One of the things the cooling industry in Europe often seems to find difficult is collaboration. It is hardly surprising, given that the companies involved are quite small in scale, for the most part. Therefore, they don't necessarily have the resources or the will to work on bigger projects — particularly when it requires working with potential competitors.
Of course, there have been companies and research establishments joining forces to tackle problems, but there perhaps isn't the ambition among such companies to chase a Big Vision — on the basis that if you are busy working on local projects, you don't tend to think about bigger ones.
But as the cooling industry's challenges become increasingly global, there is an ever-increasing pressure to work collaboratively to tackle them. The fact that we are talking more often about the "cold chain" merely serves to underline the fact that more links are required.
In the last few weeks, there have been three different cooling-related issues that have thrown the spotlight on the need to work across traditional boundaries. Two of them are somewhat outside of the scope of what I generally cover, but they give an idea of the scale of the challenge and the collaboration that will be required.
Firstly, just before Christmas, there was the second "world cold chain summit" conceived by manufacturer Carrier as a way of highlighting the role of the refrigeration industry in reducing food wastage, particularly in the developing world, and bringing stakeholders together.
The food waste issue — reducing spoilage through increased refrigeration at all stages from storage to transportation to retail — requires coordinated planning from policymakers, logistics providers, the food retail industry and cooling experts alike. Because it is so focused on the developing world, food waste reduction requires the cooling industry to go into what is uncharted territory for most — getting involved with governments and funding agencies to ensure refrigeration is a fundamental part of the solution.
Secondly, the Consumer Goods Forum (CGF) has published its progress on its 2010 commitment to reducing HFCs in refrigeration. Given the major brands that are involved, this has been a major global undertaking, and the CGF has judged it to be a success, with a wide range of programs and pilot projects undertaking conversions from HFCs to low GWP refrigerants.
The ambition among the CGF is to step up the scale of the conversion programs, and it is the sheer scale of expansion that will give rise to the need for significant collaboration between the retailers, the food and drink manufacturers and their partners across the refrigeration supply chain.
But it is the third collaboration that I want to talk about.
Not long ago, I celebrated the launch in the U.K. of the University of Birmingham's "Cold Commission" (part of its well-regarded Energy Policy Unit), which set out a strategy for stepping up cooling technology to transform refrigeration on several fronts: transport refrigeration, cold chain improvement in the developing world, and energy storage via cold storage and grid balancing.
At the time, I suggested the strategy — founded largely on relatively new cryogenic "liquid air" technology — really needed to have the buy-in of the conventional refrigeration industry if it was to make progress in its quest for wholesale transformation of the cold chain. To create a liquid air infrastructure that was entirely separate to the existing refrigeration infrastructure seemed not to be optimizing either resources or expertise.
The Cold Commission's report "Doing Cold Smarter" had appeared to catch the imagination of the national media and U.K. government alike, including securing the chairmanship of a leading figure in the House of Lords, Lord Teverson — a feat the conventional cooling industry has rarely achieved, which only served to heighten the tension.
Given this background, I am especially pleased to report there has now been significant progress on partnership between the Commission and the U.K.'s Institute of Refrigeration (IOR), and a strategy for a collaborative "refrigeration roadmap" has been hammered out.
This can only be a good thing. Doing Cold Smarter has done sterling work for the wider industry in the way it has positioned cooling as a fundamental, yet underexploited plank of energy policy. "Thermal energy, both hot and cold, is one of the major energy challenges," it says.
The Institute has acknowledged the report as "an important first step in raising the profile of the cooling industry with policymakers," and said it "considers it very important that the refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump sector actively engage with the report's authors."
The IOR's technical experts have now had a meeting with the Cold Commission and other stakeholders, such as carbon reduction body The Carbon Trust, to discuss how best to collaborate. One of the key conclusions is the combined group should prepare a detailed roadmap that will give a strategic overview of the sector, identifying and evaluating the range of technologies capable of delivering carbon savings and making a measurable contribution to the U.K. economy.
Other moves will include:
- building on links with government departments to raise awareness of the importance of the sector (and the need for ongoing dialogue)
- providing strategic direction for research bodies to promote take-up of the most cost-effective, long-term solutions for cooling
- developing a "skills roadmap" to ensure sufficient technical expertise is available to support the ambitions
- finding a mechanism for government incentives or funding to help offset the cost of purchasing the advanced cooling technologies
The IOR is optimistic the parties can work together to create a "dynamic strategy for the sector" that will encompass a broader range of cooling technologies than the cryogenic focus of the Doing Cold Smarter report.
The result can only be good news for the cooling industry in the U.K. and beyond — hopefully proving the benefits of the industry really "putting their heads together."
