Passive House retail establishments

The term “retail establishments” encompasses a wide range of buildings whose levels of energy consumption vary quite a bit depending on their size, location, shape, use, and façade. The most important factor is the energy needed to keep goods cool. Where such refrigeration is necessary, such as in grocery stores, the heat that flows into the open refrigerated areas can get to such a level that total internal gains are negative, despite high heat output from artificial lighting. In non-food stores, on the other hand, heat loads can be so great that just moderately insulated buildings need to be cooled year round. Another contributing factor is that stores stay open longer and longer.

Those of us who are trying to spread the idea of energy-efficient Passive House retail establishments must always keep the importance of economics in mind – money counts. Attempts to reduce energy demand in retail establishments must therefore not simply make economic sense in and of themselves but also make sense as part of the overall sales concept. Maximum energy efficiency tends to be of the most importance here. A few completed projects can be seen in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A variety of retail Passive Houses – Timm (sporting goods), Bautzen, Germany, photo: Jerzy Timm; Tesco (groceries), Tramore, Ireland, photo: Joseph Doyle Architects; Kohler (furniture), Erolzheim, Germany, photo: Keck Architects.

Retail establishments - the Passive House concept

There is great potential for increasing energy efficiency in retail establishments. The most important factors are refrigeration in grocery stores and lighting in almost all types of stores. Decreasing energy consumed by heating and/or air-conditioning tends to be less important. Still, Passive House technologies that have proven themselves in other projects could generally be implemented here, as long as the specific considerations for retail establishments are taken into account in the planning stages. The analysis is explained in more detail (in German) under the title “Passivhaus Verkaufsstätten” in Proceedings No. 40.

It seems to make the most sense to formulate requirements for a retail Passive House in a modular way. For example, since the refrigeration system has the greatest effect on energy consumption in a discount grocery store, it makes sense to consider efficiency in terms of meters of refrigerated areas. Just covering primary energy, for example relative to a square meter of energy reference area, is not sufficient here. Lighting is a similar case. It is difficult to reduce energy consumed by artificial lighting simply by setting maximum limit values for retail Passive Houses – here, too, requirements must be modular.

An important factor is the use of high-efficiency components. We encourage manufacturers, investors, and business owners to develop these technologies, sell them, and use them. The next step is determining certification criteria for different types of retail Passive Houses. To this end, the Passive House Institute will compile measurement data from completed projects.

This analysis was conducted as part of the “Cost-effective Passive Houses” working group, phase V. The working group receives funding from the German Environmental Foundation, the State of Hesse, and proKlima, the climate protection fund for the Hanover region.

[PHI 2011] Feist, Wolfgang; Hasper, Wolfgang; Kah, Oliver; Keck, Erwin; Krimmling, Jörn; Pohl, Wilfried; Schnieders, Jürgen; Theumer, Susanne; Proceedings No. 40 ‘Passivhaus-Verkaufsstätten’, Cost-effective Passive Houses working group, Passive House Institute (2011).