Complying with Fluorinated greenhouse gases legislation

By July 2011 contractors or employees who install, maintain or service stationary refrigeration, air-conditioning or heat-pump (RAC) equipment that contains or is designed to contain F gas refrigerants1 need to hold a full F gas qualification, and the business that employs them need to hold a FULL Company Certificate.  

Personnel qualifications
Currently all personnel that carry out installation, maintenance and servicing, leak testing, and refrigerant recovery on equipment that contains or is designed to contain an F gas refrigerantmust at least hold an interim F gas qualification, also referred to as an interim personnel certificate. The list of qualifications that an engineer may hold includes interim qualifications and new full qualifications that have been developed to meet the minimum requirements of the EC Regulation.

The EU is allowing the stationary RAC sector an interim period that runs until July 2011. This was to give personnel time to gain the new qualifications. During the remainder of the interim period personnel that only hold an interim F gas qualification urgently need to plan to gain a full qualification.  

Interim qualifications are either City & Guilds 2078, or CITB J01. For those only working on equipment that contains less than 3kg the options also include an interim personnel certificate (issued by DASA or WTA), or an in-house qualification.

Time is running out and the end of the interim period – 4 July 2011 – is not that far away. All personnel that want to carry out the activities listed above must obtain a full qualification that meets the minimum requirements specified in Commission Regulation 303/2008. For example, the relevant full F gas qualifications for personnel wanting to undertake installation, maintenance, servicing on equipment containing or designed to contain 3kg or more of an HFC refrigerant are City and Guilds Level 2079-11 or Construction Skills CITB J11.

There are in fact four levels of qualification that meet the minimum requirements that those working on RAC systems can hold. These are known as Categories I to IV.

Company Certification
Since 4 July 2009 all businesses that employ qualified personnel to carry out installation, servicing or maintenance of any stationary refrigeration and air-conditioning (RAC) systems containing F gases must hold a Company Certificate. This includes sole traders as well as larger contractors. It also includes operators that employ in-house qualified staff.  

The law requires that relevant businesses must hold at least an interim Company Certificate now and a full Company Certificate by July 2011, making it an offence to carry out installation, servicing and maintenance on RAC systems using HFCs without a Company Certificate.
    
Qualifications
To obtain a full Company Certificate, businesses must ensure that all of their engineers hold one of the following full F gas qualifications:
• City & Guilds 2079 -11 /12
• CITB J11 -12
• an equivalent European qualification.

Once the engineers are qualified a business must apply to one of the certification bodies to gain a Company Certificate:
• Refcom: www.refcom.org.uk, 01768 860409, info@refcom.org.uk
• Quidos: http://fgasregister.com, 01225 318400, fgas@quidos.co.uk
• Bureau Veritas: www.bureauveritas.co.uk/fgas, 020 76610726, fgas.mail@uk.bureauveritas.com

If you use contractors to undertake work on any F gas containing air-conditioning or refrigeration systems you should check they hold at least an interim Company Certificate and ask them about their plans to gain full qualifications and Company Certification.  
 
References
1. Common F gas refrigerants are HFCs such as R134a, R404A, R407C, R410A; a full list of F gases can be found at www.defra.gov.uk/fgas. Users of F gases are affected by the EC F gas Regulation as these refrigerants have a very high global warming potential that is up to 3,000 times higher than CO2.

F-Gas Support is a Defra funded team that provides advice and information on all aspects of the EC F gas and Ozone Regulations.

For more information
Tel: 0161 8743663    
E-mail: fgas-support@enviros.com
Web: www.defra.gov.uk/fgas