Thailand is exploring to manage end-of-life Hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants, due to a complete lack of recovery infrastructure once these gases reach the end of their use. This creates a major gap in the country’s greenhouse gas accounting and its compliance with the Kigali Amendment (the international agreement to phase down HFCs).

This project, supported by CTAF under GGGI, builds a practical blueprint for tracking fluorinated gases (F-gases) by launching an integrated recovery and digital tracking system, tailored to the industrial food cold chain sector, a major source of high Global Warming Potential (GWP) emissions. The project is managed by an incubated, vertically integrated private-sector reclamation SM and carries out two main activities:

(1) An AI-optimized “Milk Run” logistics network that safely collects high-GWP gas (mainly R-404A/R-507A) using a lean fleet of 50 digitally tracked, high-capacity recovery cylinders across 10 corporate frozen food and cold storage facilities.

(2)  A cloud-based Digital Track & Trace Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) platform that uses barcode cylinder logging to verify the entire chain of custody.

By introducing Korean software and validation technologies, the project is expected to upgrade Thailand’s Biennial Transparency Report (BTR) from Tier 1 to Tier 2/3 and to generate domestic Thailand Voluntary Emission Reduction (T-VER) carbon credits. Over 24 months, the technology will track and recover at least 1,500 kg of industrial F-gas, cutting emissions by approximately 5,883 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e).

Green Industry, Digital MRV, Circular Economy (HFC)

Because Thailand’s industrial food cold chain profile closely mirrors that of other major agricultural export hubs, like Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines and Malaysia, the field data collected through this project will be packaged into a proposal for future funding in these countries. The scale-up will target agricultural cold chains across ASEAN, drawing on carbon credit revenues and an Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) mechanism.