Why coldchainOS
The product has a clock. The building has a power bill. The deal has assumptions. Connect them.
An independent, self-funded, open-source project in active development. No venture capital. No token. No finished platform, customers, integrations, measured savings or certifications.
Why we are building this
A cold-storage facility is a building, a refrigeration system, an electrical load, a logistics node, a place where valuable, time-sensitive inventory sits, an operating business or a facility supporting one, and a capital decision, all at once.
may describe the building.
describes part of its energy economics, for specific periods.
describe equipment history.
allocates certain costs and responsibilities.
describe product movement.
evaluates a different package of information.
These records can conflict, omit important details, or describe different periods and operating conditions. The problem: decisions move forward while critical assumptions remain disconnected from their supporting evidence.
Planned We are building tools toward this. They are not a finished platform.
What the cold chain connects
Related but distinct. Temperature requirements, validation procedures, regulation and operating practice differ, and are not interchangeable. This site does not treat them as one thing.
We do not integrate with third-party systems today.
Market velocity, defined
“Velocity” means three different things. They are not interchangeable.
How quickly inventory moves through a facility.
How quickly facilities lease or transact.
How quickly a team can assemble, verify and review decision evidence.
Hypothesis Better-organized evidence may reduce avoidable review delays. This is a hypothesis to measure, not a proven result.
Market value, without inventing a TAM
These overlap. A–D describe industries; only E describes us, and we have not measured it. The entire food or pharmaceutical economy is not our addressable software market, and we publish no market-size number for it.
UNEP and FAO’s 2022 report on sustainable food cold chains cites an estimate that 526 million tons of food production (12% of the global total) was lost in 2017 due to lack of effective refrigeration. [UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO)]
A historical, global estimate (UNEP’s Ozone Secretariat attributes it to a 2021 IIR source). Not a 2026 measurement, and not our market.
eligible organizations × plausible annual spend per organization
Every input would be an explicit hypothesis. We have no adoption data, no willingness-to-pay data and no pricing commitment.
None of these is a measured result.
The building
Three dated data points on buildings (two Midwest, one national estimate), from CBRE’s Midwest report (March 2025, market characteristics as of Q4 2024). They are not current national vacancy figures.
CBRE estimates Midwest cold-storage space at 39.5 million sq. ft. It says many older facilities become obsolete when the tenant leaves because required renovations are cost prohibitive. [CBRE]
Of about 1.5 million sq. ft. delivered in the Midwest since the start of 2023, 11% was speculative and 89% was build-to-suit. [CBRE]
CBRE’s national estimate for building new refrigerated warehouse space, and it notes power is increasingly hard to acquire. That is new construction, not renovation cost. [CBRE]
For coldchainOS the takeaway is the cost of making an older facility usable again. Equipment, power and renovation evidence belong beside the real estate numbers, and the question becomes: what does this specific facility need to operate, and does that pencil?
GCCA’s 2026 Top 25 member operators run 7.76 billion cubic feet, up 6.3% on 2025. Lineage, Americold, NewCold, United States Cold Storage and Emergent Cold Latin America lead. [Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA)]
GCCA members only. Not total worldwide capacity and not occupied inventory.
GCCA’s Cold Chain Index tracks five expense classes: labor, electric power, supplies, repairs and rent. We use that structure to organize assumptions. [Global Cold Chain Alliance (GCCA)]
The index’s detailed values are member-only, so we cite none.
Worked examples
Three illustrative examples. No real property, tenant or result. Change the inputs and check the math.
A 100 kW average site load for 8,760 hours a year uses 876,000 kWh. Move the rate from $0.10 to $0.14 per kWh and the annual energy charge rises by $35,040. At an assumed 7% cap rate, a simplified value difference is about $500,571.
A fictional offering memorandum says “recently upgraded refrigeration.” The evidence includes a newer controller invoice but no documentation confirming a compressor replacement.
Missing documentation is not a claim that equipment failed. No real property or dispute is described.
The energy and operating environment
Electricity cost depends on location, tariff, time and load. A wholesale power price is not a facility’s retail electricity bill, and a national average is not a site-specific quote.
A newer EIA outlook was scheduled for Nov 10, 2026; figures here are as of Nov 9, 2026.
