With the cost of energy expected to remain high for the foreseeable future, improving energy efficiency further and faster remains a key priority for temperature-controlled warehouse operators. The Cold Chain Federation provides a range of advice and support to help CCF members reduce energy consumption, and this month we are adding to these resources by making available new bespoke benchmarking dashboards as part of our Cold Storage Energy Benchmarking Project.
Working with Jacobs Engineering, we have created a user-friendly tool that can help operators participating in the cold storage Climate Change Agreement scheme to understand how the energy usage of their cold stores compares to similar facilities around the UK. The dashboard also shows the financial and carbon savings that their sites could achieve through further reductions in energy use.
Determining the operator’s cold storage SEC (Specific Energy Consumption, which calculates the energy consumption against storage volume) the tool assesses the site’s energy performance against a benchmark for its cohort group (defined by size of facility and whether the site stores majority chilled or majority frozen products). Operators can compare their site with similar facilities based on 2022 energy data submitted as part of the Climate Change Agreement reporting process, as well as finding out the benchmarks for the cohort’s high energy users and low energy users.
Our new tool also shows the operator the site’s energy efficiency progress between 2021 and 2022, and places it in the context of the whole cohort’s progress over the same period. It also calculates the cost savings that the site could make by reaching the energy efficiency of the low energy users and ‘best in class’ of their cohort. Similarly, the dashboard identifies the carbon savings that could be made at the site by reaching the cohort’s low energy user and best in class efficiency levels.
Understanding how their site compares to the benchmark for similar facilities can give operators a stronger understanding of their site’s performance and progress, as well as a better sense of how much potential there is to improve energy efficiency further. For those able to demonstrate that their site is operating ‘best in class’ for their cohort, this information can be a valuable commercial asset.
Reducing energy consumption will remain a key objective in temperature-controlled warehousing for many years to come. The Cold Chain Federation will continue to provide our members with the guidance, tools and support to facilitate the process.
Find out more about the Cold Chain Federation Energy Benchmarking Tool at www.coldchainfederation.org.uk/energy
Comments are closed.