Details of Grant

EPSRC Reference:

EP/V042548/1

Title:

Zero Emission Cold-Chain(ZECC) - Building the Road to Sustainable Cold-Chain Systems for Food Resilience

Principal Investigator:

Other Investigators:

Greening, Professor PK	Brown, Mr T	Maidment, Professor GG
Evans, Professor J	Wang, Dr X	Xu, Dr B
Foster, Dr AM	Terry, Professor LA

Researcher Co-Investigators:

Dr N Falagan

Project Partners:

Bitzer UK	British Frozen Foods Federation	Chilled Food Association
Cold Chain Federation	Federation of Environmental Trade Associ	Food and Drink Federation
Foodservice Equipment Association	Hubbard Products Limited	Star Refrigeration Ltd
United for Efficiency	United Nations Environment Prog (UNEP)	Wave Refrigeration

Department:

Chemical Engineering

Organisation:

University of Birmingham

Scheme:

Standard Research

Starts:

01 June 2021

Ends:

31 May 2025

Value (£):

1,465,929

EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:

Energy Efficiency	Energy Storage
Sustainable Energy Networks

EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:

Aerospace, Defence and Marine

Related Grants:

Panel History:

Panel Date	Panel Name	Outcome
22 Feb 2021	Decarbonising Heat 2	Announced

Summary on Grant Application Form

This project will bring together (i) world-leading interdisciplinary researchers from the UK working across the food cold chain sector and sustainable energy; (ii) stakeholder industries; (iii) new technology innovators and (iv) cold-chain customers from farmer to retailer to provide fundamental new knowledge and a whole systems approach to redefine the cold-chain architecture and map the opportunities available to reach net zero emissions by 2050 so as to deliver (i) demand and climate adaptation, (ii) resilience and (iii) decarbonisation of the cold-chain for the food industry and its stakeholders from farmer and fishers to consumers simultaneously.

The food cold chain is complex and lacks integration between sectors. Although technological challenges exist, many decarbonisation issues are techno-economic or behavioural. The project will integrate technical (engineering and food quality/safety), behavioural, financial and business aspects to provide sustainable integrated solutions to the decarbonisation conundrum. More than 60% of our food is dependent on the cold-chain, and cold-chain is a major contributor to our energy demand. The project will provide new information into in a field that has not been researched from a system approach yet.

Key Findings

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Potential use in non-academic contexts

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Impacts

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Summary
Date Materialised

Sectors submitted by the Researcher

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Project URL:

Further Information:

Organisation Website:

http://www.bham.ac.uk