How a Fortune 500 Big Box Retailer Built a Data-Driven Carbon Reduction Strategy

Use Case

Building a data-driven carbon management strategy to quantify emissions, prioritize high-impact reduction opportunities, and align sustainability initiatives with business value across a large retail portfolio.

Challenge

Already a long-standing partner of Arcadia, the big box retailer trusted the Arcadia team to leverage their monthly bill data to help develop a business case and identify areas of opportunities to reduce carbon emissions that also produce cost savings. Through a thorough analysis, it was identified that distribution centers were accounting for a large share of the big box retailer’s overall emissions, yet it was more beneficial to the company to focus on energy savings through rebates at their retail stores, producing a higher level of savings. Ultimately, the analysis and business case helped the big box retailer prioritize energy efficiency initiatives for their retail space like rebates and retrofits that both aided in carbon reduction and cost savings before tackling opportunities with their distribution centers.

With executives in support of investing in sustainability initiatives, the big box retailer’s sustainability team wanted to focus on driving change rather than calculating emissions and analyzing year-over-year trends. They did not have the resources or depth of knowledge needed to calculate emissions, determine which datasets to analyze, know how to format the data to make it more digestible and how use of sold products emissions might change in the future. Again, they looked to Arcadia as their partner of choice.

Solution

Calculating carbon emissions and ensuring the data and metrics are compatible with reporting standards takes time and meticulous attention to detail. Focused on implementing initiatives and planning for future projects, the big box retailer looked to Arcadia to:

• Create a Greenhouse Gas Inventory which provides calendar year emissions and usage for Scope 1, 2 & 3, changes in emissions from baseline, a year-over-year comparison, a breakdown of emissions by location, building type and emission category and makes sure the calculations can be accessed for CDP reporting.
• Calculate their Scope 2 Market-Based Figure and advise them on how many Renewable Energy Credits and in which regions they should purchase them to have the largest impact on their emissions and assist in creating a methodology to adopt an emissionality principle.
• Support the Verification Process by interacting with the verifier directly to answer any questions around the accuracy of the data, the methodology used to calculate the emissions and make any necessary adjustments to the final numbers. In addition, provide an analysis on Emission Factor Projections based on potential future climate scenarios to understand how they would impact their overall emissions.

Benefits

The partnership gave the retailer something they didn't have before: confidence in their emissions data. With Arcadia's analysis, they can now track how grid electricity emission factors are shifting their numbers year over year — and act on it. That means knowing at any point whether they're:

• On pace to hit their reduction goals
• Due for a true-up in unbundled REC purchases
• Facing a need to pivot their sustainability strategy and realign it with broader business priorities

For a company that has been proactive on carbon for over 20 years, this isn't just reporting — it's the foundation for staying ahead.