Zero-Emission Cold-Chain Building the Road to Sustainable Cold-Chain Systems for Food Resilience
Project Background
This consortium of academic and industrial partners will develop a coordinated strategy to accelerate the transition to a resilient, decarbonised food cold-chain in the UK.
Our aim is to develop and deliver a clear industry-led pathway to achieve the UK’s net zero 2050 target whilst maintaining food security and affordability for UK consumers and economic opportunity for the UK food industry.
Research Questions
- What are the energy and cooling requirements and boundary conditions to meet zero emission cold chain (ZECC)?
- What are the system design and decarbonisation technical strategies of ZECC?
- What are the logistics and optimal systems of ZECC?
- What are the product flow and post-harvest food management of ZECC?
- What and how to optimise utilisation of the above newly discovered ZECC systems?
- What are the barriers and opportunities of achieving ZECC?
Methods
- Defining whole system approach to decarbonise the UK food cold chain
- Forecasting cooling and cold chain energy demand
- Technical engineering analysis and system design
- Logistics scenarios and system efficiency experiments
- Assessing strategies and management
- Multiple Criteria Decision Analysis
Project Lead
Professor Toby Peters - University of Birmingham
Co-investigators/ PhDs/ RAs
- Professor Philip Greening
- Professor Bing Xu
- Professor Judith Evans - London South Bank University
- Professor Graeme Maidment - London South Bank University
- Tim Brown - London South Bank University
- Alan Foster - London South Bank University
- Professor Leon Terry - Cranfield University
- Dr Natalia Falagan - Cranfield University