Shopping centres ‘must get greener, quicker’
By Ben Sillitoe - 10:40AM - Tue 20th September 2011
UK shopping centre owners must speed up the way in which they reduce the carbon footprint of their sites, a leading property expert said this week.
Angus McIntosh, director at global real estate services company Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) and Chair of the British Council of Shopping Centres (BCSC) Low Carbon Working Group, yesterday called on the property industry to invest more in lowering greenhouse gas emissions.
His comments pre-empt today’s publication of the BCSC-commissioned ‘Accelerating Change Towards Low Carbon Shopping Centres’, a report that will be discussed at the organisation’s Annual Conference & Exhibition in Manchester this afternoon.
The research paper urges retailers and landlords to work together to ensure that shopping centres play an adequate role helping the UK reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 per cent over the next 40 years.
McIntosh advised landlords and tenants to look beyond the “low hanging fruit” of quick wins and, instead, focus on long-term savings that require real capital investment.
“The industry has done a great deal to reduce its carbon footprint, but we have to be realistic about where to go from here,” he stated.
“We need to see an acceleration in terms of the way assets are managed sustainably. This will require investment, but with rising energy costs and improving technology can also result in savings.”
Westfield Stratford City, which opened last week, and Trinity Leeds which is due to open in 2013, are two projects that have been conducted with the strictest environmental standards in mind, but the JLL director argues that when shops undertake refits there are great opportunities to improve energy efficiency.
To that end McIntosh believes it is “crucial” that landlords and those who rent their units work in collaboration, ensuring retail properties are as efficient as possible.
Philippa Latimer, Public Affairs Manager at BCSC, said: “We cannot overstate just how important landlord-tenant relationships are in enabling shopping centres to operate as efficiently as possible. Communication about what each other have planned is key.
“Landlords work with retailers trialling all kinds of different technologies, so they are perfectly positioned to share knowledge between retailers about what technologies work in what conditions and how much they cost to put in place.”