Eco-friendly heating and refrigeration systems could be installed at a city supermarket as it looks to reduce greenhouse emissions.

Sainsbury’s wants to upgrade the equipment at its store in Blackpole as it works towards its goal of making its entire business carbon neutral by 2035.

Plans submitted to Worcester City Council propose replacing its existing plant machinery with three new air source heat pumps and a refrigeration pack.

These would sit on concrete plinths on the car park and would be installed alongside two gas coolers and a room from which all of the machinery can be monitored.

The machinery would be behind 2.5-metre fencing and a crash barrier to protect it from cars, while 3.5-metre acoustic panels would be fixed to the store walls behind where the machinery would be located.

In order to make room for the new equipment, some parent and child parking spaces would be moved, as would a trolley bay.

Overall 12 parking spaces would be lost, leaving the store with a total of 310.

Sainsbury’s says in its application: “This is sufficient to meet the ongoing operational parking demands of the store.

“The amended arrangement of the car park will result in relocation of the parent and child spaces to ensure no loss in these spaces and one of the trolley bays being relocated to the north of its existing location to allow for the parking spaces to be reconfigured.

The disabled spaces will not be affected by this proposal and there will be no changes to the cycle parking.

“Pedestrian access to the site will not be affected and access to the site via public transport remains unchanged.”

The company also says: “This application is associated with one of numerous plant upgrades that are taking place across Sainsbury’s stores around the country to reduce greenhouse emissions and energy usage.”