KANSAS CITY, Missouri, January 20, 2009 (ENS) – Grocery stores typically spend up to 50 percent of their total energy costs on refrigeration, but they may be able to save energy and money by replacing open display coolers with cases that enclose refrigerated air behind glass doors.

But would customers be as quick to open doors, reach inside and choose products in enclosed cases as they are to select products from open cases?

University of Missouri, Kansas City mechanical engineering professors Brian Fricke and Bryan Becker are trying to answer that question with a detailed study of the amount of energy used by the two different types of supermarket display cases.

Fricke and Becker say many supermarkets are reluctant to use glass door display cases since a common perception is that doors reduce shopper impulse buying. As a result, these cases have had limited success in penetrating the market dominated by open vertical cases.

“It’s important that store owners realize that being sustainable doesn’t necessarily have to hurt profitability,” said Becker. “Thus, the goal of our study will be to prove whether or not door cases in fact have a negative impact on product sales vs. open cases.”

Glass door coolers could be more energy efficient than open coolers. (Photo by HCMN Marketing)

Two Michigan grocery stores, both part of the same national chain, will participate in the study. Both grocery stores will be installing two new refrigerated cases – one open and one enclosed with glass doors.

During the two months of the study, the energy use of each display case will be monitored with HOBO® Energy Logger Pro systems from Onset, a supplier of energy monitoring equipment based in Massachusetts.

The company manufactures data logger and weather station products that are used to measure temperature, humidity, light intensity, voltage, and other indicators used in research, commercial, industrial, and renewable energy applications.

“We’ll be using the Onset monitoring gear to measure air temperatures, discharge temperatures, air return temperatures, as well as electrical consumption of the lights, fans, and anti-sweat heaters on the cases,” explained Fricke.

“Measurements will be taken every minute or so, and we’ll offload the data from both systems on a weekly basis to analyze the energy consumption of both cases,” he said.

Product sales for each display case, as well as total store product sales, also will be tracked with the aid of stock keeping units during the course of the study.

For each day, a variety of data will be obtained from the electronic point-of-sales system at each store, including the barcode of the product, a description of the product, and the quantity and prices of products sold.

The research results will allow supermarket designers to make informed decisions as to which type of display cases to install.

Electric utilities can use this information as a basis for developing new incentive programs to accelerate adoption of more sustainable supermarket designs.

Fricke says the recent adoption of sustainable practices by the world’s largest retailer is having a ripple effect on other retail chains.

“Walmart has taken real sustainable initiative with having doors on refrigerators, solar panels on the roof, and other forward-thinking programs,” he said. “Because of that, other chains are interested in following along in that direction.”

The research is being conducted for the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers and the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology Institute.

View This Story On Eco–mmunity Map.

It’s easy to think, “Local food is always the best answer,” and leave it at that; most of the time, it might be right, but new information is emerging that disputes local’s lofty position at the throne of TreeHugging food. The notion of “food miles,” the distance your food has traveled to get to your plate, is absolutely an important consideration, but, as it turns out, we might not be able to let the buck stop there.

In a piece for the New York Times [www.nytimes.com], James E. McWilliams, the author of “A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America,” argues that it isn’t as simple as sourcing your food from local farmers, at farmer’s markets and through community-supported agriculture, and calling it a day. While there are undeniable benefits of eating local — unbeatable freshness, which leads to better taste, a more meaningful connection with your food and where it comes from and a more mindful approach to eating, just to name a few — McWilliams believes that, though it’s quite intuitive, fewer food miles (and, you’d think, fewer greenhouse gas emissions) doesn’t necessary mean it’s better for the environment. What?

“It all depends on how you wield the carbon calculator,” says McWilliams. “Instead of measuring a product’s carbon footprint through food miles alone, the Lincoln University scientists expanded their equations to include other energy-consuming aspects of production — what economists call ‘factor inputs and externalities’ — like water use, harvesting techniques, fertilizer outlays, renewable energy applications, means of transportation (and the kind of fuel used), the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed during photosynthesis, disposal of packaging, storage procedures and dozens of other cultivation inputs.” Given these ideas — a more life cycle analysis-type approach — the relative carbon footprint of foods, both local and otherwise, can change very quickly. To wit: lamb raised in New Zealand’s lush clover pastures and shipped to Britain “produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton, in part because poorer British pastures force farmers to use feed. In other words, it is four times more energy-efficient for Londoners to buy lamb imported from the other side of the world than to buy it from a producer in their backyard. Similar figures were found for dairy products and fruit.”

Hmm. So what does that mean for the burgeoning “eat local” movement? It sounds bad, but, says McWilliams, it absolutely doesn’t have to be: “‘Eat local’ advocates — a passionate cohort of which I am one — are bound to interpret these findings as a threat. We shouldn’t. Not only do life cycle analyses offer genuine opportunities for environmentally efficient food production, but they also address several problems inherent in the eat-local philosophy.
“Consider the most conspicuous ones: it is impossible for most of the world to feed itself a diverse and healthy diet through exclusively local food production — food will always have to travel; asking people to move to more fertile regions is sensible but alienating and unrealistic; consumers living in developed nations will, for better or worse, always demand choices beyond what the season has to offer.”
For the most part, we think McWilliams gets it right; essentially, what he’s saying can be boiled down to a great quote, also from the Times: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” [www.nytimes.com] There is no room for blind consumption in the green world, and, like many other environmental issues, there is no silver bullet for eating green all the time, and no one method — all organic, all local, etc. — will a perfectly green meal make. Get all the details about this new take on local here in the New York Times [www.nytimes.com].