Ulta Beauty – Remund Jordan Labios – 2018

Goals 

In anticipation of long-term growth in the number of guests visiting its stores Ulta Beauty, the largest specialty beauty retailer in the U.S., enlisted EDF Climate Corps fellow Remund Labios to assist in quantifying the impact of air infiltration due to guest traffic on their energy consumption.

Solutions

After analyzing the energy profile of a select number of Ulta Beauty retail stores, Labios concluded that the local climate conditions of each store contributed significantly to the energy impact of air infiltration due to guest traffic. He developed a tool that can estimate the annual energy impact of air infiltration based on store location, local average wind speeds per year, type of entryway, and the average number of guests entering and leaving each store per hour.

This tool allows Ulta Beauty to categorize stores by climate zone and take efficiency actions that are tailored to each specific retail location. Labios offered examples of actions that could be taken such as:

• Ensuring that stores in cold climate zones be built with vestibules, rather than standard doorways, to help reduce the impact of air infiltration.

• Using dimmable lighting during summer months and take advantage of ambient light which can reduce heat generated by light fixtures as well as the cooling load of their HVAC systems and extend the lifetime of all the equipment involved.

Potential Impact

Using Labios’ tool, Ulta Beauty can use the energy consumption estimates it provides in their budgeting process to help justify energy efficiency opportunities in existing operations as well as new projects going forward. Because the company has a broad portfolio of stores located across all climate zones, the climate specific nature of the tool also provides them with the opportunity to conduct energy efficiency projects locally before rolling out changes nationally.