Wilmington, Delaware — Chemours and Honeywell are appealing against a legal decision that the EPA was wrong to use SNAP to force HFC replacement in polyurethane applications.
Chemours believes that the legal basis of the Significant New Alternatives Policy SNAP 20 rule was well-founded and that the court's ruling exceeded its jurisdiction. The ruling effectively ‘invalidating a decades-old EPA regulation and failing to take into account the EPA's original directive to ensure that safe alternatives are used to replace ozone-depleting substances,’ said Chemours.
Chemours added that US firms have invested ‘well over $1 bn to develop, commercialise and build US manufacturing facilities to produce and use novel alternatives such as HFO technology, technology that is being adopted worldwide.’ And that the preservation of this rule ‘is in the best interest of the public, the environment and the US industry.
Honeywell and Chemours have decided to go to court following the decision by US Court of appeals for the District of Columbia in August this year.
At that time, the court ruled the US EPA had exceeded its authority under the Clean Air Act.
An EPA rule in 2015 effectively banned 38 individual HFCs blends in 25 uses including foam blowing.
The court's August ruling turned on whether the EPA could use its significant new alternatives policy (SNAP) program, a Clean Air Act program geared towards phasing out ozone-depleting substances, to replace HFC that were used to replace earlier ozone-depleting blowing agents.
