Tesco displays how the environment can be good for business… which in the long run might not be great for the environment…
Tesco displays how the environment can be good for business… which in the long run might not be great for the environment…Tesco have been getting praise as well as a good bashing in the media of late for cutting their ‘per square foot’ carbon emissions.
Fred Pearce has a go at the supermarket for claiming to be "setting an example” by “reducing the overall Group carbon intensity per square foot of net sales area by 4.7%”, while the overall carbon emissions of the company increased by 400,000 tonnes in 2007. This relative decrease compared to an overall increase in emissions does seem a peculiar achievement to shout about, nevermind a bit of a mouthful to say.
It leaves me wondering whether Tesco actually meant they were "setting an example" to their less efficient, older stores, rather than on climate change, but i'll leave that hole for the Tesco PR department to dig their way out of.
Meanwhile Peter Madden, Chief Executive of ethical think tank Forum for the Future, welcomes the relative cuts.
Speaking to ClimateChangeCorp about Tesco’s latest effort to cut its greenhouse gas output with a new ‘eco-store’ in Cheetham Hill, Manchester, Madden says, “the news that Tesco's new store consumes 70% less carbon and will be the blueprint for all their new stores is fantastic. That's exactly the scale of ambition we need to see from all major retailers, given that the UK Government has pledged to reduce emissions by 80% by 2050.”
Unfortunately for the government, that's a commitment to an overall reduction in UK emissions of 80% as well as a 'per square foot' reduction, considering the UK isn't getter any bigger...
Either way, Mr Madden obviously has higher expectations from Tesco than Pearce.
New eco-store
Here are some more details of Tesco’s new new 52,000 sq ft eco-store at Cheetham Hill, courtesy of Katherine Symonds, sustainability manager for the supermarket giant.
The Cheetham Hill store’s carbon footprint is 70% less than an equivalent Tesco store built in 2006. This cut in greenhouse gas emissions has been achieved in the following ways:
- 31% through energy efficiency measures, such as roof lights allowing more natural daylight into the store, saving on electricity
- 20% by using natural refrigerant, using CO2 instead of HFCs
- 19% by using a combined heat and power plant running on "recycled vegetable oil", according to Symonds, enabling the store to generate its own electricity and make use of the waste heat
The eco-store also uses:
- A timber frame instead of metal, significantly reducing the store’s embodied carbon footprint
- Increased recyclable materials in fixtures and signage and designing equipment for future ease of recycling
- A metering system to monitor energy and water usage
- Minimised construction waste and recycling all unused construction materials
Cheetham Hill is important to Tesco because it's their new “blueprint” for future stores. “The new blueprint is designed to work across all formats. Elements can - and will - be retrofitted in existing stores, including CHP plants and small wind turbines where planning allows it (typically larger stores as we need the space to build them)”, says Symonds.
Why has it taken until 2009 to put energy efficiency at the top of the agenda for tesco’s new stores?
Symonds claims Tesco has been looking at energy efficiency “since 2006 when we built our first environmental store.”
Prior to building their new store at Cheetham Hill, Tesco built five environmental test bed stores in Swansea, Diss, Wick, Shrewsbury and Hinckley. As Tesco came up with solutions, they claim to have rolled them out to all stores “which is why we now have energy champions and state-of-the-art fridges and ovens across our estate” says Symonds.
“Since 2000, we have halved the energy use per square foot in our stores demonstrating that energy efficiency has been high on our agenda for years,” she claims.
Of course, morals aside, Tesco will be using the sustainability blueprint to a) save themselves money “…we expect energy consumption to be reduced by 48% versus stores we were building in 2006 (the baseline for all our climate change targets)” Symonds says, and b) increase the likelihood of winning planning permission from environment conscious Local Authorities to build new sustainable stores in the future. Tesco are also set to do well under the UK's new domestic cap and trade scheme, the Carbon Reduction Commitment, which ranks and rewards companies according to their relative, not their absolute, emissions.
All this could mean more bad news for Fred Pearce and the climate, but good news for Tesco’s bank balance. We'll have to wait for Tesco's 2008 carbon count up to find out whether they've managed to put a dent in their overall carbon footprint after all and prove the environmental critics wrong...