UK cold stores exceed efficiency targets
UK: The cold storage companies signed up to the UK government’s Climate Change Agreement (CCA) exceeded agreed energy efficiency improvements in 2022.
The cold storage CCA target for the end of 2022 required participating facilities to improve energy efficiency by 6.67% against a 2018 benchmark. Collectively, the facilities achieved an improvement of 6.735%.
Managed by the Cold Chain Federation, the CCA scheme operates across multiple industries, offering tax benefits to businesses which sign up to energy efficiency targets. The scheme is estimated to save the cold storage industry more than £10m each year.
“Energy efficiency is a very high priority for cold storage facilities of all sizes, and the industry’s success in meeting this very challenging CCA target reflects strong focus and significant investment,” commented Cold Chain Federation executive director Tom Southall.
“For many temperature-controlled warehouse operations, the most straightforward energy efficiency measures have already been implemented so energy efficiency gains are now harder won. But the rewards are very significant both in climate change levy savings and also in reducing sky-high energy bills,” he added.
Following campaigning by the Cold Chain Federation, an extension was confirmed by the UK government earlier this year, meaning that participating businesses which pass their targets will now benefit from the climate change levy discount through to March 2027. The scheme also opened a new application window in summer 2023 for facilities seeking to join the scheme.
The next CCA target for cold stores is to build on the 6.7% energy efficiency improvement achieved by the end of 2022 to reach 10% improvement against the same 2018 baseline by the end of 2024.
