Sainsbury’s in partnership for alternative heat
Sainsbury’s CEO Justin King used his speech at the BASE conference this week to announce a partnership with Imperial College London’s Faculty of Engineering and Grantham Institute for Climate Change. The partnership will officially launch on 16th March and initially last for 5 years.
The purpose of this partnership is to inform the delivery of Sainsbury’s ambitious ‘future stores’ plans by researching and delivering innovative and practical solutions to the future impacts of climate change as well as helping Sainsbury’s dramatically reduce its carbon footprint.
The partnership will deliver real outputs and aims to provide the partners with a commercial legacy; the intellectual property of any products or research jointly developed will be commercially owned by the partnership.
The most ambitious part of the plan is to work on ways Sainsbury’s stores give back heat and recycled water that could theoretically be used in customers’ homes. Sainsbury’s will also be working on schemes to help customers manage their waste streams.
Other initiatives include Smart Grid technology, which will help reduce Sainsbury’s energy demand, with a possibility for taking stores completely off grid. These solutions would reduce the reliance on a strained UK power network.
Neil Sachdev, commercial director for Sainsbury’s, said “We are delighted that Imperial College London is working with Sainsbury’s in this partnership – one that our customers will see in the form of unique ‘future stores’. The challenge of climate change needs bold leadership but ultimately it is action that counts and I am eager to see this relationship bear real fruit.”
Professor Nilay Shah from Imperial College London said: “As a team, we plan to work together on using engineering to develop new low-carbon store concepts, and help ensure that business is well positioned to respond to the effects of climate change.”