Schedule Detail
Full Calculation Summary
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How to Use the HFC Phase-Down Calculator
Drag the slider to any year in the Kigali Amendment schedule, from the 2019 baseline year through the final 2036 phase-down step, to see the permitted allowance percentage at that point.
The default figure is illustrative. For an accurate assessment, replace it with Canada's actual published HFC consumption baseline from Environment and Climate Change Canada.
Use the F-gas calculator to calculate your facility's CO2-equivalent HFC volume, then enter it here to see it in context of the national schedule.
The chart shows the full phase-down curve. Use this to anticipate future refrigerant supply pressure and plan equipment and refrigerant selection accordingly.
Understanding the Kigali Amendment HFC Phase-Down in Canada
The Kigali Amendment represents the most significant international framework governing the future availability of HFC refrigerants, and understanding its mechanics helps HVAC contractors and facility managers anticipate long-term refrigerant supply trends and plan equipment selection accordingly, well beyond simply reacting to price changes as they occur.
An amendment to the Montreal Protocol
The Kigali Amendment, adopted in 2016 as an amendment to the Montreal Protocol (the international agreement originally focused on ozone-depleting substances), extends that framework's proven international regulatory approach to HFCs specifically. Unlike the ozone-depleting substances the original Montreal Protocol targeted, HFCs don't deplete stratospheric ozone, but many have very high global warming potential, making them a significant contributor to climate change despite representing a relatively small volume of total greenhouse gas emissions globally. The Kigali Amendment applies the same phased reduction approach that successfully phased out ozone-depleting refrigerants to this climate-focused HFC reduction goal.
Canada's baseline and schedule
Canada ratified the Kigali Amendment and implements its commitments domestically through the Ozone-depleting Substances and Halocarbon Alternatives Regulations under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. Under the Kigali framework, each participating country establishes an HFC consumption baseline, calculated from a formula combining historical average HFC consumption with a fixed percentage of the country's historical HCFC baseline, all converted to CO2-equivalent terms. This baseline, once fixed, becomes the permanent reference point against which every future schedule step's permitted percentage is calculated, meaning the schedule reduces the percentage of a fixed baseline over time rather than recalculating the baseline itself at each step.
How the phase-down mechanism actually works
Rather than banning specific refrigerant substances on fixed dates, the Kigali Amendment framework caps a country's total national HFC consumption, measured in CO2-equivalent terms across all HFC substances combined, at a progressively shrinking percentage of the fixed baseline. This creates a national-level allowance that manufacturers and importers must collectively fit their total HFC production and import volume within, generating market-level pressure toward lower-GWP alternatives as the overall allowance shrinks, since a fixed CO2e cap can be filled with either a smaller volume of high-GWP refrigerant or a larger volume of low-GWP refrigerant. This market-based mechanism, rather than substance-specific bans, is what has driven the accelerating industry shift toward refrigerants like R-32, R-454B, and various low-GWP natural refrigerants as the schedule progresses.
Practical implications for HVAC contractors
As Canada's national HFC allowance progressively shrinks under the Kigali schedule, refrigerants with high GWP values consume a disproportionate share of the available CO2e allowance relative to their physical volume, creating structural pressure toward reduced availability and higher relative pricing for these substances over time compared to lower-GWP alternatives. Contractors specifying new equipment increasingly favor lower-GWP refrigerant options specifically to avoid this long-term supply and pricing pressure, while also planning proactively for the eventual increased cost or complexity of servicing legacy equipment that uses higher-GWP refrigerants as the phase-down continues. Use the F-gas calculator to understand your own facility's or fleet's CO2-equivalent exposure to this phase-down trend, and the refrigerant regulation checker for the broader Canadian refrigerant regulatory timeline.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Kigali Amendment is an international agreement under the Montreal Protocol, adopted in 2016, requiring participating countries to progressively phase down the production and consumption of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) over a multi-decade schedule. Canada ratified the Kigali Amendment and implements its commitments domestically through the Ozone-depleting Substances and Halocarbon Alternatives Regulations, which establish Canada's specific HFC consumption baseline and the declining allowance schedule that reduces permitted HFC consumption over time relative to that baseline.
Under the Kigali Amendment framework, each participating country's HFC consumption baseline is calculated from a formula combining average HFC consumption over a specified historical reference period with a fixed percentage of the country's historical HCFC consumption baseline, converted to CO2-equivalent using each substance's global warming potential. This baseline, once established, becomes the fixed reference point against which all future permitted consumption percentages in the phase-down schedule are calculated, meaning the baseline itself does not change even as the permitted percentage of it declines over successive schedule steps.
Not exactly. The Kigali Amendment framework caps the total national CO2-equivalent consumption of HFCs as a category, progressively reducing the permitted total over time, rather than banning specific individual refrigerant substances outright on a fixed date. This creates market pressure toward lower-GWP alternatives as the overall allowance shrinks, since manufacturers and importers must fit their total HFC consumption within the shrinking national cap, but it does not function as a substance-specific ban mechanism the way some ozone-depleting substance phase-outs have. Separate national regulations can and do impose specific substance restrictions on top of the Kigali framework. Check the refrigerant regulation checker for substance-specific timelines.
As the national HFC allowance shrinks under the phase-down schedule, high-GWP refrigerants commonly used in existing HVAC equipment, such as R-410A, face increasing market pressure and potential price increases as available supply is constrained relative to demand. This creates a practical incentive for contractors to increasingly specify and install equipment using lower-GWP alternative refrigerants for new installations, and to plan for the eventual replacement of legacy high-GWP equipment as servicing that equipment potentially becomes more expensive or logistically harder over time as the phase-down progresses. Use the F-gas calculator to quantify your specific equipment's CO2e exposure.
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