Livingstone Consulting, an engineering and sustainability consulting firm whose scope of expertise includes supermarket refrigeration, has joined the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC) at the silver level. The NASRC is an action-oriented 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to creating a climate-friendly future for refrigeration through natural refrigerants.
Livingstone Consulting works with clients across a range of industries on sustainability issues in the built environment, including building services engineering, sustainable design and solutions, onsite energy strategy, decarbonization, building optimization, and refrigerant management. Its experience includes the application of natural refrigerants and related disciplines like supply chain readiness and research and development of emerging technologies and applications.
“Our mission is to pioneer sustainable change in the built environment. What this really means is we are committed to working with partners to strategize and most importantly execute solutions that address environmental & economic challenges, namely climate change. We see natural refrigerants as a critical climate solution and a tremendous opportunity for the supermarket industry,” said Tristam Coffin, Livingstone president.
Amid the broad trend toward corporate responsibility, pressure has been growing for businesses to address sustainability across their operations. Sustainability is an especially important issue for supermarket operators, who also face increasing legislative pressures to reduce the overall carbon footprint of their refrigeration systems.
“Grocers are caught between growing pressures to transition to climate-friendly refrigerants while improving the energy performance of their refrigeration systems,” said Morgan Smith, NASRC manager of programs & operations.
With zero or near-zero global warming potential (GWP) and a potential to improve energy performance, natural refrigerants are a future-proof solution for increasing refrigerant regulations and could play a key role in reaching corporate sustainability goals.Despite their benefits, barriers such as upfront cost premiums, a shortage of workforce training, and a lack of performance data have prevented the wide scale adoption of natural refrigerants in the US.
NASRC, in partnership with its 130-plus stakeholders from across the supermarket refrigeration industry, is addressing those barriers head-on to make natural refrigerants a more feasible business choice for supermarkets.
“The NASRC is not only a leader in the supermarket industry, but they are also a vital environmental organization and unique resource in the sustainable refrigeration solutions and natural refrigerant space. We are proud to be aligned with their mission and join as a member,” said Coffin.
“Livingstone brings in a unique expertise that will help grocers meet their sustainability goals and successfully navigate increasing refrigerant regulations,” said Smith. “We’re excited to welcome them into our network and look forward to working with them to drive our mission forward.”
NASRC’s membership network represents more than 24,000 US supermarket locations and stakeholders from virtually every sector of the commercial refrigeration industry, including service contractors, manufacturers and suppliers, consultants, engineering firms, trade associations, distributors, and nonprofits.
