Grassroots: Greenfreeze
is Cool
DON DE SILVA
About a third of CFCs used to be utilized for cooling -
in refrigerators, freezers and air conditioners. As their power to damage
the ozone layer became clear, industry rapidly developed substitutes -
HCFCs and HFCs. But though less destructive, these also present problems:
HCFCs deplete ozone, if less seriously than CFCs, while HFCs have
implications for global warming.
But meanwhile, another technology was being developed at grassroots level,
and this is now sweeping the world. It began with two scientists,
Professor Harry Rosin and Dr. Hans Preisendanz from the Institute of
Hygiene in Dortmund, Germany, who were looking for a refrigerant which
neither destroyed the ozone layer nor contributed to global warming. They
settled on a mix of the hydrocarbons propane and butane, and won an award.
But their work was cold-shouldered by the refrigeration industry and the
Dortmund city fathers stopped the research, saying that the Institute's
main work should be to promote public health rather than design fridges.
Fortunately, news of their new technology reached Greenpeace's office in
Germany, which persuaded the Institute and an East German fridge
manufacturer to collaborate in its development. In August 1992, Greenpeace
launched a publicity campaign to drum up advance orders for the new fridge
- appropriately called 'greenfreeze'. Within a month it had received
50,000 orders, while a public opinion poll showed that 77 per cent of
Germans wanted an environmentally-friendly fridge.
'Then,' says Professor Rosin, 'we suddenly discovered that we had
disturbed a huge industrial lobby.' Seven major German fridge
manufacturers denounced greenfreeze as technically unfeasible.
Nevertheless, the company started producing the fridge. It won the coveted
'Blue Angel' eco-label from the German Ministry for the Environment.
Greenfreeze catches on
The industry suddenly shifted ground. In February 1993 - just five months
after they had denounced the technology - several German manufacturers
announced plans to make similar fridges. Today, almost all the companies
have abandoned CFCs and HCFCs for hydrocarbons and almost every major
European company is now marketing refrigerators based on greenfreeze
technology. Luxembourg has banned cooling systems using CFCs, HCFCs or
HFCs.
Developing countries are also taking up greenfreeze, which is particularly
suitable for their needs. The technology is easy to handle, requires no
special and expensive high-tech equipment and does not create dependency
on imports or expensive licences or substances.
'The beauty of greenfreeze,' says Dr. Preisendanz, 'is that anyone can
have the technology. It cannot be patented because all we have done is
find the right mix of two existing common gases. The technology is totally
free and can be used by the whole world, whether rich or poor, for a whole
range of uses. The irony is that the chemical industry also searched for a
substitute for CFCs but only in one direction - to find substances they
could patent.'
German refrigerator producers are willing to cooperate with companies in
developing countries at all levels. The German Federal Ministry for
Economic Cooperation and Development and the Deutsche Gesellschaft
für Technische Zusammenarbeit support the transfer of hydrocarbon
refrigeration technology, and resources are available from the
Multilateral Fund of the Montreal Protocol.
The Fund has helped an Argentine domestic manufacturer, collaborating with
a German company, to produce refrigerators based on hydrocarbons. German
companies are helping one of the largest Chinese producers to manufacture
greenfreeze fridges. Two of the three largest fridge companies in India
are working with the Swiss and German Governments to develop them. The
Dutch Organization ECOZONE has been working with the Pakistan Holland
Metal Project (PHMP) on a training course for technicians in the use of
hydrocarbon technology.
In Kenya, the Climate Action Network Africa is working with the National
Environment Secretariat and the Kenyan Polytechnic on a proposal to
demonstrate hydrocarbon technology. Courses have been held in Ghana to
train workers to convert existing refrigerators to hydrocarbons while The
Netherlands now converts 200,000 second-hand fridges a year to propane for
use in West Africa.
Multiple Applications
Greenfreeze is also being installed in air conditioning in several
countries including Italy, Great Britain and the United States of America,
and can be used in vehicle air conditioning units. At present the motor
industry uses about half of the production of HFC-134a, the main
substitute for CFCs, but approximately two-thirds of the cooling agent in
mobile air conditioning unavoidably leaks out. Changing over from CFCs to
hydrocarbons costs only a quarter as much as substituting
HFC-134a.
Greenpeace, for its part, learned a new, positive way of campaigning. 'We
could talk to the public quite differently from when we were just saying
"no" to using CFCs,' says Wolfgang Lohbeck, the campaigner who first took
up the technology. 'What really surprised me was that we could suddenly
talk quite differently with industry too. That hadn't gone so well before.
Now we were seen as partners in dialogue'.
Don de Silva specializes in communication and the environment. He can
be reached at: dondes@mihikata.demon.co.uk
and would like to receive information about grassroots
action.
