Today’s conventional brick-and-mortar retailers face significant risks; a wave of online retailers, supply channel disruptions, inflation, labor shortages, shrinking profits, and volatile energy costs. Emerging technologies impact competitiveness, market risks reduce access to capital, and shifting consumer and key stakeholder preferences can all affect the bottom line. And their energy consumption is massive, particularly in the food retail industry, which uses about $60 billion annually.
But the size of this energy footprint highlights a transformative opportunity to drive savings and increase profit margins by simply reducing energy consumption and saving on operational costs.
An average of 15% energy savings in the food retail industry represents $9 billion in annual savings.
This is a conservative estimate – in some cases, intelligent, digitized refrigeration and HVAC upgrades that combine software and connected hardware result in up to 60% energy savings.
This means investments in energy efficiency are highly cost-effective and have a serious return on investment (ROI). Any delay in improving efficiency means lost potential savings.
It’s especially important considering looming net-zero requirements. Decarbonizing operations in existing buildings is no longer a “nice to have” but a “must do.”
Upcoming generations with ‘green mindsets’ and increased purchase power now speak with their money. Property investors and regulators also expect retailers to be transparent with their energy and sustainability practices. Taking advantage of these opportunities pays dividends now and in the future.
The retail transformation
Retailers are looking to reduce costs, speed response times, and improve efficiencies while becoming more responsive to customer needs. Is it really possible to become net zero?
The answer is yes! With our expertise and commitment to net zero, we can help you reach your energy and sustainability goals.
The ideal solution we have found for all is retail transformation.
This is especially true for today’s retail operations that want to improve their energy management and control capabilities. There are significant achievable savings by evolving to all-electric, all-digital retail of the future. Solutions like integrated retail management systems are cost-effective and enable up to 20% savings.
As a retailer, you can ensure business continuity and achieve sustainability goals through successful digital transformations. We can help you create a business/sustainability case, including ROI, CO2 savings, and other financial and non-financial values.
Discover how you can capitalize on these major retail transformation opportunities by:
- Embodying Retail of the Future: hyper-efficient, sustainable, and resilient
- Delivering connectivity, resilience, and efficiency across your retail IT infrastructure
- Overcoming the challenges for sustainable refrigeration, from the F-Gas regulation to effective maintenance
- Making your store EV-friendly
- Simplifying hyper-efficient operations and sustainability for your global retail enterprise.
Schneider Electric will be live at EuroShop 2023, from February 26 to March 2 in Düsseldorf, Germany, covering these topics and much more.
Get exclusive, on-demand access to our Innovation Talks and learn how you can power your own retail of the future.
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