Shopping for Success: Numbers, Knowledge, Time & Energy

Conference item

Working with Infrastructure Creation of Knowledge and Energy strategy Development (WICKED) is a UK-based research project seeking energy solutions for different retail market segments. Stakeholders include landlords, tenants, and owner-occupiers. Through cooperative research, WICKED investigates clusters of technical, legal, and organizational challenges faced by retail organizations, including those with smart meters and energy managers (the “data rich”) and those without (the “data poor”). This paper provides a snapshot of the existing energy data and analytics practices of six WICKED partners. Partners include four retail tenants (a multi- national, full-service department store; a home improvement chain; a café chain; and an electronics retailer) and two landlords/managing agents (a property owner of UK community shopping centers, and a managing agent for a budget shopping center). Using quantitative data from partners, it provides a glimpse of current energy analytics within organizations. Using interviews with staff, it provides new information on the organizational context of energy management according to a 4C’s “concern”, “capacity” and “conditions” within a “communities” framework. These cases show that the data rich and poor will need different energy management solutions to maximize their energy efficiency and behavioral opportunities. The data rich may hire third-party experts to turn numbers into knowledge, and then discover the need for further communications strategies to engage staff. The data poor, on the other hand, have fewer opportunities to engage staff with empirical evidence. Further investigation is needed into how organizational cultures frame employee duties, behaviors, and expectations, particularly with regard to data and analytics.

Authors: Janda, K; Wallom, D; Granell, R; Layberry, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy
• Host title: Proceedings of ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings
• Journal: 2016 ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings
• Publication date: 2016-08-21
• Acceptance date: 2016-06-30
• Event location: Asilomar, CA, USA