The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced a settlement with Resonac America Inc. to address the company’s illegal import of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) at the Port of Los Angeles on four occasions in 2023 and 2024. Resonac America, which is a subsidiary of the Tokyo-based Resonac Corporation, will pay a penalty of $416,003 and destroy 1,693 pounds of HFCs to resolve EPA’s allegations of violations.
This case is the largest penalty imposed to date for importing super-polluting HFCs as part of EPA’s National Enforcement and Compliance Initiative on Mitigating Climate Change – and the first to require the company to destroy the HFCs.
On three separate occasions – in October, November and December 2023 – Resonac America imported a total of 6,208 pounds of illegal HFCs into the United States at the Port of Los Angeles. These imports violated the prohibition on importing bulk regulated substances into the United States without possessing sufficient consumption or application-specific allowances at the time of import. Resonac America also failed to give EPA the required notice of planned shipments of HFCs for the 2023 shipments and a February 2024 shipment, as well as failed to timely submit reports to the EPA with information on HFCs that the company imported in the first and second quarters of 2023.
Resonac America imported HFC-23 which is a potent greenhouse gas with a 100-year global warming potential of 14,800. This enforcement action prevented approximately 6,208 pounds, or 2.816 metric tons, of illegal HFCs from being imported into the U.S. If released into the atmosphere, these HFCs are the equivalent of 41,676.8 metric tons of CO2, or the same amount of CO2 produced from powering 8,225 homes with electricity for a year.
