If you can say the word Hydrochlorofluorocarbons five times fast, well, you're better than me.
They're called HCFC's for short, and they are refrigerants, basically, the chemicals that make air conditioners blow cold air.
Five years ago we were all told that HCFC's would safely replace CFC's which contained ozone depleting chemicals.
So Belize worked on that from 2006 to 2010 - only to find out that the same western scientists who said HCFC's were safe - are now saying that those contain greenhouse gasses.
So now, Belize and other countries have to move to organic CFC's - until they tell us that's doing something else wrong.
That is the third phase - and Belize is one of the first countries to start it - we signed on today with the assistance of the Swiss Government. The Chief Environmental Officer outlined the program:
Martin Allegria - Chief Environmental Officer
"Post 2010 is where we are right now. It took us about 6 to 9 months to develop the program for the next five years called HPMP. Why H? Because we are now targeting the HCFC, the replacement gases that were hailed as the replacement for ozone depleting CFC's at that time. Now it's being found out that some of those are greenhouse gases. So there is a move between 2010 and 2030 to phase them out. So for the next 20 years we have them out, but in Belize we carefully design the next phase to be a last phase for us."
Speaker
"Replacing all the equipments functioning with HCFC with new ones more energy efficient will allow Belize to slow down the rapid increase of energy consumption contributing, though, to its greenhouse gas emission mitigation."
Martin Allegria
"So today is a very important date because Belize is one of the first countries in the world, and I think the first in Latin America, to launch the HPMP program."
The phase out of CFC's first started in 1998.
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