The so-called "doors on fridges debate" has been a constant and at times controversial discussion in the United Kingdom. In the last three or four years, it has often pitted supermarket refrigeration engineers against their retail merchandising colleagues.

As the price of electricity has continued to increase, the argument has gained more traction — there is a good energy argument for enclosing chiller cabinets and avoiding the "overspill" of cold air into the supermarket aisles — effectively bringing the energy managers to add weight to the engineers' argument.

Two added bonuses are enclosing cabinets enable the use of LEDs to enhance focus on the food, and the "comfort" factor of having a supermarket that is not additionally chilled by the refrigerator stock. This would seem to be a compelling argument to present to the merchandising team; an approach that saves carbon and cash.

But, in a competitive retail environment, the fact that enclosed cabinets pose a threat to traditional buying patterns — literally putting a barrier between the customer and the product — many supermarkets have continued to hold fast to their open chillers, unwilling to make a move that could cost them dearly in lost sales.

"Doing the right thing" has to be put to one side when retailers are battling to hold down the price of the weekly shop.

The Co-operative Group — the U.K.’s fifth biggest supermarket, with a 6 percent share of the market — has had some success with bucking the trend and embarking on a door-on-chillers program. The Co-operative has blazed a trail partly because it has a higher proportion of smaller-footprint and convenience-type stores than its rivals (where the refrigeration constitutes a high proportion of the energy draw) and partly because it has a strong ethical stance.

The company has now carried out successful trials with doors on chiller cabinets in 298 food stores, and this has yielded an average energy saving of 20 percent. The energy payback has been judged sufficiently high at board level that there is now a plan to roll doors out in 2,000 stores by 2020, as part of the general store refitting program.

Despite this success, many of the big-store refrigeration managers believe it would require some sort of regulation or code of practice to make the supermarkets take action together for any significant change of practice to take place — a top-down approach as it were.

However unlikely the situation may have seemed a few months ago, it might actually soon be on the agenda thanks to a gathering groundswell of opinion in influential places.

In January, the British Retail Consortium published its new environmental strategy entitled a Better Retailing Climate. The strategy sets outs targets for its members on carbon, waste and resource reduction in a number of areas, from reducing refrigerant leakage to cutting transport carbon footprints to reducing building carbon emissions. The latter element is enshrined in an ambitious goal — to reduce emissions from retail buildings by 50 percent by 2020 (against a 2005 baseline).

Even though the BRC members have achieved a 30 percent cut to date since 2005, achieving an additional 20 percent is widely agreed to be a stretch target that will require ambitious energy efficiency measures. In this context, the energy savings of 20 percent that can be made from putting doors on the cabinets have been described as "low-hanging fruit."

According to Co-operative Group's Energy, Environment and Engineering Manager Alex Pitman, putting doors on fridges across all the U.K. supermarkets' estates could save around 1 percent of the country's total electricity bill — a massive potential saving.

Adding further potential to the tide of opinion is the recent establishment by U.K. Climate Change Minister Greg Barker of a retail energy efficiency task force. The BRC report highlighted that the Consortium was "looking forward to working with the taskforce ... on the identification of barriers to further energy efficiency action." This has been seen by the retail sector as a clear indication that the BRC wants to see voluntary agreements forged.

As if this wasn't enough, a third driver for change is expected to emerge in the shape of the government's Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme — requiring large businesses to undertake compulsory energy audits every four years.

While there is no compulsion to act on the opportunities identified at the audit, the ESOS is expected to drive change in practice, on the basis that it will be hard for companies with shareholders and CSR policies to ignore significant recommendations for saving energy.

A voluntary agreement among retailers to fit doors on chillers has already been proven to be possible in France (where notably the electricity costs are cheaper than the U.K.), and many believe the time has come for the U.K. supermarkets to act.

The refrigeration industry certainly appears to believe it is time for action. Last month, the U.K. Institute of Refrigeration held a debate asking, "Are doors on fridges the best environmental solution for the retail sector?" The motion was carried by a comfortable margin. Members noted that there had been similar resistance to the idea of putting lids on chest freezers but that this was now common practice.

Pitman, however, also noted that while the French supermarkets had come to a voluntary agreement about doors, there was also support from their government by way of financial incentives. He noted that the U.K. government had intervened in all sorts of places in the U.K. energy market, and that giving incentives for doors and similar measures could drive change more quickly.

The current mood among the industry is perhaps summed up by one retail refrigeration manager at last week's Euroshop exhibition: "Most other energy saving measures that haven't been implemented already are only going to give you 3 or 4 percent now. In that context, doors on fridges and all-LED lighting in store would seem to be no-brainers now."