Climate Change and Energy

For more than a decade, we have been tracking our emissions to better understand how we can reduce our impact on the environment and improve our energy use. Powered by Walmart, we are committed to achieving zero emissions in our own operations by 2040. Over 70% of our annual emissions result from energy consumption via the national grid and so it is here where we have concentrated many of our emissions-reduction efforts.

Our approach is two-fold:

Optimise energy efficiency, while concurrently identifying opportunities to transition to renewable alternatives.

Many of our sites are at an advanced stage of their efficiency journey; making use of natural lighting, LEDs, thermal storage and evaporative cooling.

We also increasingly rely on electric forklifts and rainwater harvesting to further reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and potable water for non-potable applications.

We are proud to be one of Africa’s retail leaders in deployment of solar energy solutions. Each one of our solar sites is carefully assessed to ensure maximum energy yields.

Current installations account for approximately 20% of a site’s annual energy needs with some sites reaching 100% renewable energy use at peak solar times.

Notwithstanding the progress we have made in this area, we are intent on rapidly scaling our solar program to further reduce our emissions and insulate our business from grid related energy price increases.