Senate reaches rare bipartisan agreement on deal to cut powerful greenhouse gases
In a major win for climate advocates, the United States Senate has ratified the Kigali Amendment, which experts say could significantly reduce planetary warming in the coming decades.
The vote — signed off by a large bipartisan group of senators — finalises the US agreement to the deal made by former President Barack Obama in 2016.
The amendment will phase out the worldwide use of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), chemicals often used in refrigeration and air conditioning. HFCs are an extremely potent greenhouse gas with the ability to heat the planet thousands of times more than carbon dioxide (CO2) on a per-pound basis.
“The United States is back at the table leading the fight against climate change,” President Biden said in a statement on the amendment’s passage.
The deal is an amendment to the Montreal Protocol from the 1980s, which helped fix the hole in the ozone layer by phasing out a group of ozone-depleting chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) once frequently used in refrigeration and aerosol sprays.
Over time those chemicals were replaced with HFCs which, while not damaging to the ozone layer, can be powerful planet-warming gases. Many HFCs, per pound, can heat the planet between 100 and 11,000 times more than CO2, the most common greenhouse gas which is driving the climate crisis.
Since the agreement was an amendment to a global treaty, it required more than two-thirds of Senators to vote yes in order to pass under the US Constitution. The final vote was 69-27 in favour, with some Republicans joining Democrats to vote yes.
The agreement will phase out HFCs over the next few decades worldwide. Experts have said that this alone could prevent up to 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming by 2100.
The 2015 Paris Agreement has tried to limit planetary warming to around 1.5C – and the climate crisis has already pushed temperatures 1.1-1.2C above 19th-century averages.
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