Amid all the discussions on the levels of debt the last Budget is going to leave us with, the commitment to a 34% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020 backed up with over £50 billion of low-carbon investment was rather forgotten.

With our consumer hats on, we can greet this as good and environmentally responsible news. With our industry hats on, the first realisation is that the sector is often painted as the “baddie” of climate change and will therefore be expected to lead the way in making the cuts.

Of course, you might also be thinking: if you could cut your energy usage and therefore carbon emissions by 34% at a stroke, you would already have done it: imagine the money you would have saved!

So, where can you look to cut your emissions? I think there is at least one area of the business where you are, probably unknowingly, wasting money and contributing to your emissions: your refrigeration systems. Refrigeration costs are undoubtedly a huge part of your financial and carbon budgets so even small percentage savings can result in large amounts in financial and environmental terms.

How can you tell if your refrigeration systems are costing you money and increasing your emissions? If you are replacing or topping up the refrigerant. Refrigerant doesn’t decrease of its own accord – if you are replacing refrigerant, you have a leak somewhere in the system. And leakages cost a frightening amount in both financial and environmental terms as the following statistics demonstrate. A 15% drop in refrigerant charge leads to a 100% increase in energy consumption. One kilo/watt hour of electricity (that is, one unit) suffered a significant cost rise during 2008 of up to 30% and is equivalent to 0.43kg of CO2. One kilogram of R404a (refrigerant) has a global warming equivalent of 3260kg of CO2. If you have 1000 kilos of refrigerant in your systems and they lose 40% of their charge over the year, if that refrigerant is costing £15.00 a kilo it equates to a £6,000 loss and CO2 emissions equivalent to just over 1.3 million kilos.

Clearly, eliminating leakages and making your refrigeration systems run more efficiently would contribute enormously to cutting your emissions and saving you money. (This is especially true if you are planning to wait until 2015 to switch away from using HCFC’s, such as R22: the price of recycled R22 is expected to increase by 15 – 20% per quarter from now on.) The solution lies in refrigerant management and energy efficient control.

Leak detection systems offer headline-grabbing savings. They can save you the financial and environmental costs of running leaking refrigeration systems: £6,000 and 1.3 million kilos of CO2.

The latest energy control systems offer similarly attractive energy savings in day-to-day running. One example is our condenser control system which is retro-fitted to existing condensers. We’ve seen it give energy savings of 20% and more in most installations. It does this through the use of variable speed drives. Traditional control systems wait until the refrigeration plant overshoots a pre-determined set point then overcompensates to reduce the temperature. This creates a see-saw effect that is extremely inefficient because the plant is constantly readjusting itself. Using variable speed drives in the system means that the discharge pressure of the refrigerant through the condenser can be controlled very accurately, meaning that the optimum condensing conditions are maintained within very tight bands and that the refrigeration plant operates at optimum efficiency for the prevalent load and ambient conditions. Optimum efficiency means optimum energy usage and optimum costs.

A 34% cut in emissions sounds like an alarming (if important) figure and there is no doubt that industry will be expected to play a leading role in reaching this target. But, as the saying goes, every journey starts with a single step. There is already equipment out there that can help support the quest to reduce consumption. Refrigerant management and energy control systems are examples of equipment that cuts emissions. And they save you money too.

For further information on how Parasense leak detection and management system can help your business call 01452 724123 or email sales@parasense.co.uk