GreenChill Partnership Achievements—Industry Steps Up
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The GreenChill Partnership provides food retailers, as well as advanced refrigeration system manufacturers and retrofit chemical and secondary fluid manufacturers, with assistance with preventing costly refrigerant leaks and emissions and meeting strict performance criteria under the GreenChill Store Certification Program. During the first year in the program, Partners average an almost 10 percent emissions reduction, and under the Store Certification Program, a store’s refrigerant emissions must be at least 65 percent less than the average supermarket. To date, many of the nation’s top retail grocery companies are competing for honors, and the EPA says “If supermarkets nationwide reduced refrigerant leaks to the current GreenChill Partner average of 12.4 percent, they could generate annual cost savings of over $100 million across the industry while preventing the annual emission of about 27 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MMT CO2e), which is equal to emissions from the generation of electricity use by more than 3.7 million homes annually.”
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Here are the EPA’s most recent GreenChill Award winners:
Best Corporate Emissions Rate Award: Stater Bros. Markets earned the Partnership’s most prestigious award for the second consecutive year for lowering its already low refrigerant emissions rates across all its stores.
Most Improved Emissions Rate Award: Buehler’s Fresh Foods achieved the Partnership’s largest refrigerant leak rate reduction from 2012 to 2013.
Superior Goal Achievement Awards: Seven winners met challenging goals to reduce their refrigerant emissions:
- Brookshire Grocery Company,
- Buehler’s Fresh Foods,
- Food Lion,
- King Kullen (earned an Exceptional Goal Achievement award for meeting a second, more ambitious, corporate goal for reducing refrigerant emissions)
- Meijer,
- Sweetbay, and
- Weis Markets.
Distinguished Partner Award: Raley’s was honored for its extraordinary leadership and initiative during the year to further the mission of GreenChill.
GreenChill’s Store Certification Program awards recognize stores that meet strict performance criteria demonstrating their refrigeration system has minimal impacts on the ozone layer and climate.
Best of the Best Award: The Whole Foods Market store in Brooklyn, New York, was honored for installing the most environmentally friendly refrigeration system of the 94 stores that earned GreenChill Certification over the past year. The new system uses only carbon dioxide as the refrigerant and will lower the climate impact of refrigerant emissions by thousands of times compared with other common supermarket refrigerants.
Store Certification Excellence Award: Hillphoenix, Publix Super Markets, and Sprouts Farmers Market earned the award for achieving the most GreenChill Store Certifications during the past year. A friendly competition between Sprouts and Publix resulted in 27 and 26 store certifications, respectively. Hillphoenix, a leading refrigeration system manufacturer, was responsible for installing systems that met the stringent GreenChill certification criteria in 67 stores.
Store Recertification Award: Five supermarkets that have earned certification for 5 consecutive years included:
- A Weis Markets store in Hanover, Pennsylvania,
- A Food Lion store in Columbia, South Carolina,
- A Sprouts Farmers Market store in San Diego, California, and
- Two Publix Super Markets stores—in Winter Haven, Florida, and Suwanee, Georgia.
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The White House also announced additional private sector commitments to reduce GHG emissions that “span the entire HFC supply chain—from where the chemicals are produced, to where they are used in manufacturing, to where consumers see them in stores….” These industry commitments include support for phasing down HFC production and consumption, billions of dollars in research and development of advanced refrigeration technologies with low global warming potential (GWP) and that use alternative or HFC-free refrigerants, corporate-level GHG reduction and HFC elimination goals, energy-efficiency programs and incentives, and others. Organizations and companies that made commitments include The Alliance for Responsible Atmospheric Policy, the Air-Conditioning, Heating, and Refrigeration Institute, Arkema, Coca-Cola, Carrier, Danfoss, DuPont, Emerson Climate Technologies, Goodman Manufacturing, Hillphoenix, Honeywell, Johnson Controls, Kroger, Lapolla, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Mission Pharmacal, PepsiCo, Red Bull, SEVO Systems, Target, Thermo King, and True Manufacturing.