SCC: Sustainable Cold-Chain Systems for Food Resilience
The food industry is the largest manufacturing sector is Britain and food refrigeration contributes to up to 4% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. The project aims to provide a whole systems approach to redefine the food cold-chain architecture and map the opportunities available to reach net zero emissions by 2050. The projected growth in demand for food coincides with demand for refrigerants to prevent food loss, alongside global warming presents conflicting challenges as refrigerants have a high impact on the climate. The SCC project merges technical and industry expertise to provide a solution to energy efficient, climate friendly food refrigeration. The project also presents additional economic opportunities for farmers, fisheries, and food producers in the UK.
'Building the road to sustainable cold-chain systems for food resilience.'
The purpose of the projects is to identify the weak/ broken links within the current cold-chain system, consider the overlapping drivers and create the pathway a decarbonised food chain by way of optimising technology, economy and industrial collaboration. The outcomes of the projects will be predicted emission rates for 2050, adapting to the developing innovative and essential data collection and modelling methods to be utilised by both technical and non-technical leads. The road map for zero carbon emissions for refrigerated food by 2050 is in development, considering energy efficient improvements, waste energy recovery opportunities, efficient use of energy sources and lower GWP refrigerants.