Supermarket firm Sainsbury’s has saved 250,000 tonnes of carbon through the roll-out of specialist CO2 refrigeration. The green technology is much less damaging to the environment than commonly used refrigeration gases, the supermarket claim.

David Sheehan, Sainsbury’s director of store development said: “As we continue to invest, we make the market for this technology more accessible to others. In this way we hope that other companies will follow our lead and recognise the benefits brought about by CO2. We estimate that if all UK supermarkets converted to CO2, UK carbon emissions would immediately drop by 2 million tonnes per year.”

Refrigeration is the largest source of greenhouse gases in any supermarket through both the energy required to power them and the refrigerants themselves.