March 28. 2024. 10:34

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Keeping cool this summer is an energy intensive business


As temperatures begin to climb across Europe ahead of the peak of the summer holiday season, it is worth considering the scale of the challenge we face in cooling our homes, our businesses and, indeed, the foods and beverages we consume.

We can easily intuit the simple fact that the higher the ambient temperature, the greater the amount of energy required to achieve the cooling capacity necessary to keep our hotel rooms at a comfortable temperature, our produce fresh and our ice creams frozen.

Fluorinated gases such as hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs) are used widely as refrigerants in air conditioning, commercial fridges, freezers and refrigerated transportation. These are very energy-intensive applications. F-Gases, as they are known, are often the refrigerant of choice because ultra-low Global Warming Potential HFOs frequently achieve a much greater cooling capacity while using less energy than alternatives such as ammonia, propane and CO2.

For this reason, many businesses which have compared the various alternatives and opted for HFO-based solutions on cost, energy usage and sustainability grounds are facing considerable uncertainty because of proposed revisions to the EU’s F-Gas regulation which are currently being discussed in trilogue negotiations. The proposals tabled by the European Parliament would effectively ban the use of HFOs. This could have a range of serious, unintended consequences for many EU businesses and their end customers.

Supermarket MD Discount in Persiceto, Italy, is one example of a retailer using HFO-based solutions for its commercial refrigeration needs. MD’s case includes food service, cold rooms and freezer rooms. Michele Aiello, Technical Director MD, said, “when we evaluated the available options from an energy efficiency and a sustainability perspective, it was clear that a hydrofluoroolefin (HFO)-blend was the best solution to meet our requirements”.

“We compared the projected energy usage and emissions from refrigeration at our San Giovanni store in Persiceto using the HFO-based solution versus carbon dioxide. The lifetime cost savings worked out at approximately €260,000 with 25% lower lifetime emissions for that store alone”.

“Ironically, one of the factors we considered in reaching our decision was the low Global Warming Potential of the refrigerant to ensure we would comply with the previous EU F-Gas regulation, which called for the phase-down of the use of high-GWP refrigerants. A ban or phase-down of low GWP HFOs was not envisaged at the time,” he added.

Refrigerants are crucial to effectively running supermarkets and across many other sectors. They play a huge part in the overall economy of the EU and the day-to-day lives of its citizens – from keeping produce fresh in supermarkets to the transportation of food across the EU and the heating and cooling of hotels, apartments and buildings.

For businesses operating in hot climates, achieving the temperatures required to chill buildings, rooms, or fresh produce can be difficult without using much energy.

Spain’s EAMUR prioritises energy efficiency by producing fruit and vegetables for the EU and US markets. EAMUR specialises in grapefruit, limes and lemons. These citrus fruits must be refrigerated as soon as they are picked to ensure freshness.

EAMUR Director General Juan Albacete said: “We are citrus producers and exporters based in Murcia in the south of Spain, one of the hottest areas of Europe. For us, refrigeration is key as we need to keep our produce cool before distribution. Then we export to most European countries in refrigerated trucks as well. HFO-based solutions helped us keep our energy bills at levels our balance sheet could support”.

The discussions at the EU level around the review of the F-gas regulation have focused significantly on the use of “natural alternatives”, a term used to describe propane, CO2 and ammonia-based solutions. While these alternatives will be the right option in certain circumstances, many businesses have found, when they have compared the available alternatives, that HFOs were the right solution for them on cost-effectiveness and energy usage grounds.

French company Quercy Refrigeration, an industrial refrigeration installer which specialises in energy performance for fruits preservation, compared the use of ammonia and HFO as refrigerants at the Aiguillon Fruit Cooperative (COFRA) in the southwest of the country. “COFRA was seeking to renovate and improve its fruit preservation process and replace its on-site chillers – using ammonia – which required frequent maintenance and were less efficient,” said Benoit Duparc, managing director of Quercy.

In a side-by-side comparison, the HFO-based chillers outperformed the ammonia-based chillers by 25%, according to their Energy Efficient Ratio (EER) analysis. EER is determined by the ratio between the cooling capacity of the chiller and the electricity it consumes. More than 90% of the cost of chillers comes from the energy it consumes, so these results were compelling for COFRA – which was looking to reduce its annual energy bill (€300,000 per year) and increase its resilience to booming prices of electricity.

Businesses need the right refrigerant for the right application, and it is crucial that we keep all options on the table. We know that a wide range of solutions are required to reach the EU’s climate action targets. Restricting choices at this moment will remove technology from the market, which is proven to reduce emissions and energy usage under the most challenging conditions. It will also force businesses such as COFRA, MD Discount and EAMUR to write off investments predicated not only on the money they would save on energy bills but also on their contribution to decarbonising the EU economy. In this objective, they hope to be supported rather than undermined by EU policymakers.