ORLANDO, Fla. - The GreenChill Advanced Refrigeration Partnership continues to grow in membership, in the commitment of its members, and in new programs. In the latter are plans for a service contractor and technician certification through North American Technician Excellence (NATE).

During a presentation at the most recent Food Marketing Institute Energy & Technical Services Conference, Keilly Witman, communication specialist, Office of Atmospheric Programs, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said there are now more than 80 environmental partnership programs.

She noted the partnership itself is an EPA cooperative alliance with the supermarket industry that promotes advanced refrigeration technologies and encourages reduced refrigerant charges and environmental emissions. She said the priorities are to have supermarkets shift from DX systems to others such as secondary loop and distributed, and to shift from HCFC-22 to other refrigerants while promoting reduced refrigerant charges and equipment leak tightness.

She said that since its official launch in November 2007 with 10 founding partners, the organization now includes 22 supermarket partners, as well as four manufacturers of refrigeration systems and five chemical manufacturing partners.

CERTIFICATION

Witman said the “GreenChill-NATE project is to improve service technician and contractor knowledge of environmental best practices in refrigeration service and installation.” The equation includes, she said, “training and testing on GreenChill best practices” as well as “GreenChill certification for service technicians and contractors” who have a passing grade on a refrigeration-related NATE exam and “agree to report installation leak tightness statistics to GreenChill.”

RECOGNITION

The EPA official noted that current regulations allow for a 35 percent leak rate in supermarkets. Overall, the supermarket industry has lowered its rates to 23.5 percent, she said. At the same time, she said GreenChill member stores have achieved a 13.7 percent rate.

During the FMI event, she presented special recognition to two GreenChill members for “best emission rates” said to be less than 10 percent. The recognition went to Giant Eagle and Harris-Teeter. Accepting on behalf of the companies were Cliff Timko, energy manager for Giant Eagle, and Michal Shepard, director, energy and maintenance for Harris Teeter.

Publication Date: 11/03/2008