Brad Morris, senior manager of engineering and energy, says Giant Eagle’s sustainability originally centered on construction, but over time has permeated the entire organization.
“The acceptance of these sustainable measures and products is becoming embedded in what we do,” he says.
Giant Eagle built its first green supermarket in 2004. Today, more than 10 buildings are rated as LEED, the foremost program for designing, constructing, maintaining and operating buildings for improved environmental and human health performance. However, most projects fit a lot of the LEED criteria, even if the company doesn’t fill out the paperwork.
“As we’ve progressed through the years and our standards have changed, a lot of those nice-to-haves have actually become standards today,” Morris says.
Giant Eagle does pre and post-validation to prove that cost-effectiveness.
For instance, refrigeration systems consume more than 40 percent of the overall energy, he says. By optimizing the refrigeration and HVAC system to improve energy efficiency and extend life, stores have had a 10 to 20 percent reduction of energy.
Now, Giant Eagle’s refrigerant leak rate is in the 7-8 percent range, while the industry average is 20-25 percent.
“What that ends up creating is the acceptance of these different initiatives, because we’re able to justify the initial costs and also validate that we are seeing an impact on our P&L line,” Morris says.
Morris has the numbers to prove that of the millions invested in sustainability, Giant Eagle realizes an investment return rate of 50 percent.
The human element
While Giant Eagle uses technology and data to control how its systems run, what it can’t always control are the more than 34,000-team members.
“You can never over communicate what you’re doing. If I can provide any advice: over communicate and document what you’re doing for credibility,” Morris says.
In each store, Giant Eagle has a champion, an employee incentivized to drive sustainability efforts. There’s also an annual corporate reward for sustainability.
Even with the culture already in place, Morris says it’s an ongoing effort to drive individual engagement at the store level.
evolveEA also has found it’s not easy to change behavior. The firm worked with the U.S. Steel Tower’s primary tenant UPMC to achieve LEED certifications for about 23 floors, or 1 million square feet.
But Mondor says you can’t expect the building’s tenants to all behave in a certain way unless they’re mandated to do so. By putting together a tenant sustainability committee, however, occupants have come together to understand how to better operate the building.
He’s hopeful these efforts will allow the building to continue to perform well, because even at 95 percent occupancy, it’s using less energy than it ever has.
