Lidl is the first to adopt green retrofit programme with EDGE in Cyprus

Lidl Cyprus continuously reduces its environmental footprint with a retrofit programme that is decarbonising its stores across the country. By achieving EDGE certification, Lidl Cyprus is saving 743 tons of carbon dioxide, 90.862 cubic metres of water and 1.551 MWh of energy per year.

Lidl Cyprus, has achieved EDGE green building certification for 17 stores across Cyprus, using the international green building standard created by the International Finance Corporation (IFC), member of the World Bank Group.

EDGE helps property owners and developers build and operate green buildings. It is supported by free software that encourages solutions to improve energy efficiency, water efficiency and the embodied energy in materials by at least 20% compared to a local baseline, which is the minimum standard for EDGE certification. The local baseline is calculated based on building codes, local climatic data and standard industry practices for Cyprus. It provides the perfect platform to improve the sustainability of a retail business, helping to quantify performance and reduce the carbon footprint of stores and distribution centres.

Lidl Cyprus started the EDGE certification process in 2018 with Sintali and SGS. By using the EDGE App to identify opportunities for efficiency improvements, Lidl Cyprus identified areas for retrofit which would both reduce carbon and provide a cost-effective return. This included highlighting the most effective green technologies to adopt, such as LED lights and reduced flow water fittings in most stores and implementing the retrofit strategy. Once the buildings met the EDGE standard, they were certified with Sintali-SGS, who developed a streamlined process to help Lidl certify its portfolio of stores in a resource-efficient manner.

For all existing stores, applying EDGE meant taking stores that were built years ago and bringing them up to current building codes, before working on the 20% efficiency improvements. In some cases, stores were constructed over 5 years ago. This makes the retrofit effort significant and underlines Lidl Cyprus’s sustainability strategy of focusing on constant improvements over time.

As the next phase, the company will be certifying its new stores with EDGE, while continuing to seek additional opportunities through the EDGE App to improve the resource efficiency of all of its existing building stock.

You can find out more about EDGE certification here.