Policies over climate-friendly coolants have resulted in a rare outcome — an environmental cause with bipartisan support and passionate backing from industry.
But that harmony doesn’t extend to some allies of former President Donald Trump.
The blueprint for a second Trump term known as Project 2025 outlines the antipathy that some conservative policy experts have for the mandatory phasedown of heat-trapping chemicals called hydrofluorocarbons, a superpollutant found in refrigerants and other industrial processes commonly called HFCs. The U.S. and scores of other nations have taken action to reduce the chemicals because of their powerful ability to raise global temperatures.
Yet some well-connected conservatives who could work for Trump if he’s elected have suggested that the HFC rules could be softened or abolished. Project 2025, the “playbook” spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls the EPA program overseeing the chemicals “unnecessarily stringent and costly” and says that the agency acquiesced to “opportunistic manufacturers” that make alternative coolants. Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025.
