Refrigerant lifecycle infrastructure.
Recovery, transport, reclamation, destruction — built as one system, across borders.
The cooling industry can't afford to emit a single ton more than it has to.
An estimated 13.4 gigatonnes of CO₂-equivalent in ozone-depleting substances and HFCs sit in installed equipment globally — most still in service, all eventually at end of life.
Source: Climate and Ozone Protection Alliance, 2022 estimate.
For scale: that exceeds China's annual greenhouse-gas footprint, more than doubles the United States', and dwarfs global aviation by an order of magnitude.
Sources: EDGAR / Climate Watch / IEA, 2023.
Refrigerants are among the most potent greenhouse gases on the planet — some thousands of times more warming than CO₂. Quotas in the EU, UK, US, Australia, and Mexico are tightening every year, but the industry still leaks at every handover: recovery, storage, transport, reclamation.
Closing those leaks isn't a single product. It's infrastructure — the physical, regulatory, and informational rails that move a cylinder of high-GWP gas from a service van in one country to a destruction facility in another, without losing a gram in transit.
That's what Gaia Cooling exists to build.
The window is this decade. The EU's revised F-Gas Regulation steps down hard in 2025 and zeroes out by 2050. The US AIM Act mandates an 85% HFC phasedown by 2036. Kigali's first compliance checkpoints land across the developing world in the same window. The infrastructure to handle what's already in circulation has to exist before the quotas force the question.
From recovery to destruction.
The lifecycle has four stages. Each one leaks today. Each one can be closed with the right partners, logistics, and accountability.
Identify & recover
The leak begins before the gas does. If chain of custody doesn't start at the first connection, nothing downstream can claim it. We locate high-GWP stock at end of life — service stations, decommissioned plants, OEM returns — and recover it into accredited cylinders.
Transport
Move regulated cargo across borders under ADR / IMDG / IATA-DGR / 49 CFR. Quota-aware routing through GB, EU, AU, MX, and US frameworks — without venting a gram in transit.
Reclaim & recycle
Where purity allows, reclaim back to AHRI-700 spec and return the gas to circulation. Every kilogram reclaimed is a kilogram of virgin gas not produced and quota not burned — the loop that keeps cooling viable while emissions stay flat.
Destroy
Where reclamation isn't viable, the molecule ends here. Verified destruction facilities, irreversible by design — tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions permanently avoided, documented end to end.
Gaia Cooling doesn't own destruction facilities or reclaim plants — we build the rails between accredited ones.
Across regulated markets and emerging frontiers.
My work runs across five mature quota markets and a handful of emerging regions where formal infrastructure is still being built. Other jurisdictions run their own F-gas regimes — these are simply the ones where I've operated.
Quota markets
One regulation became two overnight. Quota, labelling, and movement rules diverged just enough to make every GB↔EU handover doubly complex.
Twenty-seven jurisdictions, one quota — and a recovery rate that still hides a lot of variance between Rotterdam and Bucharest.
AIM Act enforcement is new enough that the reclaim economics shifted under our feet last year.
A small market by tonnage, but a disciplined one — the levy did most of the work the regulation couldn't.
Where Kigali compliance and informal servicing markets are still negotiating who pays for what.
The regulated markets are where I learned how this is supposed to work. The frontiers are where the same molecules are escaping with no one watching.
Emerging frontiers
Cooling load per capita that rivals anywhere on earth, and almost no end-of-life infrastructure to catch it.
Quota systems on paper in a handful of countries; recovery capacity nearly nowhere.
China and India set the global trajectory; Southeast Asia is where the next decade of leakage is being decided.
Sebastiaan Visser, founder.
I'm Sebastiaan Visser, founder of Gaia Cooling.
I came into this market trading quota. I stayed because it became obvious that the leaks weren't a product gap — they were an infrastructure gap, and no one was building it end-to-end.
I've spent the last several years inside the regulated F-gas markets across Europe, the UK, Australia, Mexico, and the US — trading quotas, structuring deals, and watching where the system actually leaks.
Gaia Cooling exists to close those leaks: building the infrastructure and partnerships that move high-GWP refrigerants through their full lifecycle, from recovery and transport to reclamation and destruction.
Gaia Cooling is the company I wish had existed when I started trading quota.
If you're working on refrigerant recovery, lifecycle infrastructure, or quota strategy — I'd like to hear from you.
svisser@gaiacooling.comIf you reach out, tell me which market you're in and what stage of the lifecycle you're working on.
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