Good point! Freon (CFC-12, with 10800x warming potential of CO2) has thankfully been banned by Montreal Protocol of 1987, and HCFC-22 (5280x) is being phased out. We are using what now, HFC-32 at 2430x? How much refrigerant does an AC contain, about a mole? I’ve been taught that refrigerant should normally never leak throughout the lifetime of the appliance (technicians are even prohibited from “recharging” refrigerant without identifying and fixing the point of the leak first) and that all gas must be recovered after end-of-life, but we can’t be sure that’s really what happens every time.
In that case leaking 1 mole of HFC-32 would be equivalent to… running the 1kW AC for 360 hours?