Warehouse heating: a heavy carbon toll
		With the current legislation and technologies in existence today, the use of energy to heat logistics buildings inflicts by far the heaviest impact on the environment, significantly affecting climate change, expressed in a emission value stated in tons of CO2 equivalent. In the case of a warehouse maintained above freezing at +5°C, the minimum for a water-sprinkled building, heating accounts for approximately 40% of the impact in release of C02 from the project, covering the 3 phases of construction, use (based on a 30-year lifetime) and deconstruction of the warehouse.

		The search for cost savings
		For the building operators, this is also a heavy financial load. And it seems somewhat obvious that with the barrel of oil currently over 100$, this cost is not going to be going down in the foreseeable future. Given this double-barrelled economic and ecological challenge that faces warehouse users, GSE has launched a research program with the objective of better understanding the thermal behaviour of warehouses, in order to develop systems for optimising the use of the energy required to maintain them above freezing. This research is being carried out in partnership with the thermal engineering department at the prestigious French Engineering School INSA de Lyon.

		The Warehouse-specific thermal model
		Warehouses are very particular buildings with respect to the thermal models currently used in the building industry in general. With warehouses, the vast dimensions mean that the static (steady-state) models for thermal calculations are, at best, very approximate. Warehouse size also results in great divergence in the dynamic models. Factors such as covered area, influence of the geothermal energy, height and stratification effects, variations in occupancy rate and stock renewal, all impact on the calculations. As a result, the first step consisted in developing a theoretical thermal model that is specific for warehouses.  The second step, which involves experimental verification, will validate this model. For this purpose, approximately one hundred temperature sensors will instrument 3 different working warehouses starting in mid-January.  The third step will consist in developing solutions for energy optimisation on pilot projects which will be monitored for an entire year. The early findings from this research program will be shared in April 2008.