As summer in Chicago approaches, people are going to start turning on the air conditioning. If your building is like many in the Chicagoland area, this means you will be firing up an old or inefficient chiller or air conditioning system that is costly to run, and even more costly to repair. Worse yet, it might mean you will be walking past an idled backup chiller collecting dust in the basement.

This old, inefficient, or idled equipment poses a huge environmental hazard. Old chillers, manufactured prior to the early 1990’s, were generally charged with chlorofluorocarbon refrigerants like R-12, R-114, or R-500. If released into the atmosphere, these CFC refrigerants are potent greenhouse gases that contribute significantly to global warming and eat away at the ozone layer protecting the earth. The longer this old equipment continues to run, or sit idled, the greater the risk that the CFCs escape.

Enter carbon offset project developers – companies that will pay building owners for the opportunity to drain and remove CFC refrigerants from their old chillers and air conditioners, ensuring that they do not harm the environment.

Project developers are able to pay a competitive price to building owners to take away old CFCs because a California greenhouse gas reduction program issues carbon offset credits to project developers for each pound of CFC that is collected and safely destroyed, permanently preventing its release into the atmosphere. This is true even for CFCs collected outside of California. Each carbon offset credit is then sold by the project developer to entities regulated under California’s emission reduction program.

The result is a win-win for everybody. Building owners receive substantial amounts of money that can be used to defray the costs to replace their old and inefficient equipment. Project developers receive money through the sale of carbon offset credits. And the environment is protected by the safe and professional capture and destruction of these harmful refrigerants.

Just ask Sterling Bay’s Engineering Manager, Patrick Biesty. Sterling Bay used a carbon offset project developer last year to help facilitate the removal of refrigerant from an unused chiller in their Gogo Building in the West Loop. The R-12 chiller provided backup cooling for the building but it had not operated for several years. By working with a carbon offset developer, the 1,800 pounds of R-12 inside the chiller was destroyed as part of a carbon credit project, preventing a release equivalent to the emissions from approximately 1,600 passenger vehicles, and providing Sterling Bay with tens of thousands of dollars to help maintain the property. “We recently began a program to remove refrigerant from old chillers in several of our buildings in downtown Chicago. We contacted a local carbon offset developer who made it really easy, and they paid us well for the used refrigerant. It’s gratifying to us and important to our tenants that we do everything we can to run efficient buildings and protect the environment.”

Make this the last summer that you rely on old, inefficient systems. Contact a carbon offset project developer to assess whether the refrigerant in your existing systems can be used in connection with a carbon offset project and develop a plan to decommission your old chillers or remove refrigerant from your idled systems, allowing you to turn a liability into a win for you and the environment.

Sam Schiller can be reached at (312) 273-5122 x4 or sschiller@tradewater.us.