Keynote Presentations

Monday 11th April

Delivering a sustainable cold chain is a worldwide initiative

James S. Curlin, United Nations Environment Programme

James Curlin will discuss the importance of international cooperation to the delivery of a sustainable cold chain. His talk will explore how countries must build national policies and action frameworks to ensure that more efficient cold chains are implemented. How, by advancing environmental protections to demand more energy-efficient equipment and identifying opportunities for the use of low GWP refrigerants, a more sustainable future can be achieved and enable countries to expand their cold chain sustainably which will lead to increasing food security, expanding economic opportunity, and realising significant environmental benefit.

Role of the UK in developing and delivering cold chains worldwide

Issy McFarlane, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and Dr Elizabeth Warham, Department for International Trade

This presentation will explore the UK's role in improving, developing, and delivering a sustainable global cold chain.  It will showcase how UK's involvement in helping to deliver the UN’s sustainable development goals and show its commitment to delivering the Montreal Protocol and increasing the UK's international trade.  

Tuesday 12th April 

The importance of a Sustainable Cold Chain

Olaf Schulze, Metro Properties 

This talk will explore why a sustainable cold chain is essential. It will discuss the challenges and opportunities and the benefits that a sustainable cold chain brings. 

Wednesday 13th April

Food for thought: How to make our food system more sustainable?

Andrea Voigt, Danfoss

Food supply represents one of society’s greatest paradoxes. While already today, millions of people are undernourished, one third of all food produced for human consumption is either lost or wasted on the way from farm to fork. This is even more alarming as by 2050, food production needs to increase by 60% to feed the growing population (compared to 2007).

The cold chain has a crucial role to play. All along the way from farm to fork, food safety, freshness and hygiene must be secured with reliable as well as cost- and energy-efficient cold chain systems. However, food is not a “stand-alone” topic. It is intrinsically linked to themes such as biodiversity, water, urbanization – all of them under the umbrella of climate change and exacerbating the food challenge that we will face in the coming decades.

 What does it take to address these challenges? What role for the cold chain? What is needed to drive change and make our food system more sustainable? Do we need to radically change our habits, moving from global to local, from large scale to small scale, from traditional food production to artificial food production? Do we have the technologies needed and are we making good use of them? What are the main stumbling blocks?

The European Green Deal is one of the most ambitious policy frameworks in the world with the overarching goal of achieving climate neutrality. It explicitly recognizes the importance of tackling the food challenge with its Farm to Fork Strategy. But is this enough? Are there globally overarching policy trends on how to move forward and lessons to be learned or mistakes to be avoided as developing countries look into developing their own approach on sustainable food systems?

This presentation will discuss ways to make our food system more sustainable from a societal and policy-based perspective, while highlighting the role of the cold chain and anchoring it in the fourth industrial revolution.

Keynote Presenters

James S. Curlin: 

Head of the OzonAction Branch in the Law Division of the United Nations Environment Programme. He has worked at UNEP since 1995 and specializes in compliance with multilateral environmental agreements, notably the Montreal Protocol. Before that, he worked in the US in both the private and public sectors on pollution prevention.

Issy McFarlane; International Stratospheric Ozone and Fluorinated Greenhouse Gases Senior Policy Advisor at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of Defra

Elizabeth Warham: Lead at Agri-Tech  Department for International Trade.  Elizabeth Warham leads the Department for International Trade Agri-Tech team promoting investment and trade of innovative agricultural businesses, products and services to improve agriculture through the cutting edge of innovation

Olaf Schulze:  Energy Management & Real Estate Sustainability, METRO PROPERTIES

Andrea Voigt: Global Public Affairs Leader. Danfoss 

Andrea’s experience in the HVACR industry spans over two decades. In 2021, she joined Danfoss Climate Solutions as Head of Global Public Affairs and Member of the Strategy & Sustainability Team.

Danfoss is a global technology partner with over 40,000 employees and 95 production sites worldwide. Before Danfoss, for the past 12 years, she was leading the European Partnership for Energy and the Environment (EPEE), a major Brussels based industry association advocating for sustainable heating and cooling technologies at EU and at global level. Previous assignments included roles in sales, marketing and communication. She is a member of ASHRAE, of the German HVACR Engineers Association DKV and a Board member of several associations and alliances at EU and at global level.