At ATMOsphere Europe Summit 2023, experts from the Basel Agency for Sustainable Energy (BASE) – a non-profit based in Basel, Switzerland, and specialized partner of the United Nations Environment Programme – reported on the success of servitization projects based on natural refrigerants around the globe.
Emma Wink, project lead and Dimitris Karamitsos, Senior Energy Efficiency Business Developer Specialist at BASE explained to attendees the concept of servitization, an alternative business model where the service, rather than the equipment, is sold. The manufacturer rent the equipment to the end-user, which pays a fee against its use. Servitization aims at overcoming some of the well-known barriers to the uptake of sustainable cooling solutions in the industry, such as higher costs of equipment, perceived risks and expertise to install and run operations.
Capture: state of play of servitization across different industries.
Wink elaborated on two case studies: refrigeration-as-a-service for supermarkets in Sweden, executed by Danfoss in partnership with Ohmia Retail International, as an all-in-one service solution for energy-efficient transcritical R744 (CO2) systems. The servitisation of this project foresees that retailers are charged for their consumption of refrigeration rather than purchasing equipment. The systems have been operational since March 2022.
They also reported the case study of an ammonia (R-717) refrigeration-as-a-service system in the food and beverage sector in South Africa, where Energy Partners Refrigeration and food manufacturer Dr. Oetker worked together to reach up to 1,671kW (475.2TR) of total cooling through a 15-years servitization contract that is delivering up to 20% energy savings and avoiding an estimated 1,200 metric tons of CO2 annually. Karamitsos explained that multiple projects have been implemented around the world with natural refrigerants through the servitization model. The presentation can be accessed by clicking here.
Within BASE, the SET Alliance and the Efficiency as a Service (EaaS) initiative support the servitization in refrigeration and cooling, aiming at accelerating the deployment of natural refrigerants. The SET Alliance (the global Servitisation for Energy Transition Alliance) is a network of visionary entities which aims to accelerate the deployment of sustainable, clean and energy-efficient solutions to reach the path to net zero in a sustainable and circular manner through the deployment of this innovative business model. The SET Alliance was founded by BASE. ATMOsphere, organizer of ATMOsphere Europe Summit 2023, is part of the steering committee of the SET Alliance.
More information on the SET Alliance can be found here.
