The state has fined The Home Depot $1.6 million for selling illegal hydrofluorocarbon products after two years of trying to get the corporation to comply with the law, the state Ecology Department announced Thursday.
The Legislature passed laws in 2019 and 2021 to phase out the use of hydrofluorocarbon products or HFCs. They are used mostly for refrigeration and air conditioning and can leak into the air if the equipment is damaged. According to Ecology, HFCs have hundreds of times the global warming impact of carbon dioxide.
One of the new state restrictions banned the sale of R-134a canisters at retail stores beginning in July 2021. R-134a is an HFC refrigerant used in automotive air conditioning systems with a global warming potential 1,430 times that of carbon dioxide, the news release said. Vehicle manufacturers had already begun phasing out the use of R-134a.
However, the Home Depot’s website continued to sell equipment with R-134a refrigerants through at least September 2023, according to Ecology. The Home Depot informed Ecology that it sold 1,058 units of the prohibited products in Washington between April 12, 2022, and Sept. 5, 2023, the state news release said.
“Restricting HFC products and equipment is key to achieving the state’s statutory greenhouse gas emission limits and ultimately getting to net zero by 2050,” said Joel Creswell, head of the Ecology Department’s Climate Pollution Reduction Program, in the news release. “HFCs safely sealed inside air-conditioning systems can be recovered, recycled and reused, but when they leak out, they become a major contributor to climate change.”
A 2008 state law that sets Washington’s carbon-reduction targets of 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, 70 percent by 2040 and 95 percent by 2050.