Points of sale account for more than two thirds of our energy consumption. The leverage for greater energy efficiency is particularly great here. Thanks to technical innovations, our sales outlets are becoming increasingly resource-friendly and efficient.
Since 2007, all our new and upgraded points of sale have satisfied the Minergie standard, meaning that they use around 20 percent less electricity and 40 percent less heat. For buildings that we do not own, we apply Minergie standards to the building services. In total, we operate more than 414 points of sale in accordance with the Minergie standard.
In all new and upgraded supermarkets, we fit LED lighting, as this technology requires up to half as little electricity. Since 2010, we have relied exclusively on LED lighting in our restaurants and, since 2015, our supermarkets have been fitted entirely with LED. Our logos are also lit entirely with LED, enabling us to save around 2 gigawatt hours of electricity each year. They are switched off at night to save electricity and minimize light pollution.
The refrigeration and freezing of our products account for nearly half of the total electricity consumption of our points of sale. Conventional refrigerants still have a very big impact on the climate. Therefore, we have been using CO2 as a refrigerant at points of sale for permanently installed units since 2010. These modern CO2 units require a quarter less electricity and their climate impact is 4 000 times less than that of conventional refrigerants. Moreover, we use the waste heat created by the refrigeration systems for boiling and for pre-heating hot water, reducing our energy consumption even further. Over 89 percent of our points of sale are already fitted with such a system (as of 2017).
We rely increasingly on energy produced from renewable energy sources. For example, we have installed a modern wood cutting plant with flue gas scrubbing, which we use for the supermarket and the restaurant at the Muripark shopping centre in Muri. Compared with the use of conventional oil heating, we thus save 90 tonnes of CO2 each year.
We have also installed over 60 photovoltaic systems on our buildings, with a total output of 11 250 kilowatts. These systems produce around 19 million kilowatt hours of solar electricity each year: enough to meet the average annual electricity requirements of about 5 800 Swiss households. This environmentally friendly electricity has been used by our points of sale since 2016.