Benchmarking energy and water consumption of supermarkets in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Buildings are responsible for about 40% of global energy consumption, 42% of global CO 2 emissions and about 30% of global fresh water consumption. Therefore, the importance of energy and water consumption benchmarking in buildings has become a major objective for governments and relevant authorities, in order to reduce the energy and water consumption by the buildings. Energy consumption benchmarks for commercial sector, hospitality industry, apparel industry and tea processing industry have been already developed and are available for Sri Lanka. However, electricity and water consumption benchmarking for retail supermarkets have not been established yet. Therefore, during this study, electricity and water consumption benchmarking for Sri Lankan retail supermarkets were estimated and proposed. According to the analysis, electricity consumption benchmarks were obtained as 780.0 kwh/year/m 2 per sales floor area and 465.4 kwh/year/m 2 per total floor area. Moreover, mean specific electricity costs were obtained as 19,465.90 Rs/year/m 2 per sales floor area and 11,621.20 Rs/year/m 2 per total floor area, provided that electricity cost is calculated per GP 2 tariff structure of Ceylon electricity board. In addition, water consumption benchmarks were obtained as 246.5 L/year/m 2 per sales floor area and 137.2 L/year/m 2 per total floor area. Moreover, a building energy simulation model was developed using eQUEST simulation software, to obtain the specific electricity consumption and average annual electricity consumption breakdown of the retail supermarkets. Eventually, the results obtained from the simulation model were validated against the results obtained from the numerical model, and then compared and verified with the international benchmarks established for retail supermarkets.