Licencing system for refrigeration, heating and air conditioning technicians: MBIE’s consultation on technical details

The Ministry of Business, Innovation & Employment is currently developing regulations for a licencing system for refrigeration technicians. Please have your say!

As brief background, in 2019 Cabinet agreed to introduce a new licencing system for refrigeration technicians. When it takes effect, this will require all technicians that work on commercial and industrial refrigeration, heat pump or air conditioning systems that use flammable, toxic or very high operating pressure refrigerants to be licenced. This new licencing requirement is aimed to support safety in the sector as we transition away from using HFCs.

MBIE are now looking to finalise some of the last technical matters for the regime, in particular the technical definitions for the types of system that will require a licenced technician to work on. To help use with this, we are asking for feedback from industry on matters like:

• Whether our suggested thresholds for “commercial or industrial” systems are appropriate

• Whether the suggested definitions will allow businesses and technicians to easily work out which systems require a licenced technician to work on.

In the short document linked here, you will find a summary of decisions that have already been made about the licencing system, our suggested definitions, and some questions to guide your feedback. Please feel free to reply to all or only some points as you prefer.

There are two ways to provide feedback.  Recovery Trust intends to submit feedback, and to have your voice heard within our collective feedback, please complete this online questionnaire by the 21 September 2022.  Or if you prefer to supply your feedback direct, please do so via email to HSWRegs@mbie.govt.nz by midday 26 September 2022.