Foreign-based retail giants are launching a new round of energy-saving in China. Wal-Mart, Carrefour, and Tesco will construct or remodel hundreds of so-called "zero carbon" supermarkets in the next year, with plans for each supermarket to save annually nearly one million yuan in electricity charges on average.
Of the daily overhead costs of their supermarkets, consisting of rent, management costs, water, and electricity charges, annual electricity costs stand at about 2 million yuan. With rent and management costs fixed, retailers must look to greater energy efficiency to cut total costs.
In a Tesco's model supermarket in Guangzhou, energy-saving equipment has been introduced into every corner of the supermarket. LED lights in refrigerators can save 60% in energy over the usual fluorescent lights. Before, an array of eight 18kw electric heaters, each working two hours a day, supplied the supermarket with hot water. From now on, waste gas from air conditioners will be used to heat water, for an annual savings of 80,000 to 100,000 yuan.
Besides its installation of energy-efficient equipment, the British-based multinational has also set up an energy-savings management center in Shanghai to supervise electricity consumption in its 65 stores in China.
Tesco has opened 10 energy-efficient supermarkets in China, and will open at least 10 in fiscal year 2009. It is also going to update the lighting and energy systems in 44 of its other stores in China, and rework the electricity systems in 15 stores. As each store is expected to save annually 0.8 million to 1.2 million yuan in electricity charges on average, in the next fiscal year Tesco stores are expected to realize "zero carbon emissions," and save 57.2 million yuan in total.
French-based Carrefour has socked 250 million yuan into energy-saving systems upgrades in its 136 stores in China and now all of them have been transformed into energy-savers. In 2008, Carrefour stores saved over 100 million yuan in energy costs, each store saving one million yuan on average, which means its investment will be covered within two more years, and each store will be able to save one million yuan in operations costs on average every year after that.
Energy-saving equipment costs account for only 7-8% of Tesco's total costs on building a new store in China, and its payback period is usually two to three years, though sometimes it's only several months. At its store in Guangzhou, carbon emissions have been cut by an estimated 857.42 tons and electricity consumption by 0.86 million kw every year, meaning the store will recover energy-saving costs within two years and cut electricity costs by about one million yuan every year after that.
Wal-Mart opened its first energy-saving store in China in 2008 in Wuhan, and since then has set up three other energy-saving stores in Beijing and Zhengzhou. Its store in Beijing is saving 60% of electricity costs by making use of natural lighting. Its energy-efficient facilities will save an estimated 23% of electricity and 17% of water every year. The payback period on energy-saving costs is about two to three years. Wal-Mart plans to complete energy-saving installations in all of its 110 China stores by 2012. By that time it should be able to save about 30% to 40% of energy consumption in total.
The three giants all say that despite high initial costs of energy-saving upgrades, long-term advantages and environmental friendliness have made it worthwhile.
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Sad to say, few domestic supermarket chains are following the fine example of their overseas brethren. Though some have upgraded lighting and ventilation systems, lack of funds, desire for quick profits, or plain short-sightedness are so far tending to trump environmental concerns. There is still a long way to go for Chinese supermarkets to promote energy-efficiency, but seeing the piling up of substantial savings by foreign competitors might make believers of them sooner rather than later.