Retail, Food Service, & Grocery

This case study from the 2021 Green Lease Leaders program explores the ways that retail leveraged green leasing strategies to help navigate unprecedented challenges, strengthen landlord-tenant relationships, and prioritize efficiency and sustainability priorities during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using case studies from commercial partners Starbucks and Kohl's - as well as former Better Buildings Alliance member Walmart - this document offers guidance into sourcing energy through community solar. 

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory compiled recommendations and guidance for retail store operators trying to minimize disease risk to staff and customers. This fact sheet reviews HVAC system operations, exhaust systems, elevator controls, and building automation systems, as well as space uses and occupancies.

Oak Ridge National Lab developed this fact sheet for grocery store operators to help them minimize the risks of airborne disease transmission. It covers various systems within a grocery store including HVAC and refrigeration and suggests best practices and behaviors.

This collection of no-cost data management and modeling tools can support Better Buildings partners in the commercial sector to manage organizational energy, emissions, and other sustainability data.

When it comes to achieving significant sustainability gains, an international retail giant has unique opportunities to cut energy use. With a total of 4,500 sites, Walmart’s commitment to efficiency in parking lighting in new construction and retrofits is paying off in major savings. As a result of its lighting upgrades Walmart received individual Lighting Energy Efficiency in Parking (LEEP) Campaign awards for a superstore, a neighborhood market and a Sam’s Club. Across 100 stores including both new and retrofitted sites, over 40 million square feet in surfaces for parking and over 100,000 parking spaces, Walmart is saving over 15 million kWh each year as a result of lighting upgrades.

This document contains a variety of resources intended to help commercial partners gain better access to energy data through the use of submetering.

This resource provides a list of steps for building owners/managers to consider when evaluating the suitability of new energy-reducing technologies or products for their commercial buildings.

This document includes steps that building owners and operators can implement to achieve smart, healthy, and low-carbon retail buildings within their existing building portfolios. Stand-alone retail and strip malls often use packaged rooftop units for heating, cooling, and ventilation.

This document includes steps that building owners and operators can implement to achieve smart, healthy, and low-carbon supermarkets within their existing building portfolios. Supermarkets include built-up refrigeration systems and refrigerated display cases and often use packaged rooftop units for heating, cooling, and ventilation.

This guide describes the process needed to cost-effectively reduce PPL energy impact in retail buildings. It includes general and appliance-specific PPL control strategies.

This guidance document from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) can help small businesses to improve indoor air quality and reduce occupant risk. Click here for the Spanish version.

This resources list can help partners in the commercial sector with their efforts to procure contractual services from qualified technicians to perform preventative maintenance, tuning, and repairs of HVACR equipment.

The Green Lease Library is a centralized site for commercial green leasing resources. The Green Lease Leaders recognition program was created with support from the U.S. Department of Energy and other Green Lease Library and contributing organizations. For more information on the program, visit www.greenleaseleaders.com.

The Environmental Defense Fund hosts a digital platform called the Supply Chain Solutions Center to help companies incorporate more sustainability goals and policies into every aspect of their supply chain.

This resource from the North American Sustainable Refrigeration Council provides a high-level summary of current and future refrigerant options for U.S. commercial refrigeration applications, including stationary refrigeration remote systems, remote condensing units, and self-contained refrigerated cases.

This resource includes a list of adaptive commercial refrigeration products receiving the ENERGY STAR® Technology Award for meeting rigorous performance criteria to reduce energy use and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

This report from the Rocky Mountain Institute summarizes an assessment of a large U.S. retail portfolio, recommending bundles of measures for optimized portfolio-wide investments and providing investment pathways to support decarbonization.