Leading academics and industrialists are to work together on an £800,000 research project to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide released by the food industry.

Amid increasing concern that climate change will wreak disastrous consequences for the whole world, the UK government is aiming for a 60 per cent reduction in carbon use by 2050.

To help energy-intensive industries, such as food production, meet this target, university researchers and industry representatives are joining forces on the Carbon Vision project to examine ways of using the gas more efficiently.

According to Peter Reason at the University of Bath School of Management, and director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice, low-carbon technologies have been available for some time but overlooked for "social, organizational and psychological reasons".

This multi-disciplinary approach, funded by scientific research councils will be one of the biggest investigations ever launched to tackle the carbon problem.

With a high use of cooking, refrigeration or chilling and air compressor systems, the food energy is a major energy consumer crying out for increased efficiency.

A suggested approach to this is to combine refrigeration, heating and electricity generation.

This single process, known as trigeneration, could convert up to 90 per cent of the energy contained in the primary fuel into a usable energy, making a huge reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

A second route to possible large savings in heating and cooling is air cycle refrigeration- a technology which has long been in existence but widely unused.

Also being explored are the business strategies used to implement exterior energy services, which have often been 'stalled' or sidelined despite theoretical advantages, said Nicholas Morley of project participant, Oakdene Hollins Ltd.

"Using action research strategies, the consortium will explore systematically how such 'stalled' solutions can be used not only at the local level of a plant, but how they can be rolled out more widely as part of an overall business strategy and into industrial sector and national policy levels," he claimed.

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