While refrigeration in supermarkets information ran throughout sessions at the Food Marketing Institute Energy & Store Development Conference, it also found itself as a stand-alone topic during several concurrent breakout sessions and as a front and center focus of a general session.

I’m starting to think that what I am about to write about will become an annual column. It concerns the latest global environmental conference that didn’t seem to produce any results. But now I’m starting to wonder if there might be some good should such events start to show some results.

My wife and I have been spending the past few weeks watching DVDs of Christmas-themed movies. But having been hanging around an industry that focuses on refrigeration and logic for so long, I keep looking at certain aspects of the movies for how cold is factored in and how logic is factored out.

The HVACR industry needs to be watching what is happening as the world continues to go green. Nowhere was this more evident than at last month’s Greenbuild International Conference & Expo in the newest - and most environmentally correct - section of the massive McCormick Place in Chicago.

A customized program in which both contractors and wholesalers can increase profits was one of the initiatives highlighted by the leadership of the Refrigeration Service Engineers Society during RSES’ 73rd Annual Conference and HVACR Technology Expo.

Chrissy Nardini has set herself apart as a leader in the HVAC industry. During the past year, the Heating, Airconditioning and Refrigeration Distributors International (HARDI) has taken an increasingly higher profile under her direction. This NEWSmaker is serving as the first female president of HARDI.

Mandates on reduced production of virgin HCFC-22 kicked in early in 2010, but, unlike what was predicted, ended up not affecting contractors much. The general consensus is that will probably be the case in 2011 also. Another small step-down in R-22 production is required in 2011 at the same time contractors continue to deal with the wild card issue of “dry shipped” R-22 condensing units.

The drumbeat for natural refrigerants is on the increase including the need for faster application. ATMOsphere 2010 was a recent international workshop held in Brussels, Belgium, with a single theme, “How to bring natural refrigerants faster to market.”

Creating works of art out of old refrigerators is one way to keep inefficient refrigerators that could be safety hazards out of circulation without having to send them to the junk heap. That seems to be one reason why a public utility commissioned artists to use old refrigerators as artistic statements.

In an interview conducted during Johnstone Supply’s 2010 Annual Meeting in October, DeWight Wallace, chief executive officer of Johnstone, noted the overall fiscal and structural strengths of the organization that has 125 owners and 350 branch locations.