Beyond Refrigeration Environmental Award

Call for entries coming soon

The Beyond Refrigeration Award is presented annually to a project or innovation that demonstrates the achievements of our sector in reducing environmental emissions from cooling in the UK. The award supports one of the most important priorities for IOR members – to address the challenges of net zero as well as facilitating the sharing of innovation, raising awareness of best practice and promoting the advancement of technology for the good of society.  Not only will the winning project, company and team be recognised before their peers at the IOR Annual Dinner each year, they will be invited to give a technical paper on the IOR written papers programme to ensure that awareness of innovative and successful solutions are maximised.

The award is linked to the practical application of the IOR’s Beyond Refrigeration priorities that are aimed at supporting the sector towards net zero. The award is open to companies or a collaboration between companies. Entries can be for a single or multi-site innovation or project in any refrigeration, air conditioning or heat pump field (industrial, commercial or domestic). The project must have been installed and must be operational. Entries must provide robust data on performance, energy usage and environmental impact. It is anticipated that a successful project will address at least four of the seven critical areas for addressing climate change as outlined in the IOR’s Beyond Refrigeration template.  These are: maximising system performance, using best technology, balancing heating and cooling, reducing the need for cooling, intelligent energy use, developing the best people and skills, working together and whole system lifetime. Read more about these topics at www.ior.org.uk/beyondrefrigeration

Judging Criteria

An independent panel of Judges will consider entries against the following criteria:

• Demonstration of Beyond Refrigeration principles cited.
• Scale and benefits of environmental savings achieved (eg compared to previous installations or industry benchmarks).
• Potential for replicability or wider application.
• Innovative nature of the approach.
• The award is designed to recognise recent projects, but as it is necessary to have had time to demonstrate result, it should be no longer than 2 years since the completion date of the project.

Winner of the 2024 Beyond Refrigeration Environmental Award

Smart Parc Energy Centre in Derby, GEA Heating & Refrigeration Solutions

This sustainable energy management centre, is based on an integrated heating and cooling network that redistributes waste heat. It uses an industrial ammonia heat pump to provide cooling as well as zero-carbon heating. The system can deliver up to 11MW of cooling and 10MW of heating across a 1.8 million square foot food production facility. It is designed to achieve a minimal seasonal heating efficiency of 400% (COPh 4).  Between 2024 and 2030, the system is projected to yield an annual CO2 saving of 27,000 tons compared with an equivalent R404a system.

The judges described this project as  “a technical and holistic makeover to the existing ‘district heating’ philosophy, focusing on food production and distribution hubs.”  They also agreed that it demonstrates potential for wider adoption on other sites.

Previous winners

• 2023 - True Circular Economy for the Cooling Industry by Sustain

Highly commends

• 2023 - Reaching Net Zero with Cooling Data by Tesco, Star Refrigeration  and Star Data Analytics