The Green Cooling Association has been founded to build upon the legacy of the Green Cooling Council, which, since its foundation in 2003, had been active in the promotion of natural refrigerants, including hydrocarbons, CO₂, and ammonia. Less than half a year after the premature demise of the Green Cooling Council’s work due to problems with the supporting government funding agency, the revitalised Green Cooling Association will ensure that the voice of natural refrigerants in Australasia keeps on being heard.

To allow the organisation to grow and gain influence in the interest of all proponents of natural refrigerant solutions, the Green Cooling Association is now calling for the participation and support from entities from Australia, as well as New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, the Asian region, Africa, the Americas and Europe.

An advocate for hydrocarbons

With regards to hydrocarbon refrigerants, the Green Cooling Association advocates their use as safe replacements for HFCs in most small and medium systems. Domestic refrigeration is an obvious application where safe systems are easily achievable due to small system charges, while many small and medium commercial applications are also feasible with various hydrocarbon refrigerants.. Immediate highly feasible applications include:

• Domestic refrigeration: Fridges, Freezers, Water dispensers
• Small A/C: Window rattlers, small split systems
• Water chillers: Water and air-cooled chillers, up to 200kW
• Supermarkets: High stage systems in combination with CO₂ or secondary refrigerants

Voicing natural refrigerants in international climate negotiations

Among the aims of the Green Cooling Association is to support the Australasian natural refrigerants industry participation in vitally important international climate negotiations. In this context, the association will participate in the forthcoming (29th) meeting of the Open-ended Working Group (OEWG) of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in Geneva. At the July meeting parties will also discuss a joint proposal by Micronesia and Mauritius to amend the Protocol so as to also regulate HFCs. A similar approach whereby the regulation of HFCs would fall under the scope of the Montreal Protocol, had also been seriously considered by the US, which, although it did not file a proposal in time for consideration by the Parties, may still have the chance to support the proposal filed by the two island nations.