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ndonesia plans to gradually halt the consumption of hydro chloro fluoro carbon (HCFC), a substance that depletes the ozone layer, by reducing HCFC consumption by 10 percent by 2015.

Indonesia still sees the need to use several types of HFC (hydrofluorocarbon) in air conditioners, domestic fire extinguishers and foam industries due to technical, economic and work safety considerations. Indonesia collected US$61 million for reducing the use of ozone layer depleting substances from 1993 to 2010.

The country ratified the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer in 1987 and has since issued regulations on the control of ozone layer depleting substances.

With these ratifications, Indonesia is obliged to follow reduction targets in relation to ozone layer depleting substances.

As part of the Montreal Protocol, adopted in 2007, signatories committed to quickening the eradication of HCFCs, due to the propensity of these substances to deplete the ozone layer and foster global warming. HCFCs, which are commonly used substances, are 2,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide (CO2) in terms of increasing global warming.

As Indonesia is the host for the 9th conference on the Vienna Convention and also the 23rd meeting of the Montreal Protocol this month in Nusa Dua, Bali, the country hopes to propose a declaration that can bridge the implementation of the Vienna Convention and Montreal Protocol with the Kyoto Protocol, which is part of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Arief Yuwono, the Environment Ministry’s deputy for environmental degradation and climate change, said that the government had drafted a HCFC Phase Out Management Plan (HPMP) to reach the freeze target by 2013, and to reach a 10 percent reduction of HCFCs by 2015. As part of the HPMP, in the near future the government will undertake technology transfer, policy and regulation interventions. “We hope that it can also support the target to reduce emissions by 26 percent from the business as usual scheme that we hope to reach by 2020,” he said.

As of December 2007, Indonesia has succeeded in halting the consumption of the ozone depleting substances of chlorofluorocarbon (CFC), methyl bromide, halon, carbon tetra chloride (CTC) and methyl chloroform (also known as trichloroethane/TCA). “We succeeded in phasing out 8,989 metric tons of CFC by the end of 2007, two years earlier than the Montreal Protocol target,” Arief said.