BUILDING PERFORMANCE AWARDS CARBON CHAMPION
SDS ACHIEVES RETAIL BUY-IN
Joint winner with M&S for Cheshire Oaks at the Building Performance Awards was M&E consultant Sustainable Design Solutions (SDS). Director Martin Donlon first worked with M&S on the design for its store at the MetroCentre in Gateshead and now boasts a 30-year relationship with the retailer. ‘We set up SDS partly off the back of that relationship, and SDS specialises in the retail sector, offering a bespoke service to clients.’
SDS was M&E consultant at the earlier Sustainable Learning Store at Ecclesall Road, Sheffield and was able to learn lessons for Cheshire Oaks. ‘It was clear that if we were to deliver an efficient, low energy store, we had to attack the lighting,’ says Donlon. ‘There’s large amounts of glazing and north lights which, when coupled with simple, efficient daylight-controlled artificial lighting, reduces the overall load.’ The HVAC load at Cheshire Oaks is also exceptionally low. ‘The space lent itself to displacement ventilation and, with free cooling, we can supply air at 18-19o
C without
mechanical cooling for large parts of the year,’ says Donlon. In addition to new builds like Cheshire Oaks, SDS is involved in refurbishments and modernisation for M&S, as well as energy reduction initiatives, and supports work across Europe.
Datta. ‘We take what works and feed that into our specification, both for new stores and into our existing estate, which accounts for 90% of our energy and provides the biggest challenge. Building energy efficiency into a new store is easier than improving an existing one.’
Applying learnings With around 700 stores up and down the country – some under the Simply Food banner, and some offering the full line, including clothing – this is no small feat. It compares with a new build programme over the next 12 months of some five to 10 full-line stores and 20-30 food-only outlets. The lessons learnt from Cheshire Oaks – and from its predecessors at Ecclesall Road, Sheffield, and London’s Stratford City – are being applied to four existing Simply Food stores: Slough Bath Road, Heswall, Oswestry and Epping. Again, the best energy-saving approaches can then be rolled out more widely. ‘We’ve chosen Simply Food stores because they are the most energy-intensive; refrigeration, for example, is a big energy load for food retailers,’ says Datta. These buildings vary in age and type,
so adding sustainable features is not straightforward. M&S is aiming to deliver up to 40% savings in energy through introducing features that include: 100% LED lighting on the sales floors; reusing waste heat from refrigeration systems; using living green walls to help insulate the building, encourage biodiversity and
36 CIBSE Journal March 2014
filter pollution; and harvesting rainwater to irrigate the living walls. ‘We are looking for technologies that can
be easily retrofitted,’ says Datta. ‘Lighting is the big opportunity for saving energy in retail – from the small corner shop to the national retailer. I’d say lighting probably accounts for some 30-40% of most retailers’ energy load. Get this right and you will see immediate benefits, with paybacks as low as two to three years for changing to LEDs for front of house lighting, for example. Back of house may be a tad longer.’ M&S’s next step is to look at heating
and cooling. ‘In existing stores, it’s really important for us to make sure the plant is running efficiently, and that it’s only working when it needs to. We also look at the life of the plant and whether replacement will have a financial as well as a carbon benefit,’ says Datta. ‘Refrigeration is a big challenge. We seek to minimise energy use by ensuring there’s no leakage of cold air from cabinets by using night blinds, and by investing in detection technology, that there is no leakage of the refrigerant gases.’ In food stores, as much as 90% of the
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