Behr, Obrist, Valeo and Visteon all showed cars using CO2 refrigerant at the “Mobile Air Conditioner Summit” in Austria on 17 February.
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The summit was attended by regulators and industry representatives, who demonstrated that technology is now available to replace the current HFC-134a refrigerant , a fluorinated greenhouse gas which is over one thousand times more damaging to the environment than CO2, and has therefore been banned for use in all new car models sold in the EU from 2011.
There conference consensus was that CO2 is the preferred replacement for HFC-134a rather than HFC-152a or other flammable refrigerants that had previously been mooted as alternatives. However, just prior to the summit, two major chemical companies said they had developed low global warming potential refrigerants that could also be used as their chemical properties are likely to be close to HFC-134a.
These completely new refrigerants are still in the test phase. The regulators and industry welcomed the announcements as this increases competition and therfore downward pressure on the cost of alternatives.
The conference organisers said that industry experts estimated that some 100,000 CO2-cooled cars would be sold in the EU by 2008 and that volume would be about two million by 2011. However, car manufacturers considered the timespan a challenge.
The summit was organised by by the European Commission together with the California Air Resources Board which is also preparing plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and considers the HFC-134a phase-out a viable option.
