Business Ethics - how B&Q tries to be ecologically aware.

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Jaymie – lee howard        Page         27/03/2012

Assignment Brief; Energy policy

B&Q

Part 1 a)

In 2007, B&Q stores in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland began changing their stores to make up for the current climate change. All B&Q stores are worked on to ensure they are as environmentally friendly as possible. They do this by making sure their stores, practices and even products are energy efficient. Raising awareness to the customer of the benefits of using the products with lower environmental impact has a major help on the company to make drastic changes to the energy consumption used.

The Corporate Leader Groups on Climate Changes’ (CLGCC) Chief Executive, Ian Cheshire, reflects the active role in the area. He brings together other business leaders from major UK and international companies who believe that there is an urgency to develop new and long-term policies for tackling climate change.

B&Q Operations:

Since 1994, B&Q have been doing trials in store design and redesign to help improve on the energy efficiency within the stores. An example of this is the company have trialled passive ventilation where vents on the roof harness wind power manually to ventilate offices and retail space. After this trial they made this procedure stand across all their stores nationwide.

 From 1998 and onward, all of B&Q’s stores have been fitted with a Trend Building Management System. This will control all heating and lighting through out the store.  However since 2002, all of the newer stores have been fitted with dimming facilities to the sales area lighting and in order to help maximise energy savings a quarter of the roofs are fitted with translucent panels. As the natural day lighting increases, the system will dim the stores lights to a minimum present level which is (30%). The dimming system will also operate at 50% lighting levels overnight to save energy during restocking.

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 New renewable technologies are planned for their New Malden store, which was scheduled to open in 2007. These technologies included a ground source heat pump, vertical axis wind turbine, solar thermal heating, PV and ‘sun pipes’. A viewing tower will also be fitted with a wind turbine fitted on top in order for the public to see the products. Not only this but energy meters will be fitted so recordings of the savings can be achieved.

B&Q’s Energy Department entered into a contract to provide automatic energy monitoring of the companies mainland UK store and office premises with ...

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