Tesco Corporate Responsibility Review 2005

main content

Energy and water

energy consumption
kwh per ft2 sales space

energy consumption

This year we reached our target for a 3.6% reduction in energy used per square foot, at a time when our sales per square foot grew by 6.3%.

Next year we aim to reduce energy consumption by 5%.

Energy efficiency

Over the past year, we have spent £3.7 million on energy-saving schemes. This has included installing fan inverter drives in 91 stores. These reduce the speed of the fan motor in air conditioning units, reducing the volume of air flowing into the store by 15-20%, and reducing energy consumption by up to 50%. We have also installed a further 104 ‘Intellihood’ systems, to add to the 274 installed last year. This is an extraction system which roughly halves the amount of energy consumed by the extractor fans at in-store bakeries and staff restaurants – saving 15,777 MWh of electricity worth £710,000 last year. We are working with the Carbon Trust to produce an energy efficiency training video for staff.

Our Horsham store has been trialling a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) unit since 2003, and has concluded that there are electricity savings to be made, despite a few problems. We are currently considering plans for future roll-out. We are also examining the potential of Light Emitting Diode (LED) lighting, which uses much less power, releases less heat into the refrigeration areas, and has lower maintenance costs.

Our drive for energy efficiency applies throughout the Tesco group. In Central Europe, we have dedicated energy managers responsible for energy-saving. There are similar programmes in all our international businesses.

Emissions trading

Tesco supports the UK Government’s position on climate change and the Kyoto Protocol. We are participating in the UK Emissions Trading Scheme and Climate Change Levy. As part of the Trading Scheme, we are committed to an absolute reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over a five-year period at a control group of 118 stores, in return for a payment from the Government which is invested in further energy saving initiatives. Over the past year, growth in the sales areas at these control stores has required us to use up carbon credits we earned in 2003-4 from greater than expected cuts in energy consumption. We participated in the UK Government’s consultation on the EU Emissions Trading Scheme, and we expect to be part of the Scheme when it is extended to retailers in 2007.

Renewables

In January 2004 we installed a solar powered roof at our Hucknall store, in partnership with Solar Century and partially aided by a Government grant. The system produced 4,854 kWh over a 15 week period, enough to light the petrol station building for 20 weeks. We expect the system to pay for itself within 13 years. Further roll-out is currently under review.

We are also investigating the potential held by geothermal heating and cooling systems, which use the earth’s natural ability to store heat.

% refrigerants used

% refrigerants used

We are reducing our year-on-year refrigerent usage by 3,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent.

Refrigeration

Tesco has phased out the use of all CFCs in our UK stores and is in the process of replacing HCFCs with HFCs in advance of European Union requirements. As part of our commitment to the UK Emissions Trading Scheme, we are reducing our year-on-year refrigerant usage by 3,500 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. We are actively evaluating alternative refrigeration design and refrigerant technology, including CO2, with the goal of reducing the overall environmental impact.

We assess the efficiency of all new refrigeration systems across their predicted working life, using Total Equivalent Warming Impact as a major deciding factor, as well as capital cost, maintenance and energy consumption.

water consumption
m3 per m2 sales space

water consumption

This year we reduced water consumption per m2 by 7%, saving 119,905 m3 of water.

Next year we aim to reduce water consumption by 1.3 m3/m2.

Water consumption

We have achieved our target to reduce water consumption by 7% per m2 of sales space. This equates to a saving of 119,905 m3 per year. We have spent £740,000 on water saving programmes, including leakage reduction, push taps, urinal controllers, rainwater recovery and water data loggers.

This year we hope to install rainwater recovery units at 33 stores. Our calculations show that at our Chichester store 1,733 m3 of rainwater could be collected from the roof. Once filtered, this water will be used by toilets and urinals, thus reducing water use from the mains supply by 30-40%.