Political Insights at HARDI Conference

“What we’ve been looking at is the HFC phasedown,” said Nathan Walker, senior vice president of environmental business development at Daikin Comfort Technologies. “There’s a phasedown coming in 2029, one coming in 2034, and then the final one in 2036, and what we see is that the sector, at least in our industry, that’s going to be squeezed the most … is service gas. There’s going to be a lot of 410A (equipment) needing service still out there.” 

“We don’t need to wait on the federal government to tell us what to do,” said Karen Meyers, vice president of government affairs at Rheem Manufacturing Co. “We as an industry need to show real leadership in this area, and we need to have reclaim practices and policies for our industry.” 

Meyers and Walker were joined, during what HARDI billed as a fireside chat, by Chris Forth, vice president of regulatory, codes, and environmental affairs at Bosch Home Comfort USA, and Eric Zito, head of government affairs and sustainability at Lennox International Inc. Alex Ayers, HARDI’s vice president of government affairs, led the discussion with a series of questions. 

Return To R-410A? No

In the context of a presidential administration committed to deregulation, the panel was asked whether the industry could return to products that use R-410A refrigerant. The answer was a resounding no. 

Meyers said the supply chain for those products, the manufacture and importing of which was banned as of January 2025, has completely changed, and that any new R-410A products would have to be retested and recertified. 

“I think it’s pretty simple: Not going to happen,” said Zito. Restoring the supply chain would increase costs, Zito said, and affordability will be a major issue in the 2026 midterm elections. On top of that, he said, is that the dwindling supply of R-410A won’t leave enough for newly manufactured equipment. 

Walker said the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has been getting mixed messages on the topic, with some in the industry, frustrated with last summer’s shortage of the lower-GWP refrigerant R-454B for service use, telling the agency that returning to R-410A would lower costs for end users. 

“If it were to happen to go backwards, everything gets worse for everybody,” Walker said. “The cost structure goes up. … It goes up on whatever we have to launch and redesign,” and on distributors, because they would have to carry more SKUs, he added. 

The panel also touched on the future of residential and light commercial R-410A systems that were manufactured in the U.S., or imported, prior to 2025, but are not yet installed. Technically, those systems can no longer be legally installed, though the EPA is weighing a repeal of the December 31, 2025, deadline. The EPA late last month announced it was deprioritizing enforcement of the installation ban while the Technology Transition rule is being reconsidered. 

Energy Policy Reform 

In a discussion about a possible Congressional review of the Energy Policy and Conservation Act (EPCA), Meyers said that eliminating date-of-installation deadlines for future equipment changeovers was her top priority. Forth pointed out that, of all the products regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), HVACR products are the only ones that have a date-of-installation deadline when new energy standards are adopted. 

Zito said he’d like to see EPCA reforms that would “provide a little bit more of a runway for us to concentrate on things other than just meeting regulatory requirements.” 

Walker, however, cautioned that wholesale reform of EPCA is unlikely given the makeup of Congress. 

“Do I think there’s an opportunity for some tweaks that can be beneficial? Yes. … I don’t know that there’s going to be enough Democrats willing to sign up for an absolute overhaul,” he said. 

Refrigerants And PFAS 

When Ayers asked whether another refrigerant transition was likely, and if it might involve A3 refrigerants — which are classified as nontoxic but highly flammable — the answer again was no, at least not in the near term at the federal level. 

“There’s no planned transition to go to A3s, right? EPA doesn’t have that,” said Forth. “There’s a whole series of testing. … Research would have to be done, the standards would have to be updated. That’s 10 years or more.” 

Moves by some individual states are more likely, Forth said, and New York has a law “that could push us into A3 … so we’re going to have to watch it.” 

When the discussion turned to PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances — chemicals found in many products, including A2L refrigerants, that can accumulate in the body and pose health risks — Meyers said regulatory proposals are “moving quickly through the states” and that she expects increased activity at that level. 

“We’re making progress, I think, on some of the state bills to make sure our products are exempted,” she said. While it might make sense to ban PFAS in things like cookware and carpeting, she added, people don’t have direct exposure to the chemicals through their HVAC systems. “It’s not like you’re, you know, rubbing the shoulders with your air conditioner and going out there and inhaling the refrigerant. At least I hope you’re not,” she said. 

A federal PFAS bill would be “incredibly helpful,” Meyers said, if it made regulations uniform and pre-empted the ability of the states to set separate restrictions. 

Zito said he sees a recognition that PFAS chemicals are so ubiquitous that proposals to regulate them need to be carefully considered.  

“I think at least there’s a broad understanding that, when you get past the headline of ‘PFAs,’ ‘Forever Chemicals,’ that it’s really so widespread that putting the brakes on it across the board just wrecked the train,” he said. The HVACR industry, he added, is in “early days” of developing usable definitions and a perspective around the issue, and EPA leadership would be helpful. 

On Tariffs 

Ayers asked if the Trump administration’s tariffs on imported products would remain. The consensus was that they will. 

“If EPCA reform is my top priority, tariffs are my biggest headache,” said Meyers. She added that she’d like to see “a little bit of more reasonableness coming out of how these tariffs are used,” but that the administration is “very committed” to using tariffs. “I think we’re going to see that for a while,” she said. 

The use of tariffs “is a very long-held belief” of President Donald Trump’s, said Zito. “I don’t predict that he’s going to change his mind anytime soon about that.” The administration, Zito added, is “already working on Plan B” for tariffs should the Supreme Court rule that the way they were imposed was unconstitutional. 

Walker said that Daikin’s lobbying meetings with members of the “largely Republican” Texas Congressional delegation gets the lawmakers “very engaged” on HVACR issues. “How can we help you? What can we do?” they say, according to Walker. 

“We get to tariffs, and they’re like, ‘Oh, well, I’ll take notes, but that’s the Oval Office,’” Walker said. 

Decarbonization Goals 

Panelists said the HVACR industry should get more involved in ways to reach states’ decarbonization goals in a way that’s affordable for consumers. California pushes for residential heat pump adoption as part of its decarbonization strategy, but Zito said the state presents a tough case for heat pump affordability because of the cost of electricity there versus the cost of natural gas. Dual-fuel systems could be a pathway toward decarbonization, he added. 

“Sometimes going to zero-emissions policies can really spike the utility bills for homeowners, because electricity rates are just skyrocketing right now in many areas. So you kind of got to look at all sides of the of the coin to make sure you do this in a thoughtful way,” Meyers said. 

“We need a collective industry voice on and come up with, ‘What is the path forward in our industry for zero emissions, decarbonization, and how do we do that?’” Meyers added later. 

“We haven’t locked in on what that solution is yet.”