Carbon emissions from refrigeration used in the UK food industry

Abstract

The food and beverage industry is the largest manufacturing sector in the UK. Food cold chains are energy intensive and use high global warming refrigerants. The aim of this work was to benchmark the existing UK cold chain and provide robust evidence-based data on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2019. Only emissions from refrigeration within UK borders was considered. Both Scope 1 emissions from refrigerant leakage (fugitive) and diesel for the transport refrigeration units (TRUs) as well as Scope 2 emissions from electrical power usage were estimated. These were estimated to be 12.9 MtCO2e per annum which represents 3.5% of the total UK annual territorial GHG emissions. Eighty-three percent of the Scope 1 emissions were fugitive, and 56% of these were from retail refrigeration. Agriculture and fisheries were the sectors with the lowest fugitive emissions accounting for only 3.7% of the total. Scope 2 emissions accounted for 54% of the emissions and tended to increase towards the consumer end of the cold chain, with 1.5% in agriculture and fisheries and 38% in domestic refrigeration. The FAOSTAT value of GWP used for f-gas emissions is not representative of UK emissions. UK government statistics may be underestimating domestic refrigerator emissions as they are not using real life energy consumption.