I have written before about the efforts being made by the cooling industry to emphasize the importance of the "cold chain" — the route by which food is distributed from producer to retailer under refrigerated conditions.
An improved cold chain, the industry argues, is a win-win globally. In the developed world, it can improve shelf lives and thus reduce food wastage. In the developing world, it can literally save people's lives by reducing the amount of spoilage.
Raising the profile of the cold chain is as much about politics as it is about technology. It requires the commitment of funding bodies to provide the necessary investment, as well as the commitment of policymakers and regulators to bring the various links in the chain together.
I have also written before of the efforts of firms involved with the liquefied gas industry in promoting this technology as a way to bring those links closer together for both refrigeration and energy storage. And it is this sector that has made a significant breakthrough in both funding and political terms in the U.K., by securing both a major investment from the government and a commitment to a relatively high-profile research program.
The establishment of a Cold Chain Commission based at the University of Birmingham's Energy Institute under the leadership of one of the Coalition government — Liberal Democrat climate change spokesperson Lord Robin Teverson — will see the cold chain get a major boost in profile, its stakeholders believe. The Institute will be one of six universities sharing the government's recently announced 60 million pound "energy accelerator" research funding.
Over the next six months the commission — comprising industrialists, academics, international development experts and energy specialists — will look at how to can make the cold chain "far more efficient and climate-friendly," before releasing a report with practical recommendations.
"There is one area that has been left out of our energy debate almost completely, and some estimate that it already accounts for up to 14 percent of our energy usage," Teverson said. "What is it? It is cold. The commission will look at the whole area of cold in the energy mix and giving it the better profile it demands.
"The scandal is that some 30 percent of the world's food production is grown but never consumed. In our developed world, the culprit is waste from use-by dates, and throwing away what's filled our fridges for too many weeks. But in developing countries, it is because food is lost either due to spoiling by infestation, but just as importantly because it spoils before reaching its market. That's due to a lack of cooling and temperature control."
One of the key areas of focus, Teverson said, will be liquefied gas, something the University of Birmingham has been involved with in its work on cryogenic energy storage.
"We will be seeing how all the vast and wasted energy that derives from turning liquefied gas back into — well — gas, is captured and reused," he said. "We will be focusing on how we can help rural farmers in developing nations get their goods to market in a condition that boosts their income. Not least we will be looking to give U.K. industry a head start in this new world of increasing demand for cold."
The Energy Institute has posed five questions for industry. It says the answers to these questions "should illuminate the potential environmental, health and economic benefits of a Cold Economy, along with the scale of the potential opportunity for Britain, and any policy measures needed to secure it."
Its five questions are:
- What is the scale of the demand for cooling services up to 2030 and beyond in the U.K. and globally?
- What would be the environmental, economic and health impacts of a business-as-usual approach? What is the economic case for cold technologies — does it really make sense?
- What would be the full economic value of developing a system-level strategy and associated clean cold technologies, including GDP, jobs, exports and environmental and health impacts? Does the business case stack up?
- What are the industrial, R&D and skill requirements that the U.K. requires to become a global leader in the development of new products and services for the Cold Economy worldwide?
- Is "cold" sufficiently recognized and integrated into policy on energy, air quality, transport, exports and overseas aid, and if not, what changes should be introduced?
The Birmingham Energy Institute stressed the importance of the cold chain within the U.K. — more than 10 percent of Britain's electricity goes to cooling, and around 5.2 billion pounds each year is spent on energy for "cold" across the grid and transport.
But compare this in the scale of the challenge in countries such as India.
"India projects it needs to spend $15 billion on cold chain alone in the next five years," the Institute says. "At the same time, however, vast amounts of 'cold' are wasted, for example during the regasification of LNG at import terminals, which could potentially be recycled to reduce the cost and environmental impact of cooling in buildings, industry and vehicles."
Given this, the Institute says, it is vital to include cold in the planning of the future energy infrastructure: "Many energy technologies will be a radical departure from the traditional methodologies. As we move toward delivering greater energy efficiency through new technologies in more integrated energy systems, there is a clear need to join up not just heat and power and transport, but should this include cold as well?"
As part of this thinking, the Institute has identified what it deems the "Cold Economy": "The Cold Economy is based on a systems analysis and covers many aspects of efficiency, but crucially involves the recycling of waste cold and 'wrong time' energy (such as excess wind power generated at night when demand is low) to provide, through novel forms of energy storage, low-carbon, zero-emission cooling and power."
The Institute says that developing a Cold Economy is likely to require:
- Systemic analysis that incorporates cold flows, including spatial and temporal balancing of dynamic needs
- Greater recycling of waste energy, including waste cold from LNG regasification, to supply cooling
- Using liquid air and other cryogens as energy vectors, to store and deliver cold and power
- Developing more efficient technologies, materials and practices
The Institute has called for planning and investment to focus on a joined-up approach on three key areas:
- Develop integrated system-level thinking and commercial solutions addressing identified market needs;
- Understand the technology roadmap (research and manufacturing) to support the accelerated delivery of novel technologies that underpin the development, deployment, effective integration and optimization of cold technologies for industry, buildings and transport;
- Identify the apprenticeship and training needed to complement the product pipeline, meeting in good time the needs of research, manufacturing, assembly, integration and after-sales service.
The full potential of the Cold Economy is potentially massive, the Institute contends:
"Could it develop into a global market in clean cold technologies potentially worth many billions of pounds and creating a wealth of new job opportunities? With new technologies and thought leadership in the field, there is a real opportunity for Britain to build an R&D conveyor belt from invention to global market. But turning the Cold Economy from idea into reality will depend on joined-up thinking and collaboration across industry, academia and government to develop, test and deploy novel solutions."
However, the use of the phrase "joined-up thinking" has irked some people in what could be deemed the more conventional cooling industry. They have accused the liquefied gas industry of taking a large injection of public cash and then charging off in its own direction, rather than working collaboratively with the existing representative bodies for refrigeration.
So, it appears that accelerating development of a viable cold chain industry will depend on the "new tech" and the conventional refrigeration worlds finding a way to work positively together. Or perhaps it will simply be a victory for the smartest or most agile. Watch this space.
