Bhumi: Tackling Refrigerants, the Greenhouse Gases with 1000x the Global Warming Potential as Carbon Dioxide

While much climate discourse is around carbon dioxide and methane, refrigerants (CFCs, HCFCs and HFCs) are also responsible for ~3% of total global warming, more than aviation or Germany + United Kingdom combined. This is an especially acute problem in developing countries, where CO2e emissions from refrigerants is expected to grow to nearly 4 GT CO2/year. Today's start-up, Bhumi, seeks to change all this by collecting, capturing and destroying refrigerants.

Some readers may recall the Montreal Protocol, which successfully phased out CFCs, which were both tearing a hole in the ozone as well as damaging the climate. They were phased out in favour of HCFCs and HFCs which do not impact the ozone, but still have significant Global Warming Potential. The most common refrigerant today, HFC-134a has a global warming potential of 1300, or 1300x the impact of carbon dioxide, per kilogram. While newer technologies are being gradually adopted for new air conditioners and refrigerators, there is virtually no regulation or capture of the refrigerants from the existing stock. Furthermore, in India, demand for cooling is growing 40% year-on-year, with HFCs continuing to be the most prominent coolant in use.

Bhumi is coordinating with e-Waste recycling centers to safely capture and transport the offending gases to their incineration centers. One of their key innovations is leveraging existing cement kilns which are already heating to the 1500+ degrees Celsius required to incinerate HFCs. They can successfully eliminate HFCs (and the HCFCs and CFCs from older equipment) without generating additional carbon emissions for the incineration process itself.

Bhumi has developed proprietary tools to monitor and verify the collection as well as destruction, making the projects eligible for carbon credits. There is a challenge in the acceptability of carbon credits from refrigerant capture in India due to historical practices around CFC capture and verification. Bhumi is overcoming these challenges using their suite of tools and is able to access voluntary carbon markets, direct sales and helping corporates meet their sustainability goals.

In some cases, such as data centres with extensive cooling requirements, Bhumi can source the refrigerants directly. In general, it is always best to remove emissions directly from the source rather than indirectly through credits. Bhumi has shown they can get capture rates above 99%, relative to the ~0% which is captured today.

Bhumi is a great example of how India can show technology leadership in a domain which can then be leveraged across the Global South. Capturing and incinerating refrigerants is one of the lowest-cost ways to avoid carbon emissions, and I am excited to see Bhumi putting the pieces together to make it happen.