NDA and data control
An NDA is signed. Books, records, leases, customer information and service files arrive. Someone wants an AI-generated deal brief. The practical question: who is authorized to process these records, where can they go, and what can be retained?
We do not claim every cloud upload breaches an NDA. Permissions depend on the agreement, the authorization, applicable obligations and the service’s processing terms.
It does not by itself guarantee confidentiality or compliance. Account for logs, temporary files, embeddings, backups, OCR, dependencies, telemetry and remote access.
Open-source code does not make client documents public. No private documents, derived text or identifiable client information belongs in a public dataset without appropriate authorization.
This public site accepts no uploads. See the dev room for a local-only prototype that sends nothing anywhere.
Refrigerants and traceability
Why now · as of November 9, 2026
Our field lab
Founder-reported An 8 × 20-foot portable Polar King cooler has been acquired: fiberglass enclosure, insulated walls and floor, steel chassis. A research concept involves two S21 Pro miners and possible useful applications of their waste heat. Integration and performance validation are still ahead. The miners do not currently cool the enclosure, and low-grade waste heat does not directly run a conventional electric refrigeration system. The field lab supports measurement and learning, secondary to the evidence and underwriting mission.
Sources
Checked on 2026-11-09. The same list lives in the repository as docs/sources.json. Re-check dates and thresholds before relying on them.
An estimated 526 million tons of food production, or 12 percent of the global total, was lost in 2017 due to lack of effective refrigeration.
UNEP's Ozone Secretariat summary states the 526 million tons / 12 percent / 2017 figure and cites 'International Institute of Refrigeration [IIF/IIR] 2021a' for it.
Newmark reported U.S. cold-storage vacancy of 7.7% in the first half of 2026, alongside the sector's first negative first-half net absorption since 2007.
U.S. electricity consumption rose 4% in 3Q26 versus 3Q25 (commercial sector up 5%, which EIA notes includes data centers), and EIA forecasts commercial-sector demand growing 2.8% in 2027.
EIA anticipates 2026 wholesale electricity prices averaging $52 per MWh across the 11 hubs it tracks, 11% above 2025.
EPA's Technology Transitions tables restrict installation of new systems using certain high-GWP HFCs. For cold storage warehouses the page lists an interim GWP limit of 700 from July 27, 2026, then 150 or 300 from January 1, 2032, depending on charge size and configuration. Components used to repair existing systems are not subject to these restrictions.
In May 2026 EPA issued a final rule reconsidering parts of the Technology Transitions requirements, addressing subsectors that include cold storage warehouses.
The original compliance date for the FSMA Food Traceability Rule was January 20, 2026. FDA proposed extending it by 30 months to July 20, 2028, and a 2026 appropriations act directed FDA not to enforce the rule before that date.
CBRE estimates Midwest cold-storage space at 39.5 million sq. ft., with 56% built before 1990. CBRE says many older facilities become obsolete when the current tenant vacates because required renovations are cost prohibitive. (PDF p. 4)
Of approximately 1.5 million sq. ft. of Midwest cold-storage product delivered since the start of 2023, speculative development was 11% and build-to-suit was 89%. (PDF p. 5)
CBRE says refrigerated warehouse construction is typically double to triple the cost of a dry warehouse, averaging $240 to $350 per sq. ft. nationally, and that the significant power cold storage requires is increasingly difficult to acquire with the data center development boom. (PDF p. 6)
GCCA's 2026 Global Top 25 members operate 7.76 billion cubic feet (219.7 million cubic meters) of temperature-controlled space, up 6.3% on 2025 (a deceleration from 8.3% in 2025). The list is led by Lineage, Americold Logistics, NewCold Coöperatief, United States Cold Storage, and Emergent Cold Latin America.
GCCA publishes a quarterly Cold Chain Index tracking cost growth in five classes of expenses: labor, electric power, supplies, repairs and rent. The public page lists Q2 2026 as available and says it can be customized to a region and state.
GCCA lists a '2026 GCCA Americas Cold Storage Capacity Report' (listing dated 2026-08-31).
Useful problems, field knowledge, datasets and contributions are welcome. 30 years of transaction experience, self-funded, no VC, no token. If our experience can help you, bring it to the table.