Even if we increase our national generation of clean energy, it takes time to get them online (e.g. nuclear), or its distribution and storage (e.g. wind and solar).

In theory, the 650 million sqft of retail & leisure parks, shopping centres, outlet malls, and supermarkets in the UK could accommodate almost 26 million solar panels (at 50% coverage) with a total system size of around 6.5GW (equivalent to two times the 3.2GW capacity of Hinkley C nuclear power station). The Solar Energy UK 2030 target for solar is 40GW by 2030, of which 7GW is expected from commercial buildings, with 2GW already online. In effect, the potential to deliver on solar via commercial property exceeds the current targets from retail alone—and that’s before looking at industrial or office properties.

In practice for a myriad of reasons, this volume of retail space won’t work for wholesale PV installation. Schemes need to be fit for purpose rightsizing to application, calculated and not gestural. A common mistake is adding renewables onto a building for planning with limited design to suit what the building actually uses, can support, or from grid capacity. An estimated 5-10GW of wind farms are pipelined to come online in the next few years, but the infrastructure isn’t there to bring it to our homes and businesses. The same issues will apply to large scale PV installations.

that even with fast charging it takes time for consumers to fuel their EVs, there will be a close relationship with working and shopping environments in making charging as seamless a process as possible; particularly for UK households that don’t have their own off street parking and private charging facility.

Dwell time is one of the key considerations to undertake when scoping the opportunity for sizing of EVs, in both kw and number of spaces. Retail provides a prime opportunity as people do tend to spend longer periods and can shop, eat, or drink while waiting. Shopping centre, retail park owners, and drivethru operators are therefore seeing this as a key opportunity. In theory, if every 5,000 sqft of retail parks, shopping centres and supermarkets had an EV charger, this could provide 20% of the government’s 2030 charger target.

However, a considerable amount of stress will be placed on the grid to provide more demand for EV. This is a physical constraint which, again, creates the need for Distribution Network Operators (DNOs) to upgrade cables, transformers, substations etc. to be able to cater for the extra demand. Unfortunately, it isn’t as simple as just installing a row of chargers as there are issues around grid capacity and whether the local infrastructure can cope with increased demands. Reports abound of frustrated EV owners getting ‘range anxiety’ or finding that fast chargers do not deliver on their promise of quick turnarounds because the installers negated to sufficiently assess local constraints.

In effect, the limit to whether that’s actually deliverable is probably down more to government and DNO investment than the retail landlords themselves.

There’s a big difference geographically in the charging facilities installed to date. London has three times the chargers by head of population than Wales and six times that of Northern Ireland. Rural areas are particularly underserved. There is also a distinct negative correlation between low affluent local authorities and availability of EV charging. With everyone trying to increase charging facilities there is a risk that a lack of coordination will see an oversupply in some locations, under supply in others and the promise of fast charging being unrealised.

THE ENERGY HIERARCHY AND TRILEMMA

In principle, adapting lots of sites to produce or provide vast amounts of energy sounds like an excellent solution to meeting the growing need for cleaner energy. However, there are some key issues that need to be considered that can reduce practicality and increase cost if full due diligence is not undertaken.

EV is after all yet another demand for electricity. PV has the potential to export excess electricity to grid. Both technologies will require reinforcing almost the entirety of the UK network.

The Energy Hierarchy is a classification of energy options, prioritised to assist progress towards a more sustainable energy system. The energy hierarchy doesn’t discount the importance of renewable energy, but puts more focus on the ‘lead in’ to using renewables. It follows the strategy that we should all undertake when assessing our needs; principally following the need to understand your energy through measurement, efficiency, and management before looking to actually implement renewable measures.

To put this another way, seeking more renewable energy sourcing or production are themselves meaningless objectives if not part of a wider strategy to optimise energy efficiency. Bang for buck, energy efficiency is of much more significance that energy delivery. The Carbon Trust suggest that for retailers a 20% cut in energy costs can represent the same bottom-line benefit as a 5% increase in sales.

According to the World Energy Council, the energy trilemma is finding the balance between security of supply, affordability, and sustainability. The UK performs relatively well in terms of energy security, but less so on sustainability; and barely registers on affordability. There’s a misalignment in meeting the objectives of producing clean and cheap energy as the infrastructure is often too antiquated to meet rapidly evolving needs and technologies.

Furthermore, we haven’t quite resolved the issue of energy availability and point of production. Too often, we have renewables when we don’t need them; A gap between daytime pricing and night time is increasing under energy trilemma, for example Octopus Go’s night time tariff is a quarter of its daytime tariff. Battery technology is coming online at scale and will be a game changer, as could bidirectional charging of EVs whereby the vehicle parked on people’s drives can act as a battery for devices used in the house. A new development currently under construction in Wales will pair a 22MW battery with a 228MW windfarm to provide enhanced frequency response services for the National Grid.

However, while energy solutions are rarely straightforward to implement, they remain an important way for landlords to address their own energy usage and supply. The retail industry has scale and, therefore, represents a vast opportunity for meeting a large proportion of a landlord’s energy need; the needs of their customers; meeting the government climate change targets; or the more pressing net zero targets that many private sector organisations have set. The journey to Net Zero will not be an easy one but those organisations that collect good energy data, while taking a whole system approach that considers energy efficiency before renewables, will be best placed to deliver positive change to the retail sector.