Blueprint for green stores

Retailer’s latest Manchester supermarket sets its eco standard Tesco is to use its latest ‘eco-store’ – a new 52,000 sq ft supermarket at Cheetham Hill in Manchester – as a ‘low-carbon blueprint’ for all the new supermarkets it builds in future.

Stephen Heal, the company’s director of climate change programmes, says that the Cheetham Hill store’s carbon emissions should be 70% less than those of an average store of its size in 2006. The sixth Tesco supermarket with the ‘eco-store’ tag, it boasts a natural refrigeration system, a combined heat and power (CHP) plant, a timber frame and cladding, rooflights to allow natural daylight inside – and a ‘very good’ rating for the building on the BRE Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM) system. Investment costs were around 10% higher than a typical store – but fuel bills are predicted to be 48% lower.

Heal emphasises that, by building such outlets, Tesco will boost the market for sustainable building technologies. “It will help those technologies improve, help markets grow, and help bring costs down,” he said.

“Like all of these things, the more you do it to scale, the cheaper it becomes,” agrees Peter Madden, Chief Executive of Forum for the Future – who visited the store before it opened in January, and said its use of timber cladding and natural light made it feel like “a more pleasant environment to shop and work in”. He added: “Building stores in this way costs more than a traditional model, but their sense is that they will recoup that through lower energy prices, higher staff productivity and better customer engagement.”

Madden now thinks it’s time for Tesco to raise the bar and start talking zero-carbon superstores. “With the right design, they can go a very long way in that direction,” he said.

And what about the retrofitting of existing supermarkets? Heal accepts that the Cheetham Hill store isn’t a retrofit blueprint, but says it still offers “guidance for architects and designers” who are retrofitting and replacing existing stores.

There could be more to learn on this from Marks & Spencer’s ‘eco-conversion’ in Bournemouth, which also achieved a ‘very good’ BREEAM rating. The store, originally built in the 1940s, benefits from energy-saving measures and water-saving initiatives, such as dual-flush toilets and self-closing taps, that have cut water use by 15%. – Chris Alden

11 May 2009

Chris Alden