Barely Functioning Counts as Functioning

Why long-lived cooling infrastructure keeps leaking—and what actually changes the math.

When’s the last time you bought a new A/C unit or refrigerator?

Probably when the old one finally died.

I’m selling my house in Utah, and one of the conditions of the sale is that I replace the A/C. It’s 23 years old. (It can vote! It can buy alcohol!) It’s technically past its expected life, butttttttttttt honestly? It still works. Not perfectly. Not especially efficiently. But it works. With a tune-up it could probably limp along for several more Utah summers.

It runs on R-22. It’s aging. The buyers insisted on a new one.

So I’m replacing it, and yes, it’s eating into the margin of my sale, and no, I would not have done this proactively on my own.

That’s precisely my point.

Cooling systems are long-lived infrastructure. We install them and then we forget about them. They sit on roofs. They hum in back rooms. They’re built to last 15, 20, sometimes 25 years—and financially, it makes perfect sense to squeeze use out of every single one of those years... and then some.

But the day they’re installed, they start leaking.

They don't leak catastrophically. They don't leak all at once. But they do leak predictably. Commercial refrigeration systems leak ~25% of their charge during normal operation, as systems hum and vibrate. They leak during routine servicing. They leak a little more as seals age and components wear down. Over time, those small losses compound, and the entire refrigerant charge is leaked every few years.

Refrigerant leakage isn’t a one-time event at the end of life. It’s baked into the life of the system—and that life is a lot longer than people think.

In the interest of transparency, I'll share that my husband and I were anticipating about a 60% profit margin on the sale of our Utah house. Replacing that A/C unit eats about 2% of our anticipated margin. When we first ran the numbers, my husband downright refused to even entertain the idea of a system replacement. The unit works! On principle, we don't want to pay to replace something that works. It took several rounds of negotiations and accepting the hard truth that the sale simply would not move forward in order to convince him to part with our hard-earned money to replace something that is, technically, functional.

Now scale that up to a grocery store operating on a 1–2% net profit margin. If the system is keeping food cold, it stays. Even if it’s running at partial capacity. Even if it’s 28 years old. Even if it’s leaking more this year than it did five years ago. Even if an environmental consultant explains just how damaging it is for the climate.

In the refrigeration and cooling space, we talk a lot about averages and lifespans and expected performance. But in the real world, “average life” is not a retirement date. It’s a suggestion at best. Equipment lives as long as it’s economically rational to keep it alive. And, practically speaking, it's almost never more expensive to keep a system running day-to-day than it is to replace it entirely.

Barely functioning counts as functioning. And replacing functioning infrastructure is expensive, disruptive, and very hard to justify internally.

So we end up with millions of systems doing exactly what they were designed to do—and exactly what we know they will do—for decades.

Leak.

So here's the question I've been mulling as I begrudgingly replace my technically-functioning A/C unit: how do we create a reason strong enough for someone to act before failure forces their hand?

Because left alone, these systems will operate until they absolutely cannot anymore. And every additional year of operation is another year of guaranteed super pollutant leakage.

The market mechanism in my little microcosm was straightforward. I could replace the unit and make the sale, or not and don't. The market mechanisms needed to move the food supply chain industry are a bit more complicated, but we have them.

This is where the Voluntary Carbon Market gets interesting to me. It creates a buyer who cares about something the operator can’t justify on their own balance sheet. It introduces outside capital that says, actually, we’re willing to pay to stop those leaks before they happen. It turns “why would we replace this, it still works” into “okayyy, now we're talkin'.”

The VCM doesn't magically make systems short-lived. But it does change the timing. And timing is everything here.

Cooling systems are climate commitments we make and then have to live with for decades. The emissions are predictable and practically scheduled. They're installed, they're running, they're leaking.

So we can't wait for failure. By the time something "needs" replacing, it's already done decades of damage.

If we want to eliminate super pollutant leaks, we have to change the economics. Not hope, not averages, not suggested lifespans.

Incentives.