Bristol is to become the first English city to host the world’s leading conference on natural refrigerants after being confirmed as host of the 2028 Gustav Lorentzen Conference at a handover undertaken on behalf of the Institute of Refrigeration by Star Refrigeration group managing director Dr Andy Pearson.
Dr Pearson represented the Institute of Refrigeration (IOR) at the closing ceremony of this year’s event in Hamilton, New Zealand, marking the handover to the UK ahead of the 18th IIR-Gustav Lorentzen Conference in 2028. Earlier in the conference, he had also delivered a plenary address and presented new research.
Held every two years, the Gustav Lorentzen Conference is the leading international forum for research and development in natural refrigerant applications, system design, energy efficiency and safety across refrigeration, air conditioning and heat pump technology. The conference has visited the UK twice before – in Glasgow in 2004 and at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in 2016 – but the 2028 event will mark the first time it has been held in England.
Dr Pearson said: “It was a privilege to represent the Institute of Refrigeration at the handover in New Zealand, and I look forward to welcoming colleagues from across the international refrigeration community to Bristol. The Gustav Lorentzen Conference is where the sector’s thinking on natural refrigerants is set, so bringing it to the UK is a significant moment for our industry.”
Dr Pearson’s role at the handover followed a substantial contribution to the conference programme. Alongside serving on GL2026’s International Scientific Committee, he was selected as one of the event’s plenary speakers and presented a second, separate technical paper – reflecting the depth of technical experience and culture of innovation developed through Star Refrigeration Group’s longstanding engineering expertise.
His plenary address, Reducing Risk in Refrigeration, took a fifty-year view of the pressures facing refrigeration businesses, from the energy crisis of the 1970s to today’s volatile utility and refrigerant markets, where fluorine shortages have driven prices up by as much as 800% since 2017. Its scope looked beyond conventional health and safety territory to examine supply chain disruption, cyber-security, the emergence of artificial intelligence, changing legislation, litigation and wider economic pressures – drawing together threads that are rarely considered together in a single piece of engineering research. A central conclusion was that investing in the skills and qualifications of staff at every level remains the single most powerful way for a business to reduce risk and build long-term resilience.
Dr Pearson’s second paper, Risk-Benefit Assessment of Industrial Refrigeration System Choices, applied the same risk mitigation focus to refrigerant selection, examining the importance of assessing industrial cooling systems on whole-life performance rather than capital cost or perception alone. The research challenged the assumption that the commercial advantages claimed for transcritical CO2 systems automatically translate to industrial applications, weighing them instead against low-charge ammonia technology across safety, energy efficiency, reliability, system complexity, maintenance and operating conditions.
The paper compared two case studies of UK warehouse installations: a transcritical CO2 system serving a refrigerated warehouse in Scotland and a low-charge ammonia installation at a refrigerated warehouse in England. Both systems achieved 100% refrigeration uptime in 2025 under the same level of proactive maintenance. However, the ammonia system recorded significantly lower specific energy consumption, at 22.63 kWh/m³ per year compared with 33.5 kWh/m³ per year for the CO2 system.
While Dr Pearson cautioned that the comparison represents too small a sample to support a universal conclusion, the findings reinforce the importance of assessing refrigeration technology against measured, real-world performance rather than assumptions about individual refrigerants.
Modelled against current electricity prices, the more efficient system would achieve payback in around 4.5 years even if the less efficient alternative had been installed free of charge – underlining Star Refrigeration’s ongoing message that, as energy prices rise, running costs are coming to dominate total cost of ownership, potentially accounting for as much as 85% of a system’s lifetime cost.
Dr Pearson was careful to note that CO2 retains clear technical advantages in specific applications, particularly at temperatures below -40°C, and that no single refrigerant is right for every project.
He said: “Industrial refrigeration systems are long-term investments, and the consequences of getting those decisions wrong can extend far beyond the initial capital cost. There is no single solution that is right for every application. What matters is understanding the requirements of the facility, assessing the evidence and selecting a system that will continue to perform efficiently and reliably throughout its operating life.”
Dr Pearson’s contribution to GL2026 as Bristol accepts the conference for 2028 reflects Star Refrigeration’s longstanding involvement in the development of natural refrigerant technology and, as risk factors increase with the ever-changing energy and climate landscape, its commitment to sharing engineering knowledge with the wider international community.
The 17th IIR-Gustav Lorentzen Conference on Natural Refrigerants took place at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand, from 23–26 August 2026. Further details of the 18th conference, to be held in Bristol in 2028, will be announced in due course.