Epta and Bitzer are among the winners of Germany’s annual Kältepreis, awarded by the German Ministry for the Environment, Nature Protection and Nuclear Safety for innovation in sustainable refrigeration. Both companies won with CO2 products.
Epta won first place in the category ‘Innovation in Refrigeration and Air Conditioning’. It developed a system to increase the year-round efficiency of the transcritical CO2 cycle by reducing the pressure. This way the system is 17% more efficient.
In the same category, Bitzer won the third-place prize for the Ecoline+ compressor that uses CO2. This year, the compressor also won a UK award for the most innovative refrigeration technology of the year. The award was handed out during the Berlin Energy Days (7-9 May 2018) by German Environment Minister Svenja Schulze. “The prize winners prove that refrigeration technology can be designed efficiently and in an environmentally friendly manner,” she said.
Currently, there are more than 120 million air conditioning and refrigeration units in Germany. The systems emit 60 million tons of CO2 equivalent (CO2e) per year.
To give an incentive to reduce the damaging potential of refrigeration, the German government decided to hand out the award, which is endowed with over €50,000 in total.
