Net zero policy and tightening energy regulation are converging on the industrial construction sector, and developers, M&E consultants and facilities teams are feeling the squeeze. Anyone responsible for buildings that depend on process cooling, whether food and beverage plants, pharma facilities or logistics warehouses, has a shrinking amount of time to get ahead of the issue.
No Longer a Future Problem
Reaching net zero by 2050 involves legally binding carbon budgets, and the framework behind them keeps getting stricter. For those specifying or managing industrial buildings, this has stopped being a line item in a long-term feasibility study and become something that affects decisions being made this year.
Energy-intensive sectors are dealing with several pressures landing at once: energy bills that haven’t come down, stricter reporting requirements, and closer attention from investors, occupiers and supply chain partners on Scope 1 and 2 emissions.
Cooling is typically one of the biggest single draws on energy within an industrial building. With prices staying high and the government widening mandatory audit requirements through ESOS (the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme), any building owner or developer who hasn’t reviewed their cooling plant recently is carrying more risk than they might realise, both financial and reputational.
The Business Case Has Changed
This isn’t only a compliance issue for design and construction teams; it’s increasingly a financial one. Payback periods on efficient cooling technology have shortened considerably as energy prices have climbed, and what used to sit in the “nice to have” column during value engineering is now competing seriously on return on investment.
That’s shifting how these systems get treated in capital planning, across automotive, pharmaceutical, food and beverage, and plastics manufacturing facilities alike, where cooling upgrades are increasingly assessed alongside, rather than after, core production investment.
Owen Crawford, Sales & Project Director, Direct Cooling Solutions, said, “What we are seeing across the industry is a genuine shift in how plant engineers and energy managers are approaching cooling. Historically, efficiency was a secondary consideration when specifying or maintaining a cooling plant.
That has changed. Free cooling, for example, is increasingly being integrated into new and existing chiller-based process cooling systems, using ambient air temperatures to reduce or eliminate compressor operation for significant periods of the year.
Similarly, heat recovery is moving from a best-practice recommendation to an operational priority. We recently completed a heat recovery project where waste heat from the cooling process is being recaptured and redistributed for use elsewhere in the facility, rather than simply being rejected into the atmosphere.”
Regulation Is Closing in From Several Angles
Alongside the economics, the rules themselves are getting harder to ignore. The Environment Act 2021 and the ongoing tightening of F-Gas regulations, which govern refrigerants widely used in industrial cooling plant, are pushing a wider rethink of how cooling systems get specified.
Facilities still running older plant with high global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants are subject to phased restrictions, which makes this a planning issue for estate managers now rather than something to deal with when a unit eventually fails.
Energy audits keep turning up the same issues, and they’re worth flagging to anyone managing an industrial estate: cooling systems sized for production volumes that no longer match current output, and plant that was never properly commissioned or controlled.
The Bigger Barrier Is Guidance, Not Awareness
For many smaller and mid-sized manufacturers and developers, the sticking point isn’t knowing that something needs to change; it’s knowing exactly what to specify. Working out the right balance of free cooling, heat recovery potential and refrigerant transition planning takes a mix of building services expertise, energy management know-how and regulatory knowledge that not every project team has in-house.
There is funding available to help close that gap, including the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) and enhanced capital allowances for energy-efficient plant, though uptake has been patchy.
Specialist cooling engineers and industry bodies are increasingly stepping in to help project teams put together schemes that stack up both technically and financially, and early collaboration between M&E consultants and specialist contractors tends to produce the strongest outcomes here.
Treating Cooling Plant as an Asset, Not Just Overhead
Crawford noted: “Net zero cannot be achieved in manufacturing without addressing energy consumption at the plant level, and process cooling is one of the areas where the greatest gains are available.
The technology exists, the financial case is increasingly compelling, and the regulatory direction of travel is clear. What is needed now is for more manufacturers to treat their cooling infrastructure as a strategic asset rather than a fixed overhead.”
Cost, regulation and design pressure are all pushing in the same direction at once. For architects, M&E consultants, contractors and facilities managers working on process-intensive industrial buildings, the real question isn’t whether cooling infrastructure needs attention. It’s how soon, and at which point in the building’s lifecycle that attention gets paid.
