From Inside the EPA...

Today the EPA hosted hearings on each of the two proposed rulemakings for the next stage in the phaseout of HCFCs. HARDI presented oral statements on both which can be found here.

Yesterday afternoon HARDI hosted a meeting with members of AHRI's unitary and government affairs committees to discuss these proposed rulemakings and their potential ramifications. From my perspective, many OEMs have still not yet calculated the total impact these proposed rules could have on themselves, their distributors, or their contractor customers.

The single most important outcome I got from these meetings is that distributors have the most to lose in all of this. It is ESSENTIAL for ALL HVACR distributors to GET INFORMED. Read HARDI's oral statements, read the summary of the proposed rules as reviewed by the EPA, and read the rules themselves (allocation proposal, pre-charged ban proposal). Distributors are potentially at risk of having to write off massive amounts of 2009 inventory in 2010 based on the current wording and interpretation of the proposed rules.

We're doing everything we can to get these fixed, but any resolution is likely months away.