A cold logistics operation can produce a detailed fuel report while knowing surprisingly little about its refrigerant history. Service work may be recorded as a maintenance expense with no usable information about the gas or quantity involved. For Indian businesses assessing the footprint of refrigerated storage and transport, that is an important information gap.
UNEP and FAO’s sustainable cold chains report addresses both energy use and refrigerants within the wider cooling system. For an individual operator, a useful first action is to connect maintenance records with the equipment inventory and the carbon reporting process.
Make the inventory specific
Record each refrigeration asset, its location, refrigerant type and relevant technical information from reliable equipment documentation. Include mobile units as well as fixed plant. Keep identifiers consistent between operations, maintenance and accounts so that a service invoice can be connected to the correct asset.
Ask service providers to document additions, removals and the reason for the work. A quantity purchased is not necessarily the same as a quantity emitted, so avoid converting all purchases directly into leakage without checking the accounting method. Retain the evidence needed to explain the calculation and identify any missing records.
Use qualified personnel for technical decisions and service activities. Choosing another refrigerant involves equipment compatibility, performance and safety considerations. A lower climate impact label alone cannot establish that a substitute is suitable for an existing system. Sustainability teams should support the engineering review rather than bypass it.
Connect reporting with maintenance
Review repeated service events and unusual refrigerant additions alongside asset condition. The purpose is to find issues that need investigation, not to infer a leak rate from an incomplete ledger. Ask maintenance teams what further evidence would confirm the problem and what corrective action is appropriate.
Keep product condition in the assessment. Unreliable cooling can damage goods and create replacement movements, while excessive intervention can disrupt service. A maintenance plan should protect the required temperature performance and improve the quality of environmental records at the same time.
When reporting results, separate verified information from estimates and explain changes in the equipment fleet. Better records may reveal a larger footprint than an earlier incomplete calculation. That is a reason to strengthen management of the system, not to hide the revised result. Refrigerant visibility gives operators another practical route to improve a cold chain’s performance and credibility.
Sources
- Sustainable Food Cold Chains: Opportunities, Challenges and the Way Forward Source published 2022-11-12. Source accessed 2026-10-13.
Illustrative photograph: Mark König / Unsplash.
