Kuwait has ratified the Kigali Amendment, becoming the 159th country to sign the international agreement to phase down HFCs.
Kuwait is classified as a “Group 2” developing country, which means it will have to freeze HFC production by 2028 and reduce its HFC consumption by 85% by 2047 compared to its average HFC consumption from 2024 to 2026 plus 65% of its HCFC consumption from 2009 to 2010.
Halfway there: Kuwait is the third country in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a regional alliance of six countries in the Persian Gulf, to ratify the Kigali Amendment in 2024.
- Bahrain ratified the Kigali Amendment in July, and the United Arab Emirates ratified the Kigali Amendment in April.
- Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar have yet to ratify the Kigali Amendment. The Sultan of Oman issued a royal decree ratifying the amendment in September, but the country’s ratification has yet to be recorded on the UN Environment Program and does not appear in the United Nations Treaty Collection.
NatRefs in the Middle East: Natural refrigerants are slowly establishing a presence in the Middle East.
- The UAE and the Cool Coalition launched the Global Cooling Pledge in December 2023, which commits signatory countries to reducing cooling-related emissions. Currently, 71 countries have signed the pledge.
- In May, Jordan’s Ministry of Environment released its National Cooling Strategy (NCS). The NCS called for a three-pronged approach to transition to sustainable cooling, with one of those prongs being “switching to natural refrigerants.”
- At Chillventa 2024, Latvian HVAC&R manufacturer Refra debuted a new CO2/propylene (R744/R1270) cascade system that CEO Aleksej Pavšukov said is targeted at the Middle East market. The system uses propylene to subcool the CO2 to enable the refrigeration unit to run in subcritical mode even in high ambient conditions.
