Energy management company scolds “wasteful” retailers

BY HANNAH KOKJOHN – MEDILL NEWS SERVICE

Just as the U.S. Census Bureau released its unexpectedly dismal March report of a 1.1 percent drop in U.S. food and retail service sales, Prenova Inc., an Atlanta-based energy management company, twisted the knife further with a press release listing the top three way retailers are wasting precious money.

Prenova, which manages $2 billion in energy spending for several national brands, cited poor HVAC monitoring and inefficient lighting and refrigeration as the primary culprits of excessive spending.

Michael Nark, CEO of Prenova, said in the release that retailers who were still forgoing energy-efficient practices are wasting money: 

“The U.S. currently has a utility bill of over $1 trillion dollars per year, yet most companies still don’t operate existing equipment efficiently. Organizations with an annual energy spend of $15,000 per site can easily lose up to $3,750 purely because of oversights. That’s a 25 percent loss.”

Prenova intentionally timed the release of its energy overspending findings with the retail sales report as a message to retail companies, said D. Scott Beaver, head of corporate communications at Prenova.

Right now might not be the easiest time to scrape together capital to invest in energy-efficient technology, but it makes one wonder if retailers might be weathering the recession better if they had jumped on the energy-efficiency bandwagon before the housing bubble burst.

Beaver estimates that only one-third of all retailers are using energy-efficient practices.

“If companies had taken steps to reduce their [energy] costs, that’s going to impact results now,” Beaver said.

Tags: Energy, energy costs, energy efficiency, Prenova, recession, retail sales, Retailers