Remarks by Gerd Leipold, Executive Director, Greenpeace International

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I’m very pleased to be here. It is a great honor.

On behalf of Greenpeace, I first wish to express our condolences to the families who lost loved ones in the tragic earthquake in Sichuan province, and to the entire Chinese nation.

I also want to thank our Chinese colleagues from Greenpeace for organizing this first ever Greenpeace Business Lecture in China. And I wish to thank all of you for attending. I want to especially thank Mr. Isdell for coming specifically to China for this event, fitting it into his very tight schedule. But more than that I want to acknowledge the leadership he is giving on this issue. I have heard him speak often and he is one of these corporate leaders who have a wider vision of what a company should be. Corporate social responsibility is not just something that appears on a nice looking report. I think Greenpeace’s experience over and over again has been that companies can change a lot and have to change a lot. But very often it is individual leadership that matters and we know that Mr. Isdell and other people in Coca-Cola are very dedicated to work against climate change, and we acknowledge that.

For Greenpeace it is a bit unusual to work together with a company like Coca-Cola. We have a very clear policy of independence and we do not take any money from governments or from businesses. Not a single dollar has ever flown from Coca-Cola to Greenpeace. We rely exclusively on the support we enjoy from 2.8 million members around the world who think that what Greenpeace is doing is important and is worthwhile to support financially. We have no permanent friends or adversaries in the business world. Therefore, we applaud companies when they do good work, and challenge them when their actions are damaging the environment. The work we are doing with Coca-Cola is an example of that.

We are not always an easy partner because the way we judge companies is not whether their intentions are good, but rather ‘what does the environment need? What do future generations need?’ Unfortunately, and I guess you all know, that if we look at the state of our environment worldwide, none of us can sit back and say ‘we do our best and we are on the right path’. Because we are not, and that applies especially to the biggest danger that is facing humanity today—global warming.

Global warming is already affecting all of us, from the increased frequency of extreme weather events to impacts on world food supplies, and it will have an even more detrimental effect to our children and our grandchildren. 

China is also already feeling the impacts of global warming. A recent Greenpeace China trip to the Himalayas discovered direct evidence that the glaciers are retreating and 80% of all glaciers in the Himalayas will be gone by 2035, that is if the current rate of shrinking continues. All of China’s major lifelines, including the Yangtze and the Yellow River, depend on the Himalaya glaciers. This means that global warming will be drastically affecting China’s ecosystems and people’s livelihoods.

I went to the Kyoto meeting in Bali last year. One of the solutions on the table was clean technologies transfer from industrialized countries to developing countries, so that they can “leapfrog” dirty, greenhouse gas emitting technologies. Of course Greenpeace understands the pressure developing countries are facing, because on the one hand they want to continue economic development in order to lift more people out of poverty, but on the other hand they have to protect the environment and climate. And ironically very often the poorest people are the most affected by environmental destruction and will be most affected by climate change. But why should developing countries follow the harmful ways of the industrialized world that has brought upon us the dual atmospheric crises of ozone layer depletion and global warming?

I am pleased to note that China is starting to look seriously into leapfrogging. The cooling industry sector is the perfect example of an opportunity that China has to leapfrog directly into climate-friendly technologies.  The currently most used refrigeration gases, HCFCs and HFCs—are both environmentally-unfriendly compounds. Specifically, HCFCs are ozone-depleting and climate-damaging gases while HFCs are greenhouse gases which have global warming potential that are thousands of times higher than carbon dioxide.

Under the terms of the Montreal Protocol for the protection of the ozone layer, HCFCs will be phased-out in China by 2030.  The chemical industry would like to see all HCFCs in the world replaced by another industry product, HFCs. Of course, from a business point of view, this makes perfect sense—they want to protect their business and keep their market shares. Unfortunately, from a climate protection perspective, the chemical industry’s solution spells disaster. While HFCs do not damage the ozone layer, they are very powerful global warming substances.

Because HFCs are potent global warming substances, they are included in the Kyoto Protocol basket of six greenhouse gases whose combined emissions must be drastically reduced if we are to avert catastrophic climate chaos. The German scientific institute, Öko-Recherche, estimates that if HFCs are used to replace all HCFCs, then by 2050, they would account for 8.6% of all global warming gases. We are not talking about a small contribution to climate change; we are talking of a big one. And compared to many other parts of the climate change problem, it is eminently solvable. The solution is there already. There may be a bit of economic pressure but even that is a timing problem. If everyone joins, there is not even an economic reason.

There are HFC-free, technically proven, commercially available and environmentally much safer cooling technologies currently available in the market for most domestic and industrial applications. Knowing that with big enough numbers, environmentally-friendly technologies cost the same as non-friendly technologies, what justification do we have not to introduce it?
One example of such a technology is the Greenfreeze domestic refrigerator. Greenfreeze uses hydrocarbons as the foam blowing agent for the insulation foam and as the refrigerant in the cooling cycle.  

