Minimising our environmental impact
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing our society. We aim to minimise our environmental impact through procuring energy from renewable resources, reducing our consumption and encouraging stakeholders to be more sustainable.
Automatic meter reading (‘AMR’) systems are essential to the timely monitoring of our energy consumption, the identification of reduction opportunities, and ensuring our billing is accurate. We consider these systems to be so fundamental to our ESG programme that their further improvement forms a key part of our shortterm targets for the business. We continued our rollout of AMRs across our portfolio during the year, and have now installed electricity AMRs at over two-thirds of our portfolio and gas AMRs at three-quarters of our portfolio. For all remaining assets we are on-track to install AMRs in the coming year, ahead of internal targets.
Electric vehicle charging
In 2018, we partnered with InstaVolt – one of the UK’s largest owner-operators of rapid DC charging stations for electrical vehicles – to install and maintain charging points to a number of our shopping centres and retail parks. We now have 18 charging points installed across six retail sites in Wallsend, Fareham, Dumfries, Middlesbrough, Market Deeping and Barry, and we have plans to install them at further sites in the coming year.
Our partnership with InstaVolt
InstaVolt is one of the UK’s leading providers
of electric vehicle charging points and is the
owner and operator of all EV charging points
across the NewRiver portfolio. InstaVolt’s
chargers are available to use on a
subscription-free, pay-as you go basis, and
with rapid DC chargers providing a minimum
50kW of electricity, can charge a vehicle
in the time it takes to have a cup of coffee.
Better still, all the electricity supplied to
InstaVolt comes from 100% renewable
energy sources, and the units are futureproofed through the ability to upgrade them
to provide up to 350kW as battery technology
develops, without the need to remove them
from the ground.
InstaVolt installs and maintains its chargers
for free and makes its money from the sale of
electricity to drivers. NewRiver receives a rent
for hosting the chargers at its centres.
Find out more about InstaVolt
Reducing water consumption at our assets saves money and reduces our overall resource intensity. We have implemented water saving initiatives at seven centres including undertaking several toilet refurbishments. Initiatives included installation of sensor taps, water saving cisterns and new water heaters. We also installed water harvesters on service decks and rooftops, such as on the roof of Broadway Shopping Centre, Bexleyheath. These installations substantially reduce the consumption of potable water by using the roof as a collector of rainwater
Energy-efficient LED lighting
Lighting is essential to ensuring our centres are safe, secure and pleasant places to visit. Recognising that many of our centres are still reliant upon inefficient light sources, we have recently commenced the rollout of LED lighting, which uses at least 80% less electricity than an equivalent conventional halogen source. LED lighting has become the favoured option for businesses wishing to reduce energy consumption, as LEDs have the highest efficacy and lamp life of all, are cost effective to run, and are easy to control and maintain. Over the last 18 months, we have installed LED lighting at an additional nine shopping centres, and we are in the process of installing them at a further two centres, meaning that the majority of our shopping centres are now running off these renewable light sources.
Solar PV Panel installation
The installation of solar photovoltaic (“PV”) panels on the roofs of our assets and other open spaces provides a renewable source of electricity derived directly from sunlight, which is used to power lighting and other amenities at our centres, while also reducing our carbon emissions and energy procurement costs.
NewRiver now has Solar PV panels at four shopping centres – in Boscombe, Llanelli, Skegness and Hastings – each with a 50 kWp system capacity. Together, these generate almost 400,000 kWh per year, enough to power 130 UK households. In addition, Grays Shopping Centre, which NewRiver acquired in July 2018, already has a system of almost 200 panels covering 15,000 sq ft on the roof of the centre. These panels generate approximately 45,000 kWh per year, sufficient to power the centre’s car park, and saving around 600 tonnes of CO2 over their life.
Minimising our waste production and encouraging recycling at our centres helps to reduce the pollution caused by sending rubbish to landfills and the manufacture of new replacement materials. A number of our centres have partnered with Don’t Waste and its industry-leading waste management platform to devise their own waste management programmes. These programmes are already showing results, with the Prospect Centre in Hull seeing a 43% reduction in waste year on year after implementing a new waste strategy and The Ridings in Wakefield seeing a 28% reduction year-on-year. We are also committed to improving our waste recycling streams and on-site management practices.
