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EPA Honors Dunwoody’s Sprouts Farmers Market for its Climate Protection Efforts

Release Date: 07/15/2014
Contact Information: Dawn Harris Young, (404) 562-8421 (Direct), (404) 562-8400 (Main), harris-young.dawn@epa.gov

ATLANTA - Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) honored Sprouts Farmers Market of Dunwoody, Georgia, for its innovative climate-friendly refrigeration technology. Regional Administrator Heather McTeer Toney presented the store with a GreenChill Platinum-Level Store Certification, the highest honor under the GreenChill Partnership program, for its deployment of a transcritical CO₂ refrigeration system.

The innovative technology being used in this store is recognized by EPA as both a major accomplishment under GreenChill as well as a significant step toward achieving the President’s Climate Action Plan goal to cut emissions of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), a class of potent greenhouse gases.

"I congratulate Sprouts Farmers Market’s Dunwoody store for taking action against climate change by deploying climate-friendly refrigeration technology,” said Regional Administrator Heather McTeer Toney. “I encourage others in the supermarket industry to follow their innovative approach to climate protection.”

Unlike the CO₂ used to refrigerate the Sprouts Dunwoody store, refrigerants used in many supermarkets have global warming potentials (GWPs) up to nearly 4,000 times that of CO₂ (GWP of 1). The Sprouts Dunwoody store is the 4^th supermarket in the United States to use this HFC-free refrigeration technology, and it is the southern-most deployment of the technology in North America. Although transcritical CO₂ technology has been used in cooler climates for the last decade, EPA hopes that the success of this refrigeration system in a warm climate will lead to widespread adoption of the technology across all of the diverse climates of the United States.

Last week, in response the President’s Climate Action Plan, EPA proposed a rule under the authority of its Significant New Alternatives Policy (SNAP) Program to remove certain high-GWP HFCs from the list of refrigerants approved for use in new and retrofit supermarket refrigeration systems.

GreenChill is an EPA partnership with the supermarket industry to reduce refrigerant emissions and decrease their impact on the ozone layer and climate change.

Learn more about the GreenChill Partnership: https://www.epa.gov/greenchill.
Learn more about EPA’s SNAP Program and the proposed rule: https://www.epa.gov/ozone/snap/regulations.html.