Refrigeration is Great, but Heats Our Planet

I started this post thinking about Refrigerators and wanted to review them the way I did Dishwashers. So I started by looking into our attempts at food preservation, from cellars to ice boxes, to early refrigeration machines, leading up to now, a time of climate change.

I wound up looking into not only cooling systems in general, but found that there was a direct path between our refrigeration systems, global warming, ocean acidification, and climate change. This is why my posts are such a learning experience for me, I never anticipate properly where I will end up.

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Food Preservation to Refrigeration

Civilization has always had to deal with the concentration of peoples, within a defined border, and issues related to that concentration. Those issues range from transportation, to waste disposal, and to food. Cities rely on more rural areas for their food, so how do we get fresh food from the farm to our tables? Once the food arrives in stores, how do we warehouse the food so it does not spoil too quickly? How do consumers keep food fresh for use?

Some of the historical answers were fairly easy. Farmers would bring fresh food to the markets and sell their products direct to consumers; while mercantile stores sold canned goods, flour and other processed foods. Then you only bought what you could use over the next few days to a week, needing more just when the next market opened.

But back then, we were more disbursed, and family farms and gardens were a part of everyday life. So often, the preservation of food was a skill held by nearly everyone. These traditional ways of food preservation were time intensive, some required constant monitoring to weed out soiled products, and yet worked well enough to feed millions of people during Winter or times of crop failures.

Here are the ancient techniques that were used to preserve food (and they are still used today):

• Cool underground “root cellars” were used by each 18th century English and American household (great for onions, potatoes, yams, squash, garlic, etc.).
• In very cold climates, food could be naturally frozen and also kept in cellars, which were more like ice cave cellars.
• Meat and fish, and some veggies and fruit as well, could be dried or smoked or cured for preservation (salmon, deer, hogs, berries, etc).
• Veggies could be fermented and kept in containers for long periods of time.
• Pickling was another way to extend the shelf life of food.
• We converted food, say milk to cheese, to preserve the nutrients longer.
• Confit, known ~4k years ago, is the slow cooking of meat (or garlic) in fat, putting that food into containers, and covering it all with fat that seals the food for longer storage.

Then, as is our tendency, we came up with innovative ideas that helped us preserve food in new and easier ways. One idea was to bring cool storage inside the house, and out from underground.

• Canning started ~1810s as the concept of placing food in tin cans was discovered.
• By 1858 the jars for home canning were created and that started home cooks preserving foods from their gardens in their own kitchens.
• The concept of an ice-box was patented in 1802, but the In-home “ice boxes” were being widely constructed in the 1840s and this way refrigeration came to families.
• We started having in-house, coolish-pantries in the early 1900s (see my post Pantries are Necessary).
• Pasteurizing products like milk started in the 1890s and extends to today as a spoilage deterrent.
• Refrigerators and freezers were being patented, and in the 1920s frozen food was invented.

Finally, we took steps into the modern age of ultimate convenience and energy use.

• In 1911 refrigerators and freezers started showing up in homes, and are now everywhere, just like other cooling systems like household AC.
• Freeze-drying food started in 1906, but blossomed in the 1950s as we became backpackers, astronauts, and survivalists, etc.
• Starting in 1963 foods were irradiated to remove insects and increasing shelf life.
• Chemicals were added to processed food for that long shelf life as well.
• Sous vide, a process if sealing food in a vacuum sealed bag, is also used to preserve food.

Refrigeration + Cooling as Pollutants

Commercial refrigerators existed since the 1850s, the first patent was in 1899, but the first home refrigerator wasn’t introduced until 1911. Eventually, as we modified and improved the older refrigerators we started to use compressors, condensers, and coils that were filled with volatile compounds allowing for the transfer of heat from inside to outside. This is the system that eventually made refrigeration and air-conditioning an every day possibility for families.

• 1 in 4 USA family have 2+ refrigerators
• Nearly 90% of USA families have air conditioners

In 2018 the International Energy Agency (IEA) reported that 2016 use of refrigeration accounted for ~6% of the world’s energy consumption, and air-conditioning was ~8%. These numbers led IEA to predict that our worldwide energy use, by air-conditioners and refrigeration alone, could triple by 2050. Of course, all this time the power generated to run our cooling systems was supplied mainly by coal-burning energy plants, and then partially by nuclear power.

We are currently in the time of changing weather, when our cooling systems are needed as a response to global warming. In a very self-perpetuating way, the more the environment heats up, the more we need cooling systems, and the more energy is needed to respond to the climate. This energy is currently still created by fossil fuels that release its own green-house gas, while the refrigerant in our cooling systems uses another green-house gas, hydrofluorocarbons. The older cooling systems often leak, so we are releasing gasses into the air that accelerates global warming.

