Most supermarkets that do business in California are familiar with the state’s greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program. Through this program, California collects a significant amount of money each year from the state’s greenhouse gas emitters. The money collected must, by law, be invested by the state in programs that help fight climate change.
To that end, the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC), an environmental nonprofit that seeks to expand the use of natural refrigerants in commercial refrigeration, has been working with California’s government to create an incentive program that would give environmentally friendlier refrigeration technologies a financial kick-start. If approved by the California legislature, the Refrigerant Incentive Program would go a long way toward ending supermarkets’ struggles with refrigerant phaseouts, regulations, and government refrigerant dictates.