HFC phase-down: the yearly quota on refrigerant imports
Refrigerant changes look like manufacturer fashion from the buyer's side. Behind them sits an international commitment to shrink the volume of these gases entering the country, administered here as a licence quota. It shapes what will be easy to buy later, not what you own now.
By Team Snowflake | Updated 8 Aug 2026
What does the HFC phase-down actually commit to?
The commitment is a ceiling on quantity, and it applies to a country. Singapore agreed to reduce national consumption of these gases along a published timetable. NEA sets that timetable out as a series of steps, each one expressed as a share of a fixed baseline.
NEA's circular to licence holders, dated 3 November 2023, states every step. Consumption stays frozen at 100% of the baseline from 2024 through 2028. It falls to 90% from 2029, then 70% from 2035, then 50% from 2040, and 20% from 2045. That last figure is the floor, and it sits above zero.
Consumption in that schedule is a defined quantity, unrelated to how hard a household runs its aircon. NEA writes it as production plus imports minus exports of the controlled gases. Singapore manufactures almost none of them. The term therefore describes what crosses the border, which puts the control in the hands of the companies bringing gas in.
The baseline behind every percentage was calculated once, in carbon-dioxide-equivalent terms. It combines average HFC consumption across 2020 to 2022 with 65% of the earlier HCFC baseline. A percentage quoted without that denominator settles very little. Ask what 70% is 70% of before treating the figure as informative.
| From | Ceiling on national consumption | How to read the step |
|---|---|---|
| From2024 | Ceiling on national consumption100% of the baseline | How to read the stepA freeze. The permitted quantity stops growing, and nothing has been cut yet |
| From2029 | Ceiling on national consumption90% of the baseline | How to read the stepThe first cut, and the next dated change anyone can point to |
| From2035 | Ceiling on national consumption70% of the baseline | How to read the stepRoughly a third gone, further out than the service life of a split bought today |
| From2040 | Ceiling on national consumption50% of the baseline | How to read the stepHalf. Measured in warming terms, so it does not mean half the kilograms |
| From2045 | Ceiling on national consumption20% of the baseline | How to read the stepThe floor written into the schedule. Supply continues at a fifth of the baseline |
Phase-down and phase-out are two different instruments
A phase-out ends at zero. The Montreal Protocol was built to eliminate the substances damaging the ozone layer, and elimination was the entire point. HFCs arrived as the replacements for those substances, and they do no ozone damage at all.
The Kigali Amendment added HFCs to that same treaty for a separate reason. These gases warm the atmosphere heavily, so the target became a reduced quantity rather than an eliminated one. What the older ozone rules did to supply here is a different story, told on the R22 phase-out page.
The distinction decides how much planning any of it justifies. An elimination date gives an owner something to count down to. A reduction to a floor does not, because the substance keeps being imported the whole way through, in smaller and smaller allocations.
A fixed denominator with a growing city behind it
The baseline was struck from a past period and it does not move. Demand for cooling in Singapore has not agreed to stay still alongside it. Every new building, every replacement system and every service call draws on a pool sized against consumption from years already gone.
That mismatch is the pressure in the mechanism, and it exists before any step lands. The freeze running through 2028 already caps the quantity at what the baseline permits. Nothing has been cut yet, and the ceiling is still a ceiling.
One consequence follows without a single step being taken. As the installed stock of equipment grows against a ceiling that stays put, the gas available per system falls. The schedule is written in national totals, so nothing inside it tracks how many machines are drawing on the total.
How does an import quota reach a flat in Singapore?
NEA turned the schedule into a quota on 1 January 2024. Any company importing or exporting the 18 controlled HFCs, including their blends and mixtures, now carries a mandatory annual consumption quota. The allocation is written onto that company's hazardous substances licence each December, for the year ahead.
The administration runs on a fixed calendar, and the dates are published. Requests for additional quota are submitted between 1 and 30 June. Requests to shift quota from one controlled gas to another go in during April or October, subject to approval. Unused quota expires at year end and carries forward to nothing.
One instruction in the circular explains the behaviour a household eventually meets at the trade counter. NEA tells licence holders not to stockpile beyond what is necessary, and says it may moderate an allocation where a forecast departs sharply from past consumption. The pool is therefore sized against forecast demand and checked against history.
None of that produces a notice addressed to an owner. The quota binds the importer. Importers supply wholesalers, wholesalers supply trade counters, and the cylinder carried up to a ledge is filled from the end of that chain. A household meets the schedule as availability and price on the day gas is bought, with no paperwork attached to explain it.
| What is moving | Inside the quota? | What NEA's circular says |
|---|---|---|
| What is movingA cylinder of bulk R32 arriving from overseas | Inside the quota?Yes | What NEA's circular saysHFC-32 is one of the 18 substances listed in the Second Schedule of the Act |
| What is movingA drum of R-410A arriving from overseas | Inside the quota?Yes | What NEA's circular saysR-410A is named among the controlled blends and mixtures |
| What is movingThe factory charge sealed inside a new aircon | Inside the quota?No | What NEA's circular saysGas pre-charged into products does not go into the consumption forecast |
| What is movingGas bought and sold within Singapore | Inside the quota?No | What NEA's circular saysLocal purchases are excluded. The forecast covers imports and exports only |
| What is movingGas leaving Singapore again | Inside the quota?Subtracted | What NEA's circular saysExports are deducted when the national figure for a year is worked out |
The budget is counted in carbon-dioxide-equivalent, not in kilograms
Quota is allocated in tonnes, then converted before anything is compared. NEA's own worked example multiplies each gas by its published warming figure to reach carbon-dioxide-equivalent tonnes. A company moving quota between two gases must keep that converted total close to where it started.
