Kudrinko’s Thrives on Cutting Energy Costs

Since taking over management of the 22-year-old family business from his father in 2005 (and ownership in 2010), Kudrinko, 37, has set an ambitious course for his 10,200-square-foot store. The myriad changes include a major overhaul of its physical infrastructure, new refrigeration and HVAC systems (below left), LED lighting retrofits, humidity controls, a parking lot reconstruction that controls rainwater, and solar parking lot lighting, among other changes.

The resulting efficiencies have led to a virtuous cycle — the more money he cuts from his energy bill, for example, the more he is incented to continue to make investments, paying for new systems with money already saved. “You see this and you want more,” he said. “How much more savings can I create in my store? The worst thing I could do is stop spending money,” he added, laughing.

Kudrinko combines a grocer’s hard-nosed approach to business with a politician’s desire to improve society. A graduate of Carleton University, Ottawa, with a degree in political science, he ran as a Green Party candidate for provincial parliament in Ontario in 2010, promoting his store’s environmental initiatives, but lost in a very conservative district. “I’m a political person,” he said. “I enjoy public policy.” And he likes seeing how businesses can be part of the solution to environmental problems. “If every grocery store in Canada made the kind of investments I made, we’d reduce carbon emissions substantially,” he said.

But he’s also very pragmatic about the economic impact of environmental investments. “When I talk to other grocers about changes we’ve made, I very rarely discuss is it good for the environment,” he said. “I look at the business benefits. And for us it’s making sure our store can compete with stores that have these [energy-saving] technologies in place.”

Kudrinko is more than holding his own. In calendar year 2011, using the Carbon Counted website, he calculated that his store generated 55% less carbon dioxide equivalents through electricity and propane usage, as well as refrigerant emissions, than the average store of his size in Canada. Between 2008, when he began renovating his store, and 2011, his overall carbon footprint has dropped from 16.60 to 10.57 kilograms of CO2-equivalent per square foot.

One of the more remarkable upsides for Kudrinko has been the installation of a back-room Hussmann Protocol refrigeration system (left) that has yet to spring a refrigerant leak in three years. (It uses R-404A refrigerant.) He credits his refrigeration contractor, Hamilton Smith, Belleville, Ontario, for doing a good installation job. “It cost more to install than to buy, but if that’s the kind of operation you get, you don’t mind,” he said. His only refrigerant loss this year was two pounds of R-22 from his office air conditioning system.

Kudrinko previously used a standard DX refrigeration system with two pipes coming out of each of its compressors. By contrast, the Protocol unit, containing six scroll compressors, has only two pipes going out to all medium-temperature and low-temperature cases. The DX unit had “much more piping, many more joints and welds, and therefore more potential for leaks and equipment failures,” he said.

To supplement the capacity of the Protocol system, Kudrinko also has a rooftop compressor supporting his fresh meat counter and another rooftop compressor for his walk-in freezer. For his frozen food cases, Kudrinko recently replaced fluorescent lighting in 21 doors with Immersion RV40 LED lights from GE Lighting Solutions, from which he expects a 2.4-year payback after rebate.