Become a Participating Contractor

The BayREN Business Refrigerant Replacement (BRRR) program helps businesses in the Bay Area replace high Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants in their commercial refrigeration systems with more environmentally friendly alternatives. The program also supports fixing refrigerant leaks and conducting system tune-ups to improve energy efficiency.

• Reduce GHG emissions by evacuating and recycling environmentally harmful refrigerants from refrigeration systems with remote condensing units in small- and medium-size businesses and recharging the systems with moderate to low Global Warming Potential refrigerants.
• Improve energy efficiency and optimize participants’ refrigeration systems and equipment
• Educate business owners, managers, and employees on how and when to maintain their refrigeration systems
• Create behavior change by providing best practices training to business owners to prolong the maintenance and reliability of their equipment

The Program is designed specifically for food service, food retail, food warehousing, and floral businesses located in DAC, low-income communities, and California Native American Tribal lands or that meet HTR criteria.

Here are some examples of businesses that may be eligible and must have the following North American Industries Classification System (NAICS) codes: See table 1 below.

1. SMB in the food service and food retail sector:
   1. Grocery stores
   2. Convenience stores
   3. Restaurants
   4. Bars
   5. Food storage warehouses
   6. Food banks
2. SMB in floral businesses
   1. Florist
   2. Nurseries
   3. Garden Centers
   4. Florist’s Supplies to wholesalers

Additionally, to be eligible, business must meet other criteria:

• Businesses must receive electrical or gas service from PG&E or local community choice aggregator.
• Businesses must be located in the San Francisco Bay Area (i.e. Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, and Sonoma Counties)
• Independently owned, non-franchise
• Operating at least a refrigeration system with remote condensing unit with high GWP refrigerant
• Have not participated in a publicly funded refrigeration retrofit program in the last five years
• Meet Hard-to-Reach (HTR) eligibility, or
• Meet Geographic eligibility (Disadvantaged community or Low-income community)

To meet HTR criteria, the business must certify that it can earn three (3) points according to table 2 below.

Geographic Eligibility

Businesses that do not qualify for HTR must meet the geographic eligibility requirement by being located in the Bay Area's low-income communities and in a disadvantaged Community (DAC).

To check if the business meets this criteria for BRRR program, enter the business's physical address in the BRRR Eligibility Map Tool.

The purple area shown in this map below are census tracts that are either a Disadvantage community, a low-income community or both.

To determine geographic eligibility for a potential customer, you enter the project site’s address into the search box in the top right corner. You can see the search result to confirm it’s the correct address and then verify that the location is fully within the purple shaded area.

To determine whether the business is located in a DAC or Low-Income Community. Read the instructions on the left of the BRRR Eligibility map to turn on/off the layers to show just the DAC (orange) and just the Low-Income Communities (blue).

Here are some examples of the refrigeration and energy measures upgrades BRRR is offering.

• Refrigerant leak detection and conduct repairs up to five (5) remote condensing systems per business.
• Change out and recycle very high-GWP refrigerant (≥ 2100 GWP) with low- or moderate-GWP refrigerant up to 80-lbs per business.
• Change out and recycle high-GWP refrigerant (1430 ≤ GWP < 2100) with low- or moderate-GWP refrigerant up to 80-lbs per business.
• Tune-up for up to five (5) remote condensing systems per business.
• And fan motors and replace with electronically commutated motors (ECM) for refrigerated display case, anti-sweat heater control, automatic door closer on refrigerated storage door.

We require all projects to have at least two components in the contractor's scope of work to be eligible project:

Project eligibility:

• Replace high global warming potential (GWP) refrigerants with lower GWP refrigerants.
• Install at least one energy efficiency measure.

Customer eligibility:

• NAICS code
• Independently owned, non-franchise
• Have at least one remote condensing unit
• Geographic eligibility: Located in DAC or a Low-income area, if not, meet Hard-to-reach criteria.

The financial incentives provided by the program vary based on the type and scope of the project. The BayREN Program Advisor staff will review the scope of work and determine the incentive amount for the project.