The North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council (NASRC) will host its 2025 natural refrigerant training summits in California and, for the first time, Minnesota, continuing its mission to advance the adoption of natural refrigerants in the food retail sector.
The California summit will be held April 22–24 at the Southern California Edison (SCE) Energy Education Center in Irwindale. The Minnesota event is scheduled for May 20–22 in St. Paul. Both summits are free for all refrigeration technicians.
Each event features a robust program of expert-led sessions on natural refrigerants, specifically CO2 (R744) and propane (R290), along with a half-day advanced workshop focused on CO2 technologies. The Irwindale workshop, already fully booked, will center on a rolling remodel of an existing system to a CO2 booster system.
“With increasing regulatory pressures to transition away from HFC refrigerants, a growing number of food retailers are transitioning to natural refrigerant alternatives,” the NASRC explains on its event page. “However, closing stores for extended periods is often not feasible for food retailers.”
The workshop will explore how to remodel a store from an HFC system to an R744 booster system while keeping the store operational. Attendees will learn how to install and commission new CO2 systems while safely decommissioning existing HFC racks. Places are still available for the St. Paul CO2 workshop.
Both summits will also feature hands-on training sessions, an exhibition hall and a refrigeration career fair for HVAC students and faculty. Training sessions will be provided by several leading manufacturers, including Copeland, Danfoss and Hillphoenix.
Registration is required for each component of the summits.
“With increasing regulatory pressures to transition away from HFC refrigerants, a growing number of food retailers are transitioning to natural refrigerant alternatives.”
The NASRC
The NASRC launched its natural refrigerant training summits in 2023, with the first two events taking place in Irwindale and St. Louis, Missouri. In 2024, NASRC hosted three training summits held in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Irwindale and Seattle, Washington.
The organization has hosted several other technician training programs, including a train-the-trainer pilot program and private on-demand contractor training.
Investing in the workforce
Both the Irwindale and St. Paul training summits are part of the NASRC’s R-TRADE (Refrigeration Technician Advancement, Development and Education) workforce development program, launched in September 2024. The initiative is focused on personnel recruitment, training and retention, and aims to train more than 14,000 technicians. Financial support for R-TRADE comes from Albertsons, Amazon, Costco, Kroger and Walmart.
Most recently, the NASRC announced up to $3 million (€2.7 million) in funding to further support refrigeration workforce development. The investment is part of the organization’s $6.5 million (€5.9 million) budget to administer California’s $65 million (€58.7 million) F-gas Reduction Incentive Program (FRIP), funded by the California Air Resources Board (CARB).
The NASRC’s leadership in workforce development was recently recognized when Executive Director Danielle Wright was named Person of the Year at the ATMO Awards/North America 2024. Presented by ATMOsphere, publisher of NaturalRefrigerants.com, the award celebrates Wright’s contributions to advancing natural refrigerant adoption in the region’s HVAC&R sector.
