There’s one tranche of buildings that touch the lives of almost every person in Australia – local retail stores. From electrical appliance stores, post offices, telcos and banks through to clothing, chemists, department stores and craft supplies. These stores are the backbone of consumer life.
Now, with the launch of the NABERS Retail Stores tool, they can also play a greater role in the decarbonisation transition.
The tool covers a broad spectrum of store types, including individual tenancies in retail shopping centres, stand-alone stores such as a Spotlight, Officeworks or Supercheap Auto, stores in arcades and street frontage stores.
At the official launch of the tool, acting director of NABERS, Magali Wardle, explained the retail tool is a key part of NABERS’ overarching sector expansion roadmap.
It’s not quite a plan for world domination, but there’s an ambition to provide effective information for the measurement and management of energy for almost every type of building in the country.
The case is strong. As Wardle said, “buildings that regularly measure their performance will reduce their energy use over time.”
Reduced energy use translates to bill savings, something that should make enormous sense to retailers battling fickle consumer spending and increasing supply chain costs.
A massive data wrangling effort
To develop the tool, the NABERS team collected thousands of data points measuring energy use in different types of retail stores.
While there are multiple other sustainability battles being waged including supply chain certifications, product stewardship, packaging and decarbonisation logistics, energy is a relatively easy win in terms of enabling a business to understand how it is performing, how it compares to peers and how it can cut some costs.
For comparison, in the shopping centre sector, since the launch of NABERS for shopping centre base buildings, overall energy intensity among rated premises has declined by 35 per cent. This also represents a significant emissions reduction for energy-related emissions.
Another positive has been the sharing of ideas and solutions across the shopping centre cohort, something Wardle believes will occur once retailers start stepping up to get rated.
“Because there is such a diversity of retail stores across the sector, developing the details required significant effort. Data was gathered from over 4000 stores, covering a good mix of store types, building styles, and climate zones,” Wardle said.
“Next, we conducted technical benchmarking, taking into account factors like operating hours, whether the store is centrally airconditioned, whether it’s a standalone store or part of a shopping centre, and the types of products or services offered. For example, an electronics store uses more energy than a shoe store, so capturing these differences was important for making fair comparisons.”
Following rules development, 17 pilot ratings were undertaken across different store types and climate zones to bench test the tool. Concurrently, a first cohort of over 60 assessors were trained up, so NABERS for Retail can hit the marketplace ready for action.
Making the complexity simple for stores
Bonnie Marshall, policy officer for the National Retailers Association said at the launch: This was a very simple tool that businesses can use to understand where they can save on energy.”
The tool is tailored across two broad categories – those stores that are selling goods, and those that sell services.
Within those broad categories are classifications such as medium-to-large department stores, stores selling one specific type of good such as camping gear or pet supplies, and in services retail, classifications based on the profile of equipment required such as banks, hair and beauty or travel agencies, all of which have quite specific energy-using equipment in a typical premises.
Suruchi Pathak, NABERS acting head of market development said that even for stores that are under centralised servicing arrangements, the rating process will help identify some low hanging fruit where they can change the bottom line on their bills, such as changes to controls and set points around airconditioning, or lighting operations.
“Retrofits of more energy-efficient lighting fixtures, controls and fine-tuning of practices or set points to better reflect occupancy levels, or reducing after-hours plug loads from electronics are all within store operator control,” Pathak said.
Customer feedback
Beyond the benefits for trimming energy bills, gaining a NABERS rating can also have benefits for customer loyalty. Shoppers these days care more about the ethics of where they spend their money. “Having a NABERS certificate at the entrance is a clear statement about corporate social responsibility,” Pathak said.
It may also help entice employees who look for a workplace that reflects their own ethical position on climate action, and the struggle to recruit and retain talent is as real in retail as it is in the big corporate commercial workplaces.
More collaboration on the way
Looking ahead, the launch of the retail stores tool also paves the way for the development and launch of a NABERS Retail Co-Assess tool, potentially as early as next year.
Country Road, for one is finding the process rewarding.
As one of the road testers for the tool, the retailer had to engage in conversations with landlords to obtain necessary documentation such as floor plans and services details, and to facilitate access for the NABERS assessors.
“Already the new rating process is fostering increased collaboration between store operators and retail centre landlords,” said Brodi Coghlan, environment and reporting specialist, Country Road.
The same goes for ANZ.
Jeff Elliott, environmental sustainability lead, ANZ, another of the pioneers, said it enabled the bank to negotiate better electricity tariff rates, and improve opportunities for the bank to procure green leasing for its branches.
“It is also a great way to get ahead of incoming reporting requirements,” he said.
