Value Retail designs, builds and operates shopping locations called The Bicester Collection™ with two villages in China and nine in Europe, including Bicester Village in the UK. Value Retail offer retail outlets in these ‘villages’ to a range of luxury brand partners and attracts shoppers via a unique guest tourism experience thus delivering a steady stream of high-net-worth clients to luxury shops.
Value Retail wish to improve the sustainability of their business through developing an energy strategy across their estate that enables monitoring and reducing environmental impact across the villages by reducing water and energy use, waste and greenhouse gas emissions. At the same time they wish to drive the deployment of EV charging for guests, the rollout of low carbon technology, integration of renewable generation and opportunities for energy storage.
Value Retail chose Hitachi ZeroCarbon to assist them in the development of this strategy across their European retail village business, taking full account of local constraints and requirements within a consistent global energy and decarbonisation strategy.
Hitachi’s solution
In August 2022, we undertook desktop studies for eight of Value Retail’s European villages. These studies investigated the potential for installing solar PV, the capacity for EV charging and provided an overview of the energy infrastructure at the villages.
Following the successful delivery of this work, Value Retail engaged the Hitachi ZeroCarbon team as strategic advisors to help develop their energy strategy across their UK and European village estate. This holistic Energy Strategy included a plan for deploying power across the estate taking full account of future decarbonisation objectives as well as a comprehensive review of electrical infrastructure and required concurrent energy activity.
Benefits of our solution
Our work has provided Value Retail with a set of guidelines and a detailed roadmap that each village can use to reduce their emissions, as well as a long-term strategy for deploying renewable energy across the villages in support of their net zero goals. detailed roadmap for each village. In particular, we have provided:
- A new comprehensive approach to energy management and renewables, including recommendations to improve energy usage and reduce emissions;
- A comprehensive business case highlighting the cost and financial benefits of various energy solutions, including solar PV;
- A set of standard guidelines to support the planning and procurement of power and the implementation of low carbon technologies; and
- A detailed information pack on energy policies with the evaluation of different types of Low Carbon Technologies to inform future projects.
This work has enabled Value Retail to make holistic and informed decisions for their future energy infrastructure investment and sustainability activities, ensuring consistency across all their villages.
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