13. Environmental Protection Agency · Notable
Repeal Biden-era AIM Act implementing regulations for HFCs
Printed page 425 13. Environmental Protection Agency
“Repeal Biden Administration implementing regulations for the AIM Act that are unnecessarily stringent and costly.”
What has happened
- Partially done
The loosening was finalized, subsector by subsector rather than wholesale. EPA's final rule, effective 2026-07-27, relaxes the Technology Transitions restrictions for intermodal refrigerated transport, semiconductor process refrigeration and chillers, supermarket and remote condensing food retail systems, cold storage, laboratory equipment and residential and light commercial air conditioning, and lets pre-2025 inventory of that air conditioning equipment keep being installed. The rest of the AIM Act implementing regulations remain in force.
- Attempted
EPA proposed to reopen the Biden AIM Act rules, listing reconsideration of the technology transition rule — which it said "forces companies to use certain technologies that increased costs on food at grocery stores and semiconductor manufacturing" — among its 31 deregulatory actions and then publishing the proposal.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
- The instrument is the Technology Transitions rule, the AIM Act regulation that forces sectors off high-global-warming-potential refrigerants on a schedule. EPA reconsidered it and loosened it subsector by subsector rather than repealing it.
- partial and not done: the AIM Act’s other implementing rules — the allowance allocation and phasedown program, and the refrigerant management rule — stand, and the Technology Transitions rule itself survives in amended form.
- The companion proposal published the same day (#1080’s Evidence) would take road and intermodal transport refrigeration units out of the leak-repair requirements.
- Action
- repeal
- Object
- AIM Act implementing regulations
- ID
- 1079