John Lewis is the biggest department store retailer here in the UK having been trading for around 150 years. On the 10th April 2014 it is to open a brand new store in York that will be its 41st store in the country at a cost of about £15,000,000 covering an area of around 130,000 square feet. The store will provide the usual products that you would expect from a company of their stature and there are also two restaurants for the use of visitors.
It probably does not come as a surprise to you to read that energy costs are a significant expenditure for many retailers with many shops keeping lighting on in various parts of the outlet 24 hours a day and 365 days a year. Many retailers have air conditioning for the comfort of customers that visit their stores and, of course, sophisticated heating systems. Therefore, anything that can be done to reduce this expenditure has got to be welcomed.
John Lewis’s new store in York has been fitted with solar panels on the roof by a company called Think Renewable Energy that will go some way towards helping John Lewis meet its target of reducing carbon emissions by 15% by its year ending 2020/21. The 96.5kWp solar panel system has an annual capability of 81,925 kWh of clean energy. It is forecast that the store will remove 34 tonnes of CO2 emissions each year from the earth’s atmosphere and save the company in the region of £17,000 through both savings on its annual electricity bill and through the Feed in Tariff scheme.
This is another example of a major retailer looking to make a contribution towards helping the UK achieve its renewable energy targets by 2020. During 2012 and 2013, we reported on Sainsbury’s supermarket chain having invested heavily in the installation of solar panels in recent years.
