“World’s greenest new retail building”: a model to follow, says Lidl

Supermarket chain Lidl is taking a lead in greening its stores. A pilot store in Växjö, Sweden, has won an award as the world’s greenest new retail building and should serve as a template for a new generation of stores, says the company.

Reducing risk to the environment and even enhancing the site’s biodiversity will attract customers as well as improving energy efficiency, is the theory.

Species and greenery were required in each applicable area of the new build site, eco-zones were created within the car park, to accommodate various species, and information boards describing the flora and fauna are located in each zone, says Lidl. Reducing risk to the environment and even enhancing the site’s biodiversity will attract customers as well as improving energy efficiency, is the theory.

The idea is that the eco-zones will encourage customers and passers by to stop, read the information boards and reflect.

In years to come they may reflect on the passing of the age of in-store shopping, if the trend towards greening stores goes far enough. But leaving that thought aside, a recent environmental report uses the example of Lidl’s Växjö store to demonstrate the value of a global sustainability standard to the retail sector.

The report, “Delivering Sustainable Buildings: Value of BREEAM to Retail in the UK”, details ways that high sustainability standards can help the sector get the most from its property, its largest operating cost after employment.

BREEAM stands for “building research establishment environmental assessment methodology” and is a global sustainability standard.

BREEAM certification of the store in Växjö, Sweden is just the start of a long-term value adding process, says Lidl.

The design achieved 100% of the available BREEAM credits in management, health and wellbeing and met numerous exemplary level standards in land use, ecology and pollution.

The building was designed, constructed and fitted out to ensure optimum natural daylight, optimised thermal comfort and acoustic performance, with energy efficient LED lighting.

In addition to energy efficiency measures, a local on-site energy generation strategy was implemented. This consisted of a reversible heat pump, with cold recovery from the refrigerated cabinets and cold storage rooms, as well as solar cells on the roof, and resulted in a 33% reduction in CO₂ emissions compared to an existing store.

To reduce environmental pollution, the propane-based refrigerants used within building services and cold storage systems have an Ozone-Depletion Potential (ODP) of zero and Global Warming Potential (GWP) < 5% thus reducing the contribution to climate change. The plant installed to meet the building’s space heating demand has low dry NOX emission levels.

Further measures included electric car recharging stations with on-site generated solar, low water use fittings and on-site water attenuation measures.

“BREEAM has been a useful tool for implementation of our own sustainability goals as well as helping us contribute to national and international environmental objectives. The response within the whole company has been enormous: nowadays everybody at Lidl is talking about BREEAM and sustainability. When we started working with BREEAM we wanted to plant a seed within Lidl, but ended up starting a green movement,” says Johan Augustsson, real estate director at Lidl Sweden.