Achieving energy efficiency without a full remodel

Average electricity prices for retailers in the U.S. increased 4.8% annually from 2019 to 2023 and continue to trend upward. At the same time, energy performance has become a meaningful piece of corporate sustainability reporting and investor scrutiny.

For retailers looking to control energy costs while meeting environmental commitments, efficiency is often viewed as a new construction or remodel issue. However, meaningful cost savings and sustainability progress can also come from how existing buildings are monitored and optimized.

Visibility into Energy Usage

Beyond convenience stores and groceries, where energy consumption monitoring is essential, many retailers lack clear insights into their energy consumption. As a result, they often take utility bills at face value without fully understanding what they’re paying for.

Bills provide totals, but they don’t show what’s driving consumption, leaving retailers unable to distinguish between normal usage, equipment inefficiency, or billing discrepancies.

The challenge becomes even more complex in multi-tenant spaces such as shopping centers or strip malls, where there is difficulty validating that what you’re paying is your fair share. Without granular performance data, retailers are left making capital decisions with limited insights, unable to justify HVAC replacements or demonstrate the ROI on LED upgrades.

Real-Time Monitoring Changes the Equation

Implementing an energy management system shifts retailers from reactive, monthly reviews of energy usage to real-time visibility, fundamentally changing how they assess and manage costs.

With continuous monitoring in place, retailers gain insights into electricity, water, and even natural gas usage – reducing surprises when the utility bill arrives. What once required hours of manually reviewing and reconciling utility bills per store can now be reduced to minutes, allowing facilities teams to validate energy usage and move on to the next store in their portfolio.

Beyond billing accuracy, monitoring is an operational tool that can be used to immediately identify usage spikes and compare expected versus actual consumption. In many stores, real-time visibility can be integrated with smart building management systems to automatically adjust lighting and HVAC when occupancy drops. Rather than running systems during low-traffic periods, stores can shift into energy-saving mode without manual oversight.

When monitoring is layered with AI and predictive analytics, retailers can strengthen financial forecasting and scenario planning around seasonal demand. For example, access to historical and real-time data can highlight anticipated energy usage increases, such as during peak summer cooling months, allowing teams to allocate budgets accordingly and prepare for anticipated demand spikes rather than reacting after costs rise.

Asset Optimization

From an energy efficiency perspective, asset optimization means ensuring critical building systems, such as HVAC, lighting systems, and refrigeration, are operating at peak performance.

In addition to usage volume, energy waste can come from underperforming equipment, which also accelerates asset degradation, shortens lifespan, and increases emergency repair costs.

Asset optimization, supported by sensors and IoT-enabled monitoring, can predict potential failures and alert retailers when maintenance is needed before a failure occurs. For stores managing hundreds of assets, preventative maintenance helps avoid store closures and revenue loss tied to unexpected failures.

For example, flagging and addressing an HVAC issue based on performance data can prevent a store from a shutdown that would otherwise occur if the unit failed outright. This visibility into asset performance can also support capital planning by demonstrating when replacement is more cost-effective and energy efficient than continued repair.

Peak Demand and Operational Impacts

In high-cost energy markets, electricity pricing fluctuates based on demand. During peak demand periods, particularly in the summer, retailers may face added charges on top of costs for the energy supply.

In California, for example, a boutique retailer adjusted operating hours to close midday during peak demand windows to reduce exposure to these charges. While this approach may not be widespread, it highlights a broader shift of energy management becoming part of operational planning rather than a background expense handled after the fact.

Practical Takeaways for Retailers

Becoming more energy efficient starts with clear insight into energy performance. Without that foundation, it’s difficult to understand current consumption or measure progress toward improvement.

Retailers should also prioritize optimizing high-consumption assets, like HVAC systems and refrigeration, to ensure they are operating at peak performance. With real-time data in place, those insights can be used to justify necessary upgrades and guide smarter capital decisions.

Energy efficiency has become an increasing concern for retailers as energy prices increase, and socio-economic challenges threaten its availability. For many retailers, this has moved energy efficiency and sustainability from a second thought to a priority area of focus now and looking into the future. Taking the next step doesn’t always require a full remodel, but it does require meaningful insight into your energy data.