We then apply our SC-HFCs to the Kigali Amendment, a global agreement addressing hydrofluorocarbon emissions, to estimate the climate benefits over the lifetime of the agreement.

Recognizing that recent advancements have been made in estimating the social cost of greenhouse gases, such as those in Rennert et al 2023 (Nature) and in EPA's recent oil and gas rule, we develop the framework to estimate the SC-HFCs consistent with these cutting edge models.

Previous attempts to estimate the climate damages associated with their use relied on global warming potentials relative to other greenhouse gases (e.g., CO2). However, we show that this is a poor proxy for estimating their social costs.

What are hydrofluorocarbons? They are a potent greenhouse gas that is used in many cooling technologies (air conditioning/heat pumps, insulations, etc.), the same technologies that are being relied upon to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change.