Refrigeration is Everywhere

Interestingly, when I asked people about the location of refrigeration, the number one answer was in our homes. Then second was either restaurants or grocery stores, but no one seemed to be aware of every place where we now rely on refrigeration.

• Homes, apartments, townhouses, etc.
• In-front for consumers and in-back for storage in grocery stores
• Packaging plants (especially for frozen foods and meat products)
• Restaurants or any place with food preparation (hotels, fire stations, hospitals, schools, etc.)
• Transport trucks and warehouses
• Vending machines
• Academic and research laboratories
• Food processing sites
• Libraries and archives (for some environmentally controlled rooms)
• Cooling systems (AC) in schools, office buildings, homes, stores, etc.
• Airplanes, boats + ships, RVs, cars, trains, and submarines.

Without this technology, modern civilization would run into severe food-related problems. People would be globally affected by the loss of artificial cooling systems. But these systems come with a very heavy price, first is the reliance on low cost, consistent electricity and second is the warming of our planet.

Cooling is Heating the Planet

The BBC records that the cooling industry is important, but it is also incredibly polluting – accounting for around 10% of global CO2 emissions. That is three times the amount produced by aviation and shipping combined. And as temperatures around the world continue to rise due to climate change, the demand for cooling will increase too.

Originally the most common type of refrigerant was chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), but those depleted the ozone layer, so eventually a worldwide effort stopped the creation and use of those chemicals with the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

• ScienceDaily: (2001) Shredded foam insulation from junked refrigerators is releasing substantial amounts of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, into the earth’s atmosphere — and the more finely shredded the foam, the faster the release, a Danish researcher reports.

So chemical manufacturers replaced CFCs in cooling systems with two groups of chemicals: hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs). These did not appear to damage the ozone as much as CFCs, but they turned out to be very potent greenhouse gasses themselves. So as these leak from our refrigerators or air conditioners, we are making the planet warmer. In fact, combined, BBC writes that these chemicals account for 11% of global warming.

They also report that in 2016, 150+ countries signed the Kigali Amendment, agreeing to reduce HFC consumption by 80% by 2047.

What to do?

The UN and IEA are estimating that the number of global cooling devices will increase from  3.6 billion to 9.5 billion by 2050. In part, this is happening as poorer nations gain wealth, they are seeking cooling systems for their own food and homes, and who can begrudge them of this luxury that is quickly becoming a necessity as the world heats up.

So what needs to be done to stop the cycle of cooling systems causing global warming, requiring more cooling systems, warming our world even more? 

• Proper housing and city design can increase natural cooling and air flow through living spaces so air conditioning units are not as required.
• The cooling industry needs to innovate away from using climate warming chemicals.
• Consumers need to select energy efficient, climate protective refrigerants.
  • Try here to find those types of systems: Climate Friendly Cooling
• The cooling industry needs to drastically improve energy efficiency of current refridgerators, freezers, and air conditioning.
• The USA needs to move from coal, or limited resource dependent energy, to solar, wind, wave and other systems that are renewables.
• Studies have shown that 90% of climate harm is done during the end-of-life of these cooling systems. We need proper recycling and reclaiming of cooling materials, which requires specialized disposal plans to prevent gas leakage.
  • Here is one lead for fridge recycling: EnergyStar
  • California appliance recycling: DTSC
• Modify all the vending machines to using non-damaging coolants.
  • GlobalNewsWire (2019): 15M vending machines worldwide, 2.28M in Japan, 5M in the USA.

In Europe, they already have laws on the books requiring the reclaiming of refrigerants prior to disposal. Not sure why the USA is lagging so far behind. Luckily, in 2015 they also started to phase out HFCs and are using primarily CO2.

Oh Dear

Wish I had done this exploration before we bought our fridge. Our older one died last year and we had to replace it quickly so as not to lose any food. We bought one, but I did not pay attention then to the coolant used, just that it was recommended by Consumer Reports and was Energy Star rated.

I am now also aware that I have a fridge/freezer combo in my kitchen along with a ~20 wine bottle fridge. But positively speaking, we never had used any air conditioner in our house, because mainly we had not yet experienced severe heat here. But, when our furnace broke, we replaced it with an environmental friendly Heat Pump that does supply some cooling for those few days or weeks we need it.

Not sure this evens out, but all we can do is try.

—Patty

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