The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership recognized six supermarkets last week for reducing their use of greenhouse gas refrigerants that deplete the Earth’s ozone layer and contribute to climate change. The Price Chopper store located in Colonie, NY received the Best of the Best award, which is given to the single store nationwide that is most successful at reducing the environmental impact of its refrigeration equipment.

“Price Chopper’s system is so effective at reducing the amount of refrigerant needed and the expected leak rate that it is truly a one-of-a-kind system in the U.S.,” said EPA Acting Regional Administrator George Pavlou. “Refrigerants are a double whammy – both depleting the ozone and contributing to climate change – so Price Chopper’s efforts are highly commendable.”

The GreenChill Partnership is an EPA cooperative alliance with the supermarket industry that works with stores to reduce their emissions of ozone-depleting greenhouse gas refrigerants. EPA estimates that if every supermarket in the nation joined GreenChill and reduced its emissions to the current GreenChill average, the nation could save the equivalent of 22 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 240 ozone depleting potential tons every year, all while saving $108 million in refrigerant expenses annually.

GreenChill’s founding food retail partners created baseline measurements of corporate-wide refrigerant emissions in 2007 and set goals to reduce emissions in 2008. Through those goals, partners reduced their aggregated total corporate emissions rate by 8.5 percent in one year.

This year’s awards recognize partners’ most recent successes. Awardees include:

    * Price Chopper’s Colonie, N.Y. store
    * King Kullen
    * Wild by Nature
    * Whole Foods
    * Hill Phoenix
    * Supervalu, the parent company of Acme


King Kullen and Wild by Nature, both supermarkets headquartered in Bethpage, N.Y., received New Partner Awards. New partners pledge to go beyond regulatory requirements by measuring and tracking refrigerant emissions, and then setting reduction targets for those emissions. Partners also agree to use only ozone-friendly alternatives in all new and remodeled stores.

Whole Foods, a nationwide chain of supermarkets, received the award for Most Improved Emissions Rate. As a GreenChill Founding Partner, Whole Foods shares GreenChill’s mission to minimize supermarkets’ impact on the Earth's ozone layer and on climate change. EPA recognized another food retailer that can be found nationwide, Supervalu, for achieving its emissions target in 2008/2009.

And refrigeration manufacturer Hill Phoenix also earned a Distinguished Partner Award for its advanced refrigeration technology, including compact chillers and secondary loop systems.

GreenChill now has a total of 46 partners, including 37 food retail partners with over 6,500 stores in 47 states.


Source: yosemite.epa.gov