F-Gas Regulation update

From 29 June to 07 September 2020, the Commission asked for feedback on its inception impact assessment relating to the F-Gas Regulation. On 15 September 2020, this was followed by a public consultation supported by a questionnaire. This consultation runs until 29 December 2020.

Introduction

The number of consultations by the European Commission on revision of existing legislation and ideas for new legislation is proliferating. There are 1.753 going on at present. Eurovent tries to monitor those that are relevant and when appropriate provide input.

All these initiatives are on: https://ec.europa.eu/info/law/better-regulation/have-your-say/initiatives

These consultations start with a ‘Roadmap/Inception Impact Assessment’ followed by a ‘Public consultation’. The roadmap looks for general comments of the interested persons and stakeholders. The consultation is the second phase and consists of detailed questionnaires that often require two to three hours to fill.

The consultation on the F-Gas Regulation is one of, at present, twelve consultations that Eurovent is monitoring and contributing to.

Consultation on the review of the F-Gas Regulations

At the request of Product Groups, one Task Force was set up to accompany the review of the F-Gas Regulation. This Task Force defined the feedback provided by Eurovent by 7 September to the roadmap/inception impact assessment.

The Commission received 75 inputs, alongside Eurovent those of note are from Agoria (the only member association of Eurovent that picked up this issue), APPLiA, AREA, Asercom, EHI, EHPA, EPEE and JRAIA.

For the consultation that runs until 29 December, the Commission has developed a questionnaire consisting of mainly question with multi-choice answers and some questions that can be responded to in free text. In total about 20 pages.

The questionnaire is built up in parts:

• Part 1 seeks to explore your general awareness of F-Gas policies
• Part 2 seeks to gather general views as regards the performance of the F-Gas Regulation and the need for any changes (it inquires into the effectiveness of the implementation and also asks if the COVID-19 pandemic has an influence)
• Part 3 seeks to gather specialised views on the existing regulatory provisions and considered changes to the existing rules, it requires detailed technical knowledge of the F-Gas Regulation

For information – EU report on alternative refrigerants for split air conditioning systems

On 30 September released the enclosed report (GEN – 1160.03) on the availability of refrigerants for new split air conditioning systems that can replace fluorinated greenhouse gases or result in a lower climate impact. It is enclosed as additional information when considering the questionnaire.

Recommended actions

Member Associations and participants of the interested Eurovent Product Groups (mainly PG-AC, PG-LCP-HP, PG-RDC, and PG-RT) are asked to provide the Eurovent Secretariat with their written input by the 3rd week of October 2020. The received input will be consolidated in dedicated Product Group meetings and then shared with the Eurovent TF-FGAS. The TF-FGAS will finalise the Eurovent response to the questionnaire. This response will be a compromise of the views within Eurovent.

Member Associations and manufacturers are therefore recommended to participate directly as well, so that their specific views can be taken into account by the European Commission.