The project began two years ago following an international ‘refrigeration summit’ hosted by McDonald’s, UNEP and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. As a result of what it learned there, the hamburger chain decided to accelerate ways of finding sustainable refrigerant technologies.

Denmark was chosen because it had already started initiatives to phase out HFCs (hydrofluorocarbons) and the restaurant was opened by its Environment Minister, Hans Christian Schmidt. It is equipped with state-of-the-art refrigeration and ventilation systems using environmentally innovative refrigerants that do not contain freon or HFCs.

The challenges are: the political and economic security threat posed by the world’s dependence on oil; the risk to the global environment from climate change; and the lack of access of the world’s poor to the modern energy services they need for economic advancement.