CLIVE Efford, the MP who has called for new legislation to phase out HFCs in supermarket refrigeration, has praised M&S on a recent visit to one of its stores.
The MP for Eltham and Plumstead, met with M&S' refrigeration specialist Bob Arthur at London's Westfield shopping centre on March 15, to see how a HFC-based refrigeration system can be modified to work with C02.

The M&S store uses a CO2 cascade system. The system's Searle packs cool CO2 which is pumped round the store into refrigeration display cases.

The store opened in October 2008. A conventional M&S store uses 350kgs of HFCs per system. Westfield's M&S store uses CO2 and 60kgs of HFCs per system. Year to date, the store has achieved a leakage rate of just 1%.

Bob Arthur said: 'The challenge is to make a system more energy efficient. The energy efficiency of a HFC system is far greater than a CO2 system'.

He said: 'We've paid a 12% premium over what we would for a standard installation of this kind. We have a development plant in our test centre which is testing the use of hydrocarbons with CO2, so that we can perhaps use this in our stores instead of HFCs'.

'We don't have the answers to everything at the moment. That's why we must progressively plan for a long-term strategy', he added.

M&S is targetted to phase out HFCs from its refrigeration by 2030 and has so far trained up 150 engineers to work with CO2.

Clive Efford said: 'This has been highlighted as an example of doing the right thing by investing additional money to modify existing refrigeration systems. I would like to see HFCs phased out of supermarket refrigeration between 2015-2050'.

Bob Arthur said:'The physics of the industry wouldn't support 2015. The industry does not have the equipment nor the skills to acheive this by this date'.

Efford acknowledged the additional cost to retrofitting equipment. The MP said: 'This isn't necessarily going to be market-driven. Government needs to act'.

Clive Efford tabled an Early Day Motion about the impact of HFC-based refrigeration on March 9 and with more than 60 MPs' signatures, he is working on getting all MPs to sign it.

The MP first called last summer for a bill to end the use of HFCs in supermarkets but says he is determined to keep the issue in the spotlight.

'Supermarkets would like the government to legislate to create a level playing field. At the moment the government believes EU competition rules say they can't act. This is not true. It is my hope the government will change their stance on this issue and adopt the bill'.

When asked how the legislation would work and whether sticks such as fines would help, Efford said: 'We've not talked too much on the detail. The plan is to first get the government to talk about adopting a bill'.