Ken Logan is group sustainability and regulatory director of A-Gas International, the world’s largest refrigerant recovery-and-reclamation company. The company’s technology effectively abated about the emissions equivalent of 8 million metric tonnes of CO2 in 2022—about the same as would come from removing over 1.6 million cars from the roads for a year. This year, a majority stake was sold to TPG Rise Climate to enable A-Gas to keep scaling up.
What is a climate technology that isn’t getting the attention or funding it deserves?
Having been involved with the cooling industry for all my working life, it was Project Drawdown’s analysis on the management and destruction of existing refrigerants that really caught my attention. There is a huge decarbonization opportunity in lifecycle management of legacy refrigerants that remain in use within older air conditioning and refrigeration equipment across the world. This definitely requires further attention and funding to stop these potential emissions from taking place.
What is the single most important action you think the public, or a specific company or government, needs to take in the next year to advance the climate agenda?
The Montreal Protocol and its Kigali Amendment has successfully delivered on phasing out the manufacture and use of many previous generations of refrigerants. The attention now needs to turn to effectively managing the existing installed quantities, in a holistic manner, so that they do not find their way into the atmosphere. Here, a circular economy approach can be put in place to recover and reclaim existing refrigerants, in place of virgin manufacturing, where their future reuse is allowed, and where there is no reuse potential they should be permanently destroyed.
What sustainability effort do you hope will gain popularity with the general public this year, and why?
The compliance and voluntary carbon markets play an important role in helping to fund and eradicate older generations of refrigerants, on an ongoing basis. It’s in everyone’s best interest that older ozone depleting and high global warming refrigerants are captured and destroyed. I would like to see a wider understanding and adoption of these long standing and mutually successful carbon methodologies, to help further enable lifecycle refrigerant management on a global basis.
- The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
- How Far Trump Would Go
- Scenes From Pro-Palestinian Encampments Across U.S. Universities
- Saving Seconds Is Better Than Hours
- Why Your Breakfast Should Start with a Vegetable
- 6 Compliments That Land Every Time
- Welcome to the Golden Age of Ryan Gosling
- Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time
