A year ago, Carrier Transicold made a commitment to pursue low Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants across the food cold chain by 2020, and now the company says it has made progress on that front.

“We have made significant progress across the refrigeration cold chain,” said David Appel, president of Carrier Transicold and Refrigeration Systems. “Since the 2014 roundtable, Carrier provided technical analysis to support the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of carbon dioxide (CO2) as a natural refrigerant for transport refrigeration.

“We are making lower GWP refrigerants available to truck and trailer refrigeration customers. We’re also focusing research and development in this segment on the natural refrigerant CO2, which has a GWP of only one and is roughly 4,000 times better than conventional refrigerants used in transport and supermarket refrigeration applications,” added Appel. “Carrier offers customers some of the most environmentally sustainable refrigeration systems and we are committed to expanding our proven, environmentally responsible natural refrigerant systems for road transport.”

Representatives from the company participated in a White House roundtable on HFCs. There they outlined the progress they have made.

In addition to the more than 1,600 supermarkets in Europe using Carrier’s CO2OLtec HFC-free natural refrigeration technologies for food retail, Carrier installed its first food retail units in China this year using natural refrigerants to help lower GWP emissions, and installed its first ultra-low GWP hydrofluro-olefin (HFO) chiller, in Switzerland.

“While more research and technical breakthroughs are needed, we believe that low GWP refrigerants – including CO2 as a natural refrigerant – hold great promise across the cold chain,” Appel said.