At a supermarket in Somerset, the fridges had simply given up. Photographs taken when temperatures soared over 36C showed rows of empty, broken chillers – a scene repeated across the region as Britain braced for yet another hot week.
“These appliances were designed decades ago in a much cooler world,” said Dr Alan Foster, a refrigeration expert based in Bristol. His warning comes as the Met Office confirms that heatwaves are becoming more common in the UK – and that the nation’s fridges may not be able to keep up.
“British fridges, designed for 32C, are failing as heatwaves hit 40C, with supermarkets and homes reporting breakdowns.”
Fridges are typically built to operate in air temperatures up to about 32C. Last week, and potentially again next week, the mercury pushed well above that. When it does, compressors run continuously to try to stay cool, overwhelming the system until it breaks down entirely.
In Wiltshire, engineers reported record call-outs to homes where fridges had “given up the ghost”. In Somerset and Bristol, shoppers found supermarket aisles with entire banks of chillers switched off and empty. The problem is not limited to households: Foster’s company, Refrigeration Developments and Testing (RD&T), works with many of the big retailers, advising them on how to cope with climate change.
Inside a climate-controlled chamber in Lower Langford, Somerset, Foster runs experiments to measure how fridges cope with rising heat. A standard fridge, fitted with sensors and filled with gel blocks to simulate food, is tested as the room temperature is raised or lowered. “We can test the temperature across different parts of the fridge,” he explained. The results are stark: once the ambient temperature exceeds what the system was designed for, the compressor never stops, and eventually the fridge fails.
Supermarkets have been forced to adapt on the fly. When systems come under pressure, they may reduce the number of chilled cabinets in use to keep the most essential ones running. The systems run on central refrigeration units, so closing some cabinets allows them to divert cooling power to the ones that must stay cold.
The scale of the problem was laid bare by a study commissioned by the UK Climate Change Commission. It found that the food industry was badly hit by the 2022 heatwave, when the UK recorded a maximum temperature of 40.3C for the first time. The study noted increased energy costs and failure of refrigeration systems in numerous retail facilities. Supermarkets were forced to take emergency measures, but the report offered no easy solutions.
As the mercury climbs again, the question hangs over every fridge in the country: designed for a world that no longer exists, can they survive the one that is arriving?