A supermarket experimental environmental analysis by using ETEWI methodology

The greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities have determined the global mean temperature increase during last years. The increase of heating, cooling, ventilation, and refrigeration demands in commercial and industrial sectors represent a high contribution to world environmental emissions. The refrigeration devices and air conditioning units used in supermarkets are responsible for between 3÷4% of the total annual energy consumption in industrialized countries. The environmental analysis by innovative metric indexes represents a good solution to evaluate, chose and compare supply systems on the basis of energy loads. The Innovation Expanded Total Equivalent Warming Impact methodology was designed to measure the direct and indirect emission caused by air conditioning and refrigeration systems by including the Urban Heat Island effect overcoming the traditional Total Equivalent Warming Impact and including also natural gas-based devices. Considering the refrigeration and air conditioning consumption of a supermarket case study, a comparison between TEWI and ETEWI methodology has been realised.