Greenpeace initiated the development of this breakthrough technology in 1992, and then promoted its uptake around the world.  Today, in 2008, there are nearly 300 million Greenfreeze refrigerators in the world. Greenfreeze represents approximately 30-40% of the total fleet of 80 million refrigerators produced annually globally.  In 1997 Greenpeace received the United Nations Ozone protection Award for developing Greenfreeze and making the technology freely available to the world, and another award last year at the anniversary of the Montreal Protocol. 

I am pleased to note that Greenpeace actively participated in the transfer of the Greenfreeze technology to China, and that Chinese companies like Haier and Kelon, were among the first in developing countries to produce Greenfreeze refrigerators. This was one of Greenpeace’s first campaigns in China, and currently 75% of the Chinese domestic refrigeration industry produces Greenfreeze refrigerators.

Another example of the use of natural refrigerants is the development of CO2-based vending machines by Coca-Cola. These CO2 machines will be used 100% by Coca-Cola during the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Used as a refrigerant, carbon dioxide is defendable even if it is the most important greenhouse gas. The German Automakers Association—whose members include companies like BMW, Volkswagen and Mecedes Benz—announced in 2007 that they will be switching from HFCs to carbon dioxide in car air-conditioning. And the six largest supermarkets chains in the United Kingdom have also began converting their stores from HFCs to carbon dioxide.

We are happy that companies like Coca-Cola are taking the lead in tackling the climate change problem related to refrigeration and cooling because we need big guys like Coke to take the lead.

And fortunately, they are not alone. Companies like Unilever, Pepsi, and McDonald’s, IKEA, and Carlsberg have all pledged they will move away from climate-damaging HCFCs and HFCs by joining the Refrigerants, Naturally! corporate initiative.  Greenpeace and UNEP are supporters of this initiative and we urge other corporations to join this bold project.

But unfortunately, the current pace of development, even within Refrigerants, Naturally!  is not quick enough. While we are happy that the will and the investment are there, we are eagerly awaiting a total HFC phase-out deadline from all of the corporations participating in this initiative.

In fact, progress has been made. Unilever currently has over 275,000 hydrocarbon ice-cream freezers in the field, and has given a timeline to phase-out HFCs in all their Chinese refrigerators by 2010. 

Coca-Cola has developed a new energy efficient technology for its bottle coolers and plans to have 100,000 CO2 units in the field in the next three years. While this is a good start, we believe that Coca-Cola needs to do much more, as the 100,000 coolers represent less than 1% of the company’s 11 million refrigeration units.

Now we are challenging Coke, as well as its competitors, to phase-out all the use of HFCs in all their refrigerators by 2012, the London Olympics.

As I mentioned, the refrigeration industry in China has already started leapfrogging from CFCs and HCFCs towards natural refrigerants with the production of Greenfreeze domestic refrigerators. We now hope that Chinese companies will seize the opportunity to embrace natural refrigerants in the commercial refrigeration as well as air-conditioning sectors.  If the Chinese industry can indeed leapfrog, this would be a huge victory for climate. Imagine the power of the world’s largest air-conditioners and refrigerators producing country adopting climate-friendly technologies. And remember that in 2050 refrigeration could contribute up to 8% of the climate problem; 8% which we could replace by available technology at a competitive price.

We are also hoping that Chinese mega giants like Yili, Mengniu, and Haier—with deep stakes in the domestic and global refrigeration and cooling industry sector—will join this movement towards long term and sustainable solutions to meeting humanity’s cooling needs. We invite them to show corporate leadership, for they have the power to transform and green an entire industrial sector.

So in conclusion, while we acknowledge Coca-Cola’s efforts to date to protect the climate by preparing to steer away from HFCs, and while we recognize the corporate leadership. Coca-Cola has shown by playing a key role in the formation of Refrigerants, Naturally!. We urge Coca-Cola to go further and accelerate the company’s momentum towards a global HFC a phase-out plan.
We also encourage Coca-Cola to continue its proactive outreach to other corporations, in its own interest, with the aim of broadening the Refrigerants, Naturally! initiative, and creating the necessary critical mass to transform the entire cooling industry towards an HFC-free future. 

We also take this opportunity to urge Coca to put further efforts into addressing the company’s other environmental challenges, such as, the water problems identified in India.

To the Chinese refrigeration industry, we urge you to continue to work hard and to be part of the long-term solution. We urge you to phase-out from HCFCs by leapfrogging HFCs and moving directly into natural refrigerants. It will be to your, your country’s and your citizens’ advantage. HFCs are already under greater scrutiny and increased restrictions in the markets of Europe, and the trend is likely to continue in other jurisdictions as well. Chinese manufacturers that produce HFC-free products and equipment will gain market advantage in countries that enact restrictive regulations on HFCs. 

Of course, a lot of this is hard work. I do not deny that. I can promise that Greenpeace will continue to support, I can promise that we will inform the public and consumers and by this create pressure and expectations from companies. We will challenge the world’s largest companies to achieve the phase-out of HCFCs and HFCs by 2012. We should do this all together, in the interest of protecting the climate and this is why we need early action on it.

Thank you very much.