Energy Efficiency Solutions for Retail Chains
Triple Pundit, March 4, 2015
Twenty billion dollars.
That is a lot of money. $20 billion is roughly the Gross Domestic Product of Nepal. It’s also rumored to be the annual budget of the NSA. $20 billion also happens to be the value of energy used each year by the retail industry in the U.S. According to Adam Siegel of the Retail Industry Leaders Association, this creates a savings potential in the industry of roughly $3 billion (more than the GDP of Aruba).
At the macro level, a $3 billion industry-wide opportunity for savings (not to mention the potential environmental improvements) is a big deal. Even at the micro level, when we examine individual retail chains, we discover that excess energy consumption in retail can exceed 30 percent of total profits. With solutions that promote energy and operational efficiencies, we can do away with the waste and inject the savings directly to the bottom line.
Forward-thinking retail chains are accepting energy as a strategic asset. And, as such, they are finding ways to manage their energy consumption intelligently to minimize off-hour consumption and wrong building automation system (BAS) scheduling, antiquated technology solutions, poor maintenance and inefficient equipment, and eliminate undetected and resource-intensive failures.