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The BREEAM In-Use certification is a holistic environmental assessment method, which focuses on assessing the sustainability of existing assets. It seeks to drive improvements in buildings’ operational performance, helping both owners and occupiers to embrace sustainability.
Six of our assets currently hold the BREEAM In-Use certification:
As part of our submission to Phase 3 of the Energy Savings Opportunity Scheme (ESOS), we commissioned net-zero audits of a representative sample of our assets, in order to understand the energy efficiency and decarbonisation interventions required to achieve our ambition of:
To truly achieve net-zero at a global scale, we need to ensure that assets are not only moving towards renewable and low-carbon energy sources, but also reducing their energy usage intensity as far as possible. Without this reduction, the demand for renewable and low-carbon energy sources will outstrip supply; hence our current strategy prioritises opportunities to reduce our consumption, such as through lighting replacements.
Our property managers supported us to implement IBOS at Broadway Shopping Centre in Bexleyheath, aiming to reduce our utilities consumption through optimisation of our building systems, making them intelligent and more efficient. IBOS uses the latest IoT technology to provide remote, dynamic control that optimises buildings' systems according to actual levels of occupancy.
In the half year period ending 31 December 2023 following intitial installation of the system, we saw a 29% reduction in energy consumption vs the same period of 2022, equivalent to 62 tonnes CO2e savings, or 7.5million mobile phone charges!
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.
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. 80% of our surface level car parks now have EV charging infrastructure, amounting to 50 bays across the portfolio in total.
Reducing water consumption at our assets saves money and reduces our overall resource intensity. We have implemented water saving initiatives at many of our centres, including undertaking several WC refurbishments. Initiatives included the 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.
NewRiver has a target to recycle 85% of the waste we manage at our shopping centres. Recent measures to support us to achieve this target include:
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 has Solar PV panels at four shopping centres – in Boscombe, Grays, Skegness and Hastings. Together, these generate almost 400,000 kWh per year, enough to power 130 UK households.
NewRiver continues to explore opportunities to introduce more solar PV systems across our portfolio, with a target to increase on-site renewable energy generation by 50% from a 2020 baseline.
