BCSC: Shopping centres must innovate to hit green targets
Published: 21 September, 2011
It is crucial that retailers and landlords work together to ensure that shopping centres play their part in hitting the UK’s legally binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050, according to a new report commissioned by BCSC.
The research, Accelerating Change Towards A Low Carbon Shopping Centre, published on Monday to coincide with BCSC’s annual conference and exhibition in Manchester.
Shopping centres have improved efficiency by a third in the last eight years, mostly by low or zero cost efficiency measures. But if they are to hit the 2050 targets reductions must continue at a rate of 2.5 per cent a year. The report’s findings make clear that for this to happen, retailers and landlords will have to commit to investing capital in major carbon reduction measures.
Angus McIntosh, chair of the BCSC Low Carbon Working Group and a director at Jones Lang LaSalle, urged landlords and tenants to look beyond the “low hanging fruit” of quick wins and towards long-term savings that require real capital investment.
McIntosh said: “The industry has done a great deal to reduce its carbon footprint, but we have to be realistic about where to go from here. We need to see an acceleration in terms of the way assets are managed sustainably. This will require investment, but with rising energy costs and improving technology can also result in savings.”
Philippa Latimer, public affairs manager at BCSC, said the organisation wanted to provide guidance to members swamped under a “minefield of advice” that led to a lack of awareness about which measures really work.
She said: “We cannot overstate just how important landlord-tenant relationships are in enabling shopping centres to operate as efficiently as possible. Communication about what each other have planned is key.
“Landlords work with retailers trialling all kinds of different technologies, so they are perfectly positioned to share knowledge between retailers about what technologies work in what conditions and how much they cost to put in place.”
