Ammonia/CO2 stores get GreenChill’s ‘Best of the Best’ award
Two U.S. supermarkets that use ammonia/CO2 cascade refrigeration systems – a Whole Foods Market and a Piggly Wiggly – received the GreenChill Award for “Best of the Best” certified stores from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s GreenChill Partnership.
In a Tuesday morning ceremony at the Food Marketing Institute’s Energy & Store Development Conference in New Orleans, Tom Land, manager of the GreenChill Partnership, presented the award to Keith Milligan, CIO of JTM Corp., for a Piggly Wiggly Store in Columbus, Ga; and to Tristam Coffin, director of sustainability and facilities at Whole Foods Market, and Mike Ellinger, global maintenance and refrigeration coordinator at Whole Foods, for the chain’s store in Dublin, Calif.
More than 125 supermarkets were certified silver, gold or platinum by the GreenChill program in 2015 for reducing emissions and charge to certain levels or using refrigerants with a global warming potential (GWP) of less than 150 (platinum only). The Whole Foods and Piggly Wiggly stores were platinum-certified. The Best of the Best award “goes to the best GreenChill certified store of all stores certified in the past year,” according to Land.
The Distinguished Partner GreenChill Award was given to Minneapolis-vased Target as the organization “that has demonstrated extraordinary leadership and initiative in achieving GreenChill’s mission in the past year,” said Land, who presented the award to Paul Anderson, Target’s director of engineering. Target has made a CO2 hybrid cascade system its prototype in newly opened PFresh stores, and is actively installing self-contained display cases using propane as the refrigerant.
The other GreenChill Awards recognized retailers for superior leak reduction or store certifications. These include:
- Most Improved Emissions Rate: Dorothy Lane Market (year-to-year) and Weis Markets (since baseline year).
- Best Emissions Rate: Giant Eagle (retail chain) and Port Townsend Food Co-op (small-independent).
- Superior Goal Achievement for achieving its annual leak reduction goal: Buehler’s Fresh Foods, City Market Onion River Co-op, Dorothy Lane Market, Meijer and Weis Markets.
- Store Certification Excellence (Supermarket) for the retailer that received the most GreenChill store certifications in the past year: Sprouts Farmers Market.
- Store Certification Excellence (Non-Supermarket) for the commercial systems manufacturer with the most systems installed in GreenChill certified stores in the past year: Hillphoenix.
- Store Re-Certification Excellence for each supermarket that has renewed its GreenChill store certification for five consecutive years: Stater Bros. Market (Chino, Grand Terrace, Lake Elsinore and Palm Desert, Calif.) and Weis Markets (Bellefonte, Pa.)