This project will focus on retail food businesses with fewer than 100 employees and accomplish two key gaps these markets face in refrigerant management: 1. Gaps in technical knowledge regarding…

This project will focus on retail food businesses with fewer than 100 employees and accomplish two key gaps these markets face in refrigerant management: 1. Gaps in technical knowledge regarding more sustainable refrigeration systems; and 2. A dearth of funding to implement more sustainable refrigeration practices. The purpose of this award is to address two challenges, the first is to launch a customized, one-on-one technical assistance program for small retail food businesses. Technical assistance will be provided by a qualified technician who will go to each business site, conduct an on-site refrigerant assessment, and guide folk through appropriate promising practices as outlined in the greenchill best practices guideline: commercial refrigeration leak prevention and repairs. To address the second challenge, the project will create a competitive grant program to provide small retail food businesses with funds to upgrade or retrofit high-GWP refrigeration systems with low-GWP alternatives. Grantees will be required to provide a cash match for their project. Specific match requirements and criteria for the scoring of proposals will be created during the scope of this project and in tandem with small businesses - thereby ensuring project buy-in from those the project is targeting.activities:the following activities to be performed are: activity one: technical refrigerant assistance program - the city of ANN arbor office of sustainability and innovations (city) will release a competitive request for proposals and, upon selecting the most qualified vendor, enter into a contract with them to provide small food retail businesses with technical assistance in the form of one-on-one site visits to identify strategic refrigerant improvements opportunities as identified in the greenchill best practices guideline: commercial refrigeration leak prevention and repairs document. Activity two: grant program for low-GWP refrigerants in small food retail businesses - based on results from the onsite assessments and technical assistance, the city will establish a small business grant program and provide up to $100,000 to small, independently owned and operated food retail businesses to upgrade refrigeration systems to use low-GWP refrigerants. Activity three: evaluation and business-to-business learning - as a condition of receiving funding, technical assistance, or equipment through this program, businesses must participate in an interview to provide feedback about the program and information about the practices they'VE developed to integrate refrigerant management into their operations. Participating businesses will additionally be encouraged to attend annual roundtable refrigerant management meetings with their peers.subrecipient:no subawards are included in this assistance agreement.outcomes:the anticipated deliverables, expected outcomes are: 1) for the technical assistance program, the deliverables are 25 businesses receive technical assistance and leak detectors (4 small grocery stores; 21 small food retailers), with the expected outcomes: small grocery stores: 3444.2 MTCO2E and small food retailers: 16.8 MTCO2E. 2) for the grant program, the deliverables are 3 small grocery stores with retrofitted refrigeration systems, with the expected outcome of small grocery stores: 3449.6 MTCO2E; and 3) for the business-to-business program, the deliverables are 12 small food retailers with upgraded closed-loop units, with the expected outcome of small food retailers: 5.3 MTCO2. By project completion, the city will have reduced refrigeration emissions from at least 25 businesses by a total of 6,915.9 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2E) from pre-intervention levels and established a replicable model of refrigeration replacement throughout that can scale throughout washtenaw county, the intended beneficiaries.