An £800,000 research project has been launched to investigate and reduce carbon emissions released by the food industry. Carbon dioxide secretion is fuelling climate change and the UK government hopes to achieve a 60% reduction in carbon use by 2050.
Manufacturing companies such as Unilever, Northern Foods and Hygrade Foods have linked up with researchers from Bath, Bristol, Nottingham and Manchester universities to get to the core of the problem.
“Although low-carbon technologies are available, many of the reasons for not using them are social, organisational and psychological,” said Professor Peter Reason from the University of Bath School of Management, who is heading the Carbon Vision project.
“Although recent publicity around sustainability issues and climate change has increased awareness, and there is a growing sense of common concern in society, people generally feel powerless in the face of planetary level events such as climate change.”
The project, which is being funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Economic and Social Research Council, will look at areas where high and low temperature cycles are common. Cooking, refrigeration and air compressor systems are the main energy consumers within food processing. “Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions using innovative cooling, heating and power generation systems [tri-generation systems] could play a key role in reducing energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in the food industry,” said Professor Riffat from the University of Nottingham.
Researchers believe that tri-generation could convert up to 90% of the energy contained in the primary fuel into a usable energy.