CAREL has released a new white paper entitled Energy efficiency in food retail stores.
It covers AI tools, regulatory and technical aspects of energy efficiency, providing an depth document dedicated to the challenges and opportunities linked to energy optimisation in large-scale retail stores.
In a scenario marked by increasingly volatile energy costs, and global regulations, the growing focus on ESG objectives and energy efficiency is taking on an increasingly strategic role for the food retail sector.
The white paper analyses this context through an integrated approach, connecting regulatory aspects, economic dynamics, available technologies and the new possibilities offered by artificial intelligence.
The document starts from the European regulatory framework, with particular reference to the Energy Performance of Buildings Directive, EPBD, which strengthens the role of efficient buildings, digitalisation and building automation and control systems.
This perspective is complemented by an international overview, highlighting how markets such as Australia, China, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States are moving towards more stringent requirements in terms of energy performance, transparency and emission reduction.
Significant attention is also dedicated to the evolution of energy costs and the main tariff models, from fixed-price tariffs to indexed, time-of-use and dynamic tariffs.
In this scenario, the ability to monitor and modulate consumption becomes essential to transform energy from a simple operating cost into a strategic management variable.
The white paper then explores the specific case of food retail, a sector in which refrigeration represents one of the main areas of energy consumption.
In supermarkets and hypermarkets, however, the optimisation of refrigeration, HVAC and lighting systems must be achieved without compromising food safety, product quality and the operational continuity of the store.
The strategies analysed include asset replacement or retrofit, improvement of operating logic, advanced control, maintenance and automation.
In particular, the document highlights how the optimisation of existing systems can offer significant opportunities for savings, thanks to interventions on software, adjustments and intelligent configurations.
A specific chapter is dedicated to the role of artificial intelligence in improving the efficiency of distributed store networks.
By analysing large quantities of field data, AI can support plant monitoring, anomaly detection, asset classification and the definition of recommendations to improve performance.
However, the white paper underlines that human contribution remains central: experts continue to play a decisive role in model set-up, critical decisions and the continuous fine tuning of systems.
Finally, the document presents the IPMVP method, the international protocol for the Measurement and Verification of energy savings, as a reference for assessing the results of efficiency measures in a transparent and shared way.
Since energy savings represent avoided consumption and are not directly measurable quantities, the adoption of recognised methodologies is essential to build reliable and comparable assessments.
The white paper is available on the CAREL web site.