Reducing stores’ environmental impact
Reducing stores’ environmental impact
Sobeys Québec
The Québec region uses the experience and knowledge acquired from the construction of the first LEED®-certified grocery store in the country when planning to retrofit or upgrade existing stores. For example, the region has installed solar walls at eight locations as a result of their proven effectiveness in this LEED® store.
New refrigeration technology has been introduced at two stores. One uses a water-glycol mixture for medium temperature cases to reduce the amount of global warming-causing hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerant used by 80%. The other new system installed at a recently opened store in St-Félix-de-Valois, Québec, uses CO2 refrigeration technology to significantly reduce the volume of refrigerant required to operate the system and, in the event of a refrigerant leak, greatly reduce the global warming impact of the emissions.
Sobeys Québec’s commitment to energy conservation was acknowledged in early 2008 when the region earned an Energy Wise Citation of Excellence from Hydro-Québec for the most projects under the utility’s energy efficiency program. Sobeys Québec carried out 35 energy conservation projects under this program between January 1, 2004 and December 31, 2007 which resulted in combined energy savings of over 23 million kWh during the three-year period. Since then, 75 additional IGA stores have carried out energy efficiency projects and are registered in the Hydro-Québec program.