The conversion is what gives the schedule its direction. A kilogram of a heavier blend spends more of the national budget than a kilogram of a lighter one. The same tonnage can therefore cost very different shares of the allowance. The figure doing the multiplying is a gas's global warming potential, and how that number is derived has its own page here.
Read that way, the mechanism stops looking arbitrary. Nobody had to ban a particular refrigerant to move the market off it. Making it expensive in budget terms was enough, and the market did the rest on its own.
Does the phase-down affect an aircon already installed?
No part of the schedule reaches equipment already sitting in a flat. The quota binds licence holders at the border. NEA's 2021 circular on high-warming refrigerants makes the same point about the supply restriction it introduced, stating plainly that existing equipment already installed is not affected by it.
The current gas sits inside the budget as well, which catches people out. HFC-32, sold as R32, appears on the list of 18 controlled substances. R-410A appears among the controlled blends. Neither has been carved out, and both are counted at their own weight.
Treat the phase-down as grounds for replacing a system that still works and you have been sold something. The schedule names no model, no brand and no household duty. It names an annual national quantity and the companies obliged to stay inside it. A machine that still cools carries no deadline out of any of this.
The question worth asking a seller is which instrument they are actually invoking. A quota on imports, a ceiling on what may be supplied new, and an efficiency requirement are three separate things with three separate commencement dates. Sales conversations blur them constantly, usually in the direction of urgency.
Three rules, three different jobs
The phase-down governs how much gas enters the country each year. It reaches importers and exporters, and it says nothing about which product may be sold.
A separate restriction governs which refrigerant a new household aircon is permitted to use, expressed as a warming ceiling. The gwp limit page covers that one and the date it commenced. Minimum energy performance standards work differently again, setting the least efficient machine that may lawfully be supplied. The energy label governs what has to be printed and registered before a model reaches a shop floor.
Clearing one of those says nothing about the other three. A shopper who treats them as a single approval will read far more into a compliant refrigerant than it can support.
What it changes for servicing an older system
The exposure lands on a single day: the one where a circuit has to be filled again. Gas already inside a working system stays outside all of it. A sealed refrigerant circuit draws on no allocation, because nothing is being bought.
A refill is a purchase, and that purchase comes out of the quota'd pool. So the cost of getting a leak wrong climbs with every step in the schedule. Paying for gas that leaves again through the same hole was always poor value. It gets worse as the allocation tightens.
Push back on a top-up offered before the leak has been located. A charge that disappears twice was never a charge problem. Ask what was done to look for it, and what the search turned up. The leak detection methods available produce specific answers, not opinions. A full recharge into a circuit nobody proved tight buys the same afternoon a second time.
For a system running R-410A, the gas is controlled and counted, and it carries more weight per kilogram than R32 does. Whether that surfaces as price or as waiting time at any given moment is not published anywhere, and no schedule can be read to produce it. The r32 vs r410a comparison sits on its own page.
What to establish before gas goes back in
Start by confirming what the system actually holds. The designation is stamped on the aircon rating plate at the outdoor unit, next to the charge weight in kilograms.
Then establish whether the circuit was proven tight, and how. A leak that was searched for and found is a different situation from one that was assumed. What becomes of an old charge once a system is opened or taken away sits under refrigerant recovery, and it belongs in the same conversation.
Neither question depends on the phase-down at all. Both were worth asking before 2024 and will be worth asking in 2045. The schedule changes the price of getting them wrong, not the questions themselves.
How far ahead can any of this be planned?
The schedule runs to 2045, which is further out than a split bought today will last. That looks like unusual certainty, and it is certainty about one thing: the national quantity. Those steps are published, dated, and unlikely to move quietly.
What the schedule does not decide is which unit appears on a shop floor. Manufacturers choose the refrigerant they engineer around, and they choose it for a world market. Local instruments then filter what may be supplied here. The model range in front of a shopper is the output of all of that, several steps removed from a percentage in a circular.
Names circulating in equipment overseas include R290 and R454B. Which of them reaches Singapore household splits, and when, is not something this schedule settles. Anyone offering a firm forecast on that is selling confidence they have not earned.
So the plannable part is narrow, and stating it plainly is more useful than padding it. The direction is downward and dated. The next step lands in 2029. The instruments arrive separately, each with its own commencement date. Below the level of the national total, the supply side simply is not forecastable one gas at a time.
- Establish what your own system holds before any of this matters to you. The designation is printed on the plate, not in the manual.
- Treat a quoted phase-down date as checkable. NEA publishes the schedule, and the steps fall in 2029, 2035, 2040 and 2045.
- Separate the instruments before agreeing with a sales argument. A gas ceiling, an efficiency floor and a labelling duty commenced on different dates and do different work.
- Judge the joints and the workmanship instead. Gas that never escapes never has to be bought back out of a tightening allocation.
- Dismiss any argument that a working system must go because of a supply schedule. Nothing in it places a duty on an owner.
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