ProCold: a project that boosts supply and demand for the most energy efficient commercial plug-in refrigerators and freezers

Panel: 2. Sustainable production design and supply chain initiatives

Authors:
Christof Horvath, Austrian Energy Agency, Austria
Sophie Attali, Guide Topten, France
Eva Geilinger, Bush Energie GmbH, Switzerland

Abstract

ProCold is a European project in the framework of Horizon 2020, supporting the development and market penetration of energy efficient commercial refrigeration equipment using green refrigerants. The project aims at stimulating both the supply and demand for environmentally friendly efficient technology by various market-oriented services, including among others a web-based product database for efficient products, procurement guidelines and a product competition. The project is implemented in 8 countries (DE, FR, CH, IT, CZ, PT, SE, AT).

In the proposed presentation, an overview of plug-in commercial refrigeration equipment will be given: cabinet types, stock, sales and energy consumption. Best available technology will be compared to standard products to evaluate how large the saving potentials are. Market trends and future technology potentials will be discussed.

The ProCold project’s scope is to directly deliver tools and information to around 1000 key stakeholders in Europe that have leverage to transform the market. The mapping of these stakeholder groups will be presented and which tools and policy frameworks can support their efforts. Data analysis shows a great difference between kWh/day declared in catalogues and kWh/day measured according to Euopean testing standards (half of declared values are more than 30% lower, 15% more than 50% lower). This lack of standardised product information to compare the energy costs of different models is the main barrier to green procurement.

We will present an overview of the related legislation in the EU (Ecodesign, Labelling and F-Gas) and what it means for commercial plug-in refrigerators and freezers. Then we will examine specific regulations and testing standards that are currently under revision or in preparation and show the major issues that will decide if they can effectively transform the market towards environmentally friendly technology.