Integrated Clean Cold Chain (IC3)

As a recent University of Birmingham Policy Commission, ‘Doing Cold Smarter’, acknowledged, cold chain infrastructure is vital to modern society. It has a critical role to play in the efficacy of fundamental products and services including vaccines and perishable foods. These services will experience unprecedented pressure as populations grow, become richer, their lifestyles change and the effects of climate change take hold. Meanwhile, conventional cooling technologies, are often inefficient, energy intensive and polluting. Therefore, if we are to meet growing demand for goods and services without creating negative environmental consequences, it is critical that cold chains operate in the most efficient and sustainable way possible. This project will deliver an ‘Innovative Integrated Clean Cold Chain’ (IC3) for the global cold chain industry. The market for temperature controlled logistics is worth around £23bn per year. However, this sizeable economic contribution comes at a cost as the vast majority of this sector is powered by polluting diesel engines or high-carbon peak electricity. In the UK, demand for cooling consumes 20% of total electricity and the cold chain is responsible for 2.4% of total GHG emissions. Globally, this demand is projected to increase substantially over the coming decades. IC3 will implement an innovative solution across the entire cold chain – food processing, logistics, cold storage, retail and last-mile delivery – leveraging clean technologies and modelling to optimise the system, lowering both costs and emissions. The project could deliver CO2 savings of up to 31%, reductions in operational expenditure of 12% and reductions in emissions of NOx and PM by 1,300T and 146T per year. Economic benefits are widespread; costs for operators could be reduced, valuable cryogenic and industrial gas expertise will be retained and the project offers a gateway to the rapidly growing energy storage demand response market. There are three innovation strands to IC3: 1) the deployment of innovative clean technologies, 2) integration of these technologies in a first of a kind deployment, 3) analysis and development of a “Cold-as-a-Service” financing model. The technologies to be implemented are: a cryogenic freezer for food processing, a high efficiency liquid nitrogen (LiN) expander delivering clean cold and power in refrigerated transport, a thermal energy storage system for refrigeration demands in retail and cold storage, and a eutectic cooling system for last-mile transport. They have all demonstrated commercial viability independently but at present there is limited market penetration. A first of a kind deployment of the technologies as an integrated solution will leverage synergies and deliver system optimisation across the cold chain. Modelling will enable whole system solutions for technology choice and operating regime. An innovative financing model could remove barriers to uptake, accelerating routes to market and enabling large-scale adoption. The project offers several infrastructure benefits. Technologies within IC3 make use of cheaper, lower-carbon off-peak electricity which has significant benefits including greater integration of “wrong-time” renewables to help match electricity supply and demand, an increase in UK energy security, and further integration of energy and transport systems. This project has the potential to create a significant UK advantage in a global cold chain market worth over USD$234bn by 2020.