ATMOsphere, publisher of NaturalRefrigerants.com and organizer of the ATMOsphere (ATMO) America Summit 2025 on natural refrigerant-based cooling and heating, announced the winners of the ATMO Awards/North America for 2025 during a ceremony on June 11 at the Summit in Atlanta, Georgia.
The awards honor excellence in the development and implementation of natural refrigerant-based HVAC&R systems. Awards were given in three categories:
- Best-in-Sector/Retail End User: Costco
- Innovation of the Year: Bitzer’s Fender Software
- Person of the Year: Gary Schrift, President of the International Institute of All-Natural Refrigeration (IIAR)
The awards were based on industry nominations and other criteria. The Best-in-Sector and Person of the Year awards were selected by ATMOsphere, which also prepared a shortlist of Innovation of the Year finalists. Online voting leading up to and at ATMO America determined the winner of the Innovation of the Year award.
Best-in-Sector/Retail End User: Costco
The Best-in-Sector/Retail End User award is given to a food retail company that has excelled in advancing adoption of natural refrigerant-based systems. Accepting the award for Costco was Tyler Graham, Buyer for Costco.
Issaquah, Washington-based Costco operates 903 warehouse stores globally, 732 of which are in the U.S. and Canada. According to its 2024 Climate Action plan, the retailer installed 30 transcritical CO2 (R744) refrigeration systems between its 2022 and 2024 fiscal years, 10 in 2022, 7 in 2023 and 13 in 2024, and has installed these systems in both new and existing stores. It operates CO2 systems outside of the U.S., including Canada and Australia.
Costco is “leveraging CO2 as the primary refrigerant in our new warehouses, where the required equipment and specialized labor are available and where it is operationally viable,” according to its “Energy and Refrigeration” report. It’s also retrofitting existing locations with lower-GWP refrigerants and testing new emerging leak detection systems.
Other Costco initiatives include:
- Collaborating with the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC) and others to address the shortage of technicians needed to further the adoption of natural refrigerants in a program called R-TRADE. They aim to add 15,000 technicians by 2027.
- In some warmer climates, installing hybrid systems that use an energy-efficient combination of fans and misting to cool refrigeration systems throughout the day.
- Launching a pilot program in select warehouses to take an in-depth audit of energy consumption of coolers, fans, lighting and ovens.
- Operating a STAR (Sustainability Technical Assistance Review) program to minimize water, waste, energy and emissions.
- Introducing Energy Star benchmarking, which compares its warehouses to similar buildings to learn about potential energy-saving opportunities.
Innovation of the Year: Bitzer’s Fender Software
The Innovation of the Year award is given to the company that has produced a natural refrigerant-based product that has had, or is expected to have, a significant impact on the market.
The shortlist of candidates for the Innovation of the Year award consisted of Hillphoenix’s ChargeSecure system, Bitzer’s Fender Software, Danfoss’s BOCK HGX56 CO₂ T Compressor and OLAB’s FastPro and ProShield valves.
Bitzer’s Fender Software system is designed to help end users, technicians, and engineers create “digital twins” of their system. The software helps size, select and better understand complicated system architectures. The Fender software:
- Selects and configure Bitzer products, including compressors, ammonia (R717) compressor packs (ACPs), heat exchangers and motors.
- Stores component data such as part numbers and refrigerant charges.
- Analyzes refrigerant properties and mass flow at any system point.
- Moves, rotates and groups components to visualize any setup.
- Assesses vessels and pipe diameters, fluid velocities and parasitic losses through sizing tools.
- Saves designs for reference, collaboration and comparison.
Accepting the award for Bitzer was Joe Sanchez, VP of Engineering for Bitzer.
Person of the Year: Gary Schrift, President of the IIAR
The Person of the Year Award honors a single individual who has made an exemplary effort to advance the adoption of natural refrigerant technology in HVAC&R applications in North America.
Since becoming President of the IIAR in April 2020 Gary Schrift has helped to extend its reach from ammonia to CO2 and hydrocarbons. The trade group even changed its name in 2023 to the International Institute of All-Natural Refrigeration (from the International Institute of Ammonia Refrigeration), following the change of its research arm to the Natural Refrigeration Foundation in 2022. The IIAR is also expanding beyond industrial refrigeration to commercial refrigeration, partnering with other organizations like ATMOsphere and the NASRC.
Under Schrift’s leadership the IIAR created a safety standard for CO2 refrigeration in 2021 to go along with its myriad ammonia standards and is in the process of doing so for hydrocarbon refrigeration. He has continued to maintain IIAR’s annual event as one of the leading natural refrigeration trade shows in the world.
Schrift has addressed important regulatory issues facing the refrigeration industry. For example, at its 2025 show, IIAR featured as its keynote speaker attorney Robert Bilott, who exposed the threat of PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) pollution. Fluorinated refrigerants such as HFO-1234yf and its by-product trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) have put refrigerants into the conversation about how to regulate PFAS. Bilott previously delivered a keynote address at the ATMOsphere America conference in 2024.
In a recent interview with NaturalRefrigerants.com, Schrift spoke about the natural refrigeration industry’s concerns regarding the proposed rollback of the U.S. AIM Act, which authorizes the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate HFCs.
Accepting the award for Schrift was Eric Smith, VP & Technical Director for IIAR.
