The Interagency Task Force on Illegal Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) Trade announced that over the past ten weeks, it has prevented illegal HFC shipments equivalent to approximately 530,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions, the same amount as the emissions from nearly 100,000 homes' electricity use in one year. As of January 1, 2022, when the EPA's HFC Allowance Allocation and Trading program went into effect, the import of HFCs requires allowances. Shipments coming to U.S. ports without proper allowances have been identified, stopped, and re-exported.
In September of 2021, the task force was established when EPA issued a final rule initiating a comprehensive program to cap and phase down the production and consumption of climate-damaging HFCs in the United States, potent greenhouse gases commonly used in refrigeration and air conditioning equipment. A global phasedown of HFCs is expected to avoid up to 0.5 °C of global warming by 2100. The HFC phasedown is projected to avoid approximately 4.6 billion metric tons of CO2 from 2022 – 2050 in the United States, or nearly equal to three years' worth of U.S. power sector emissions at 2019 levels. The task force helps ensure the vast environmental benefits of the rule are realized by detecting, deterring, and disrupting any attempts to illegally import HFCs into the United States.