Fridge Technology to Cut Carbon Emissions by One Third

It now seems that Sainsbury’s, one of Britain’s largest supermarket chains, has just recently announce its plans to cut is carbon footprint by one third before 2030. This is going to be done by changing the company’s fridge technology.

Apparently the retailer will stop using so called “F-gases,” which are pumped through the fridges to cool them down. Instead they will be using carbon dioxide, which is said to be less polluting.

The chief executive of Sainsbury’s, Justin King, said that fridges are, by far, the biggest source of CO2 emissions in any supermarket. These fridges are opened many times everyday, and they have to keep running to keep everything in the fridge cool. This is a fact that many people do not think about.

As of right now it appears that the company plans on converting 135 of its 800 stores by the time 2014 rolls around. The rest of the stores will be converted before 2030. The company went on to say that, if all of the UK’s supermarkets followed down the same path, then their combined annual carbon emissions would be reduced by the equivalent of an annual emissions seen in 350,000 homes or the entire city of Birmingham.

Sainsbury’s said it will be alerting the government about a skills shortage in green engineering. Justin King also noted that this is a very serious barrier that is preventing other companies from following Sainsbury’s lead. This big lack of engineers is making it more expensive to get these kinds of units built, and thus, many other stores just cannot afford to do it as of now.