only accelerate the damage already threatening our planet,” said Attorney General Bonta. “That’s why, today, we’re urging EPA to abandon its proposed rule, which would significantly delay the phaseout of HFCs and undermine important climate progress. Reducing this super pollutant, as required by the current regulations, will protect future generations and the planet.”

“California has proven that reducing super-pollutants like hydrofluorocarbons is not only achievable but essential to protecting our communities from worsening climate impacts,” said CARB Chair Lauren Sanchez. "Weakening these standards now would erase hard-won progress and ignore the tremendous investment states and industry have already made. We are calling on the EPA to follow science and the law to keep the nation on track by upholding the current rule."

HFCs are widely used in residential, mobile, and commercial cooling systems, such as air conditioning and refrigeration. Once deemed a safer alternative for the environment relative to ozone-depleting substances (chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs), which damage the earth’s ozone layer, HFCs were later discovered to pose huge environmental risks. With greenhouse effects (or global warming potentials) hundreds to thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide over a hundred-year period, HFCs were projected to contribute 0.28 to 0.44 degrees Celsius to global surface warming by 2100. Because of this extreme potency, their increasing share of emissions, and their relatively short lifespan in the atmosphere, reducing consumption and production of HFCs is particularly important for addressing climate change.

In December 2020, Congress passed the AIM Act on a bipartisan basis and President Trump signed it into law. The AIM Act provides a framework through which the United States will phase out the production and consumption of HFCs by about 85% by 2036. Under the current regulations, specific sectors that use equipment with refrigerant gases would be limited to gases with lower GWP, resulting in a gradual phaseout of HFC use. For example, currently, new remote condensing systems — typically used to refrigerate food by retailers like supermarkets, bakeries, and conveniences stores — are limited to using refrigerants with 150 to 300 GWP, depending on the system. EPA’s proposed rule would raise the maximum GWP of the refrigerants that could be used to 1,400 from January 1, 2026, until 2032. EPA offers insufficient evidence that relaxing the rule in this manner is consistent with the AIM Act’s mandate to reduce use of HFCs.

California has a long history of working to phase down the use of HFCs in our state. This work is an important part of our efforts to curb GHG emissions, which pose massive and unique environmental and economic burdens to California in the form of climate change.

In filing the comment letter, Attorney General Bonta, CARB, and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell leads a coalition that includes the attorneys general of Connecticut, Delaware, Hawai’i, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin, Washington, the District of Columbia, and the Chief Legal Officer of the City of New York.