Parliament votes through historic deal that will drastically cut emissions from dangerous f-gases

Today, the MEPs have just voted through the deal on f-gases, which was reached between negotiators from the Member States and Parliament in October. When released into the atmosphere f-gases have an enormous multiplying effect on global heating and their impact on the climate is often thousands of times higher than CO2.

Bas Eickhout MEP, Greens/EFA Vice President and Rapporteur for the European Parliament on the file comments:

"F-gases cause serious damage to our climate and undermine our efforts to bring down global temperature rises. This is a huge victory for the climate for the EU to phase out the use of f-gases, which are already doing serious harm to the planet.

“Getting rid of these super greenhouse gases will send a clear message to the market, that it’s time to switch to greener alternatives. This is essential for the climate and good for European industry, which will remain at the forefront of innovation and cleaner products.

“In a few years, residential heat pumps will be widely used across Europe as an alternative to oil and gas heating in peoples homes and are essential to our energy transition. To guarantee that heat pumps are a truly green alternative to fossil fuels, we must make sure that they are not dependent on the use of climate killing f-gases. This deal ensures that manufacturers of residential heat pumps will switch to climate-friendly alternatives in the coming years.”

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The phase out on the use of fluorinated greenhouse gases will reduce global emissions and prevent the runaway greenhouse effect of these substances. Fluorinated gases or ‘f-gases’ are super greenhouse gases that are found in refrigerators, heat pumps, air conditioning units and other industrial applications.