Voluntary actions

You may want to consider some additional voluntary actions in the area of good practice when complying with the F gas Regulation. These may, for example, help to make sure you keep complete records about all systems in your organisation, and to both simplify and standardise your approach when implementing the regulations across existing equipment and future purchases.

Examples of voluntary actions include:

• considering alternatives to F gases for new equipment (see below for more information)
• paying attention to energy consumption as well as refrigerant emissions
• choosing new purchases of F gas containing refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pumps systems with low leakage designs
• using system records to improve understanding of the causes of leaks
• applying labels to all existing systems containing F gas
• minimising emissions from any refrigerated vehicles operated by your organisation.

Practical guidance aimed at reducing leaks has been produced by the Institute of Refrigeration. The guidance and tools are aimed at all sectors of business and industry with the aim of helping to achieve significant reductions in carbon emissions from refrigerant leakage from installed systems.

• More details on Real Zero

Alternative gases

Users of F gases may want to consider ways of reducing or eliminating emissions of these greenhouse or global warming gases. One way to do this is to use an alternative.

The information sheets provided in this section are intended to provide some guidance on the options available and the issues that should be considered when looking for alternatives to F gases. The final decision on whether to use an alternative or not will be dependent on a number of factors including the equipment affected, the costs involved, the suitability of a replacement in the circumstances presented. Therefore it may be necessary to employ a contractor or consultant to advise you further.

A key consideration when looking at alternatives is your choice is cost-effective and has the lowest “overall carbon footprint”. The overall carbon footprint looks at both direct emissions such as leaks of the refrigerant and indirect emissions of carbon dioxide in the generation of energy to run the equipment. The energy related carbon dioxide emissions may be the dominant part of the overall carbon footprint. So any system using an alternative should take full account of energy efficiency issues.

Please download our information sheet on this subject for each sector.

• RAC 7 – refrigerant selection (PDF 150 KB)

Each information sheet indicates when it was last updated. Over time, the information sheets will be updated to reflect current contact points.