What are HFCs? Thanks for asking!

Fridges, freezers and air conditioning. In cooling our individual homes, humans are heating up our collective home - planet earth. That’s partly down to hydrofluorocarbons, or HFCs for short. These industrial chemicals are mainly used for cooling and refrigeration, but they generate a huge amount of pollution.

The adoption of HFCs is relatively recent as until the 1980s we used chlorofluorocarbons as refrigerants. Scientists then realised these greenhouse gases were contributing to ozone layer depletion, with a global warming potential of around 10,000. That’s a multiple of the heat that would be absorbed by the same mass of carbon dioxide. So in 1987, states signed the Montreal Protocol, which would see the production of CFCs drastically reduced. To be replaced by....

HFCs? What is that? Is it good for the environment? How are we going to produce refrigerants without CFCs or HFCs? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions!

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