Tag Archives: energy efficiency

Industrial Refrigeration

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This document is a step-by-step guide to improving energy efficiency in medium to large-scale industrial refrigeration systems for industry. It provides best practice information on system operation and outlines opportunities for improving system performance and
efficiency, which will lead to benefits for your business.

By following this guide, you will be able to determine what changes can be made in order to improve the performance of equipment, reduce operating costs and improve
environmental outcomes. Using refrigeration loads to minimise peak demand energy costs is not covered in this document.

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Understanding Victoria’s Fruit and Vegetable Freight Movements

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While the greenhouse emissions from agriculture (12.9% of Victoria’s total emissions) are
increasingly well understood, emissions generated throughout the supply chain are considerably
less so. Post-farmgate activities include packaging, processing, transport, storage, retail etc.
These supply chains are complex and variable.The horticulture industry in Australia is valued at $3.5 billion and in Victoria is worth $1.3 billion per annum. An improved understanding of the factors affecting greenhouse emissions, fuel use and potential vulnerabilities in the supply chains of these products will be important to their ongoing viability.

The analysis outlined in this report is intended to contribute to an increased understanding of how
fruit and vegetables are moved from production to consumers in Victoria and the greenhouse
emissions implications of this operation. The analysis is focused only on the transport
components of the supply chain, including refrigeration within transport where required, but it
does not include energy use of emissions from production, processing, packaging etc. It should
not be understood as a lifecycle analysis, it is intended only to increase understanding regarding
the transport components of food (particularly fruit and vegetable) supply chains in Victoria.

Overall, key findings of this analysis are:
a) The farm-to-fork transport of of fruit and vegetables in Victoria generate significant
greenhouse gas emissions.

b) Distances between the different elements of the supply chain, including consumer markets,
have a significant influence on the total GHG emissions generated, as do the type of vehicles
used and the proportion of backhauling.

c) Following the rationale of b) and from a transport emissions and fuel use perspective there
are significant benefits in retaining F&V production in proximity to the major population
centres. In this case, it is Melbourne’s consumers.

d) Most importantly, the proximity of retail outlets to consumers (or access without a car) is
critical to decrease the consumer transport component in farm-to-fork supply chains.

e) Seasonality has a large influence on the amount of fuel used / emissions generated from the
transport of fruits and vegetables. Under current production patterns, Victoria has a large
surplus in March and a likely deficit of produce in October.

f) GHG emissions in these analysis act as a proxy for fuel use. Significant GHG emissions also
represent vulnerabilities of both supply chain operators and consumers to increases in fuel
price.

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An assessment of greenhouse gas emissions from the Australian vegetables industry

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Recently, partly due to the increasing carbon consciousness in the electorates and partly due to the imminent introduction of the Australian Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), estimating carbon footprints is becoming increasingly necessary in agriculture. By taking data from several sources, this study estimates the national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from
a variety of farm inputs, for the 23 key vegetables crops grown in Australia. For the 121,122 ha of land occupied by vegetable farms, there are 1.1 MtCO2e GHG emissions or 9.2 tCO2eha−1.

  • 65 % of total GHG emissions from the vegetable industry are due to electricity use for irrigation and post-harvest on-farm activities,
  • 17 % from soil N2O emissions due to N fertiliser use,
  • 10 % from agrochemicals,
  • 7 % through fossils fuels and
  • 1 % from on-farm machinery.

The top four vegetables, potatoes, lettuce, tomatoes and broccoli account for 29.1 %, 7.9 %, 5.9 % and 7.2 % of total GHG emissions from vegetables, respectively. However, the ratio of GHG emissions between the highest and lowest-emitting crops per hectare and per tonne, are different. Therefore, care must be exercised in carbon footprint labeling vegetable products to ensure that the labels reflect carbon emissions on a per tonnage basis.

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