The North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council is hosting an event to help create utility incentive programs to benefit retailers who install natural refrigerants.
On Thurs., Aug. 4, 2016, utilities representatives and supermarket end-users will convene at the Energy Efficiency & Natural Refrigerants Workshop, “Bringing the Energy Profile of the Grocery Sector into the 21st Century,” to create solutions that will incentivize the use of natural refrigerants in supermarkets and convenience stores. The workshop will be held at the National Grid New England corporate office in Waltham, Mass.
The workshop is organized by the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC) with help from Bitzer U.S., sponsored by Emerson Climate Technologies and hosted by National Grid. “Bringing the Energy Profile of the Grocery Sector into the 21st Century” is an invitation-only event that will bring together commercial refrigeration end-users and utilities to take steps toward the creation of utility incentive programs that will benefit both retailers installing natural refrigerants and the utilities themselves.
Despite the long-term savings and proven environmental benefits of natural refrigerants, their higher initial equipment cost remains the primary barrier to widespread adoption of these beneficial technologies. Utilities have an opportunity to speed the transition to these technologies by offering incentives for their installation and use. The NASRC workshop this August gives end-users the opportunity to share their actual experiences with a variety of refrigeration systems and offer recommendations for the development of both performance baselines for calculating energy consumption and utility incentives to help offset the upfront costs of natural refrigerant technology.
Participating utilities will gain a better understanding of how and why the transition from HFC refrigerants to naturals affects their kWh and kW reduction goals, how energy savings can be achieved with natural refrigerants, and how partnerships between utilities and end-users are needed to accelerate the pace of transition to more energy-efficient refrigeration technology.
More than 50 representatives from the utility and retail food sectors are expected to attend the invitation-only workshop. Participants will create recommendations for developing and streamlining utility incentive programs that accelerate the adoption of natural refrigerant systems.
