The trouble with chest freezers is they are a pain to get things from the bottom of. What I've seen happen is stuff remaining at the bottom of the freezer for years on end, eventually becoming freezer-burnt. But if you can automate the stacking and unstacking of things, this could be a good idea. You wouldn't even need the entire top to be openable (or at least, you wouldn't typically open the entire top), there could just be a smaller port for pulling things out of.

Another idea for encouraging more energy-efficient freezing would be a garage-sized (or bigger) freezer designed for community use. The bigger the better from an energy efficiency standpoint because that means less surface area per unit volume. I'm thinking fully automated storage and retrieval would make this work better as a community good (compared to a walk-in freezer), since there would be no need to employ a person to retrieve and keep track of things manually. You could basically just walk up to it, swipe your card, and tell it which items you want to retrieve, at which point they are deposited on a shelf for you to grab.