The Obama administration has secured voluntary agreements from major companies to decrease emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) or greenhouse gases, the White House announced on Tuesday.
HFCs play a significant role in climate change and decreasing its use is imperative. The largest companies in the United States including Pepsi, Red Bull, Honeywell, Coca-Cola, DuPont, and Kroger, expressed their cooperation by cutting the use of HFCs and switching to environment-friendly alternatives.
The U.S. government expects that these agreements will decrease global use of HFCs through 2025 by as much as 700 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, equivalent to 1.5 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in 2010, according to the New York Times.
The White House is concurrently reaching out to major businesses in the country to voluntarily phase out the production of the potent greenhouse gas. The HFCs became a popular replacement for Freon after the latter was banned in the 1990s for causing damage to the ozone layer. Obama has been seeking voluntary phase out since 2010, as well as amendments to the Montreal Protocol that banned Freon 20 years ago, the Washington Post reported.
The announcement came a week before the climate change summit organized by the United Nations in New York. The summit will mark the beginning of a 15-month negotiation period as leaders create the framework by which nations will combat the effects of climate change.
The summit will work on creating new laws that will decrease the use of emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as cut down on the use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil. Participating leaders are anticipating the hurdles that will delay the agreement. The world's largest economies such as India, China, and the United States will be pressured to significantly lessen their use of oil and coal. Leaders of both China and India expressed early this month that they will not be attending the summit.
