Energy costs, sustainability, and environmental trends are among the overriding topics for the upcoming Food Marketing Institute Energy & Technical Service Conference Sept. 7-10 in Orlando, Fla.

Michael Sansolo, president, Sansolo Solutions, will discuss competition, consumer demands, energy, inflation, a weakening economy, and labor issues in a talk that will cover possible ways to deal with such issues.

Richard Costello, partner, Acela Energy Group, will analyze natural gas supplies, coal plants, and carbon credits, as well as volatile conditions related to high oil prices.

There will also be an update of the FMI Sustainability Task Force. The presentation will come from Ed Estberg, senior director for facilities, Raley’s Supermarkets.

Andy Campbell, head of refrigeration environmental, Tesco Stores Ltd., will outline energy and environmental trends in Europe.

Paul Hepperla, director of energy savings, Verisae Inc. will talk about how to calculate a carbon footprint for a store. There will also be an update on the overall Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations related to supermarkets from the EPA’s Julius Banks, as well as the GreenChill voluntary program from the EPA’s Keilly Witman.

Also on the governmental front there will be regulatory-legislative update under the title “What Are They Thinking In Washington?” presented by Sheila Millar, partner Keller Heckman.

The issue of using R-744 (CO2) as a refrigerant will be described in a retail case study to be presented by Benny Smith, director of facilities for Golub Corp., and Mark Hankle, mechanical engineer for Price Chopper Supermarkets.

There will also be a number of breakout sessions on such topics as energy procurement, fuel cells, day lighting, energy awareness, variable-speed/variable-frequency drives, roofing, alarm monitoring, controls, installation basics, refrigerant/management/leak checking, copper theft, R-22 retrofits, commissioning, and secondary coolants.

The conference site will be the Omni Orlando Resort at ChampionsGate.

For more information, visit www.fmi.org/events.

Publication date: 08/04/2008