Why is HFC-23 a concern at HCFC-22 plants?
Making HCFC-22 refrigerant produces HFC-23 as a by-product, a gas with a 100-year GWP of 14,600 under IPCC AR6. Venting even small amounts gives a large Scope 1 figure. Plants capture and destroy it in a thermal oxidiser; report generated, destroyed and vented quantities.
What to record
- HCFC-22 produced.
- HFC-23 generated, from measurement or the plant's own ratio.
- HFC-23 destroyed, with oxidiser running hours.
- HFC-23 vented or stored.
Why the hours matter
When the oxidiser is down, by-product gas may be vented. A few days of venting can exceed a year of all other plant emissions, so log every outage.
Worked example (illustrative figures)
- HFC-23 vented in a year: 2 tonnes.
- 2 × 14,600 = 29,200 tonnes CO2e in Scope 1.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads bills, fuel invoices and production records into dated, fingerprinted records, so the figure you send a buyer can be traced to its documents.
Sources: IPCC 2006 Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, IPCC AR6 Working Group I, Ozone Cell, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
Last reviewed 2026-10-22.