U.S. Tries Again With Year’s ‘Biggest Climate Deal’

The U.S. plans a second stab at a greenhouse-gas proposal, arguing that carbon trading isn’t the best way to eliminate hydrofluorocarbon-23, an industrial waste product that traps 11,700 times as much heat as carbon dioxide.

The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1987 after scientists discovered a hole in the earth’s ozone, could be a vehicle for saving hundreds of millions of dollars now spent via emissions trading, said Dan Reifsnyder, the official responsible for ozone protection at the U.S. Bureau of Oceans, Environment and Science. The cost of including an HFC phase-down in the protocol would be “millions rather than billions,” said Washington- based Reifsnyder in a phone interview on Sept. 16.