WASHINGTON (AP) — Near the end of his first term, President Donald Trump signed into law a bill that aimed to reduce harmful, planet-warming pollutants emitted by refrigerators and air conditioners. The bipartisan measure brought environmentalists and major business groups into rare alignment on the contentious issue of climate change and won praise across the political spectrum.
Five years later, the second Trump administration is reversing course, as it moves to loosen a federal rule — based on the 2020 law — that requires grocery stores, air-conditioning companies and others to reduce powerful greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment.
The shift in approach has upended a broad bipartisan consensus on the need to quickly phase out domestic use of hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs, that are thousands of times more potent than carbon dioxide and are considered a major driver of global warming.
The proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency highlights the second Trump administration’s drive to roll back regulations perceived as climate-friendly, even at the cost of causing disarray for the very business interests it is claiming to protect. The plan is among a series of sweeping environmental rollbacks that EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has said will put a “dagger through the heart of climate change religion.”
The HFC proposal will help “make American refrigerants affordable, safe and reliable again,” Zeldin said in a statement.
But environmentalists say the plan will exacerbate climate pollution while disrupting a years-long industry transition to new coolants as an alternative to HFCs.
With HFCs one of the main drivers of extreme heat and pollution, any delay in their phaseout “is going to be have negative outcomes and significant ones,” said Kiff Gallagher, executive director of the Global Heat Reduction Initiative, an international effort to reduce trapped heat that is warming the planet.
Industry groups supported the phaseout
The 2020 law signed by Trump, known as the American Innovation and Manufacturing Act, phased out HFCs as part of an international agreement on ozone pollution. The law accelerated an industry shift to alternative refrigerants that use less harmful chemicals and are widely available.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Chemistry Council, the top lobbying group for the chemical industry, were among numerous business groups that supported the law and an international deal on pollutants, known as the Kigali Amendment, as wins for jobs and the environment. U.S. companies such as Chemours and Honeywell developed and produce the alternative refrigerants sold in the U.S. and around the world.
Get weekly health news
Receive the latest medical news and health information delivered to you every Sunday.
The 2020 law led to a 2023 rule, now being relaxed, which imposed steep restrictions starting next year on HFCs. Zeldin said the Biden-era rule did not give companies enough time to comply and the rapid switch to other refrigerants had caused shortages and price hikes. Some in the industry dispute this.
In September, the EPA announced it is relaxing standards for cold storage warehouses and other cooling equipment and delaying other aspects of the HFC rule until 2032.
EPA now says the rule is bad for business
On a visit this summer to a refrigeration facility in swing-state Georgia alongside Vice President JD Vance, Zeldin said the administration was responding to grocery stores and refrigeration companies that have complained about the federal rule.
“We at the Trump administration are heeding the call of Alta Refrigeration,” Zeldin said at an Aug. 21 appearance at the company in Peachtree City, Georgia, outside Atlanta.
Zeldin said the so-called Technology Transitions Rule, finalized under former President Joe Biden, has been restricting access to refrigerants Americans need to cool their homes and businesses, while costs are going up and supply is going down.
He said Alta Refrigeration, along with grocery stores, the semiconductor industry and residents across America, were dissatisfied with the rule and vowed to “fix this mistake.”
The Food Industry Association, which represents grocery stores and suppliers, applauded the EPA plan, saying the current rule “imposed significant and unrealistic compliance timelines.” Zeldin’s proposal “achieves the intended environmental benefits without placing unnecessary and costly burdens on the food industry,” said Leslie Sarasin, the group’s president and CEO.
Jorge Alvarez, co-founder of iGas USA, a Florida air conditioning company whose products include HFCs, said the Biden rule was “shoved down our throats” and threatened to create havoc. The delay “gives industry a chance to create new refrigerants, and we will,” he said.
The rule’s rollback sparks confusion over Trump’s strategy
But the change in tack comes after industry players had already made adjustments to ensure they could meet the goals set in motion by the 2020 law.
“Changing the schedule now would disrupt planning and inject uncertainty across the market,” said Samantha Slater, a senior vice president at the Air-Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration Institute, which represents more than 330 HVAC manufacturers and commercial refrigeration companies.
Manufacturers have already retooled product lines and certified models based on the current timeline, she said, noting that nearly 90% of residential and light commercial air conditioning systems use substitute refrigerants.
A delay would give an advantage to foreign-based competitors that did not invest in alternative refrigerants and risks “higher costs for U.S. consumers,” Slater said.
Chemours, the Delaware-based chemical giant that is a leading producer of alternative refrigerants, said in a statement that it has “consistently supported an orderly phasedown schedule of HFCs as outlined in the AIM Act.”
Delays to the transition “risk undermining and stranding U.S. manufacturing and innovation investments, while also increasing uncertainty and supply chain inefficiencies, ultimately driving up consumer costs,” said Joe Martinko, president of Chemours’ Thermal & Specialized Solutions business.
Even with the holdup, “the transition to low-global warming potential refrigerants is well underway,” he said.
A temporary shortage this summer of cylinders used by HVAC contractors — which Zeldin and others have cited as a reason to delay the EPA rule — has been resolved, Martinko and other industry representatives said.
David Doniger, a senior strategist at the environmental nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, said the current rule ensures an efficient, affordable phasedown of harmful HFCs, while offering industry regulatory uniformity and a way to remain globally competitive.
He said the federal rule averts a previous patchwork of state laws and regulations. States such as California, Washington and New York have similar requirements to the Biden rule and may end up in conflict with the Trump standard.
“Weakening the rule will confuse the market,” he said.