CAREL has released a white paper examining energy efficiency in food retail stores, including regulations, energy costs, technical strategies and artificial intelligence. The document addresses energy optimisation in large-scale retail stores amid volatile energy costs, evolving regulations and growing attention to ESG objectives.
The white paper reviews the European regulatory framework, with particular reference to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD), and its focus on efficient buildings, digitalisation, and building automation and control systems. It also outlines developments in Australia, China, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States concerning energy performance, transparency and emission reduction.
The document examines fixed-price, indexed, time-of-use and dynamic energy tariffs. It states that monitoring and modulating consumption can help retailers manage energy as a strategic variable rather than only as an operating cost.
For supermarkets and hypermarkets, the white paper focuses on refrigeration, HVAC and lighting systems while maintaining food safety, product quality and store operations. Strategies covered include asset replacement or retrofit, improved operating logic, advanced control, maintenance, automation and optimisation of existing systems through software, adjustments and intelligent configurations.
A dedicated chapter describes how AI can support monitoring, anomaly detection, asset classification and performance recommendations across distributed store networks. CAREL also highlights the role of experts in model set-up, critical decisions and continuous system fine-tuning.
The white paper presents the IPMVP method for measuring and verifying energy savings through recognised and comparable assessments. “Improving efficiency in food retail stores” is available on the
CAREL website.
