Sustainable cooling and the cold chain for food and vaccines

Cooling accounts for over 7% of global GHG emissions and is the fastest growing GHG contributor in the world. Globally, 12% of the total food produced is lost due to the lack of cold chain. Likewise, 20% of temperature-sensitive vaccine products are damaged due to broken cold chains. The cold chain is also a key player in ensuring food quality and safety. Temperature-controlled processing, distribution and storage, often based on inefficient equipment and protocols, have a significant environmental impact. Conventional cold chains are energy intensive and often use high-GWP refrigerants. To achieve climate change mitigation and adaptation globally, a resilient and low-carbon food and pharma cold chain is needed. How it could be achieved has significant implication for the economy, industry, social wellbeing, and energy system resilience. It is essential to combine techno-economic, environmental, social and policy aspects in an integrated approach for the design and evaluation of decarbonisation solutions for the cold chain for food (from farm to fork) and vaccine (from manufacture to arm).

In this talk, Dr Xinfang Wang of the University of Birmingham will present the work undertaken by the team of the Centre for Sustainable Cooling at the University of Birmingham, including a whole-systems framework to assess the demand of food cold chain up to 2050, considering the technology, infrastructure, environment, policy, behaviour, finance and business models.