Bayside Mall in Tableview, Cape Town, scooped the award for the Large Building Retrofit Category, raising the bar for energy efficiency at shopping centres in the Mother City and across the country.

Bayside Mall’s energy efficiency interventions include upgrades to LED lighting and improvements in the heating, ventilation and air conditioning system. The projects have yielded consistent monthly energy savings averaging at 11% so far, with the hot summer months expected to bump savings up to 17%. 

Norbert Sasse, CEO of Growthpoint Properties, comments: “Winning this award is an exciting achievement. It shows we are on the right track to achieve our own green goals, and we also hope it serves to inspire others to do the same, going beyond what’s required to ensure we are resource-efficient and preserve our environment as best we can.”

Growthpoint is South Africa’s largest REIT and a JSE ALSI Top 40 Index company. It is a Platinum Founding Member of the Green Building Council South Africa (GBCSA), a JSE Socially Responsible Investment (SRI) Index company and a Dow Jones Sustainability Index company. It owns and manages a diversified portfolio of 471 properties in South Africa, 53 properties in Australia through its investment in GOZ and a 50% interest in the properties at V&A Waterfront, Cape Town. Growthpoint’s consolidated property assets are valued at over R100 billion. 

Stephan le Roux, Growthpoint’s Divisional Director for Retail, says: “Our sustainability projects that produce solar energy, harvest rainwater, and convert waste into energy all make Bayside Mall more self-sufficient by generating its own energy and reducing its waste to landfill.”

Bayside Mall’s flagship project was a 500 kWp pilot rooftop solar photovoltaic (PV) plant, with 2,108 panels covering 3,300sqm. It supplies 5% of the electricity needs in this shopping centre, which spans over 45,000sqm of retail space and welcomes in excess of 7.5 million shoppers each year.

“The annual average daily energy production of these panels is 2,100 kWh, which equates to the average daily use of 150 households in Cape Town. The installation of the PV panels has also resulted in carbon emission reductions equivalent to 767 tonnes of CO2,” says le Roux.

The mall has also invested in a rainwater harvesting and reuse intervention. This involves the extraction, detaining, storage and utilisation of storm water runoff from the shopping centre’s hard surfaces and rooftop.

“Harvested storm water is screened free of litter, debris and silt before it enters the main storm water holding tanks. Storm water is pumped to elevated tanks at Bayside Mall’s back of house area. These tanks have the capacity to hold a total volume of 60 kL, with clean storm water pumped to two tanks, positioned above the public toilet blocks and used to fill the toilet cisterns,” le Roux explains. Storm water is further used for irrigating the mall’s landscaping.

All this results in a 93% water saving in landscaping and public toilet usage. 

The mall’s waste-to-energy intervention involves the anaerobic digestion of organic waste that are generated in the shopping mall each day. A waste-to-energy electricity generation plant has been constructed and will introduce a further 250 to 330 kWh per day in the near future. This will be fed back into the mall and be used for power in its common areas. 

Not only is Bayside Mall saving energy, but it is also encouraging others to do the same.

It has put in place ongoing behavioural and awareness programmes that target its staff, retailers and shoppers.

“Bayside Mall has moved beyond basic lighting retrofits and peak demand reductions, pioneering efforts that have set us apart as an exemplary custodian of all our energy resources,” says le Roux.