The Co-operative Group continues to strengthen its green credentials with the launch of a night-time energy-saving programme for the IBM Electronic Point Of Sale (EPOS) operations in its 2,200 food stores.

The launch marks a further green innovation for The Co-operative following the switch to renewable sources for the electricity for its mainland food stores. The introduction of the “Wake-up on LAN” programme will enable tills, receipt printers, customer and operator screens, chip and pin devices and barcode scanners that are currently left on overnight to be switched off automatically when stores close and to be powered up again the following morning before they reopen for business.

These include 7,500 till units, 7,500 receipt printers, 15,000 customer and operator screens, 7,500 chip and pin devices and 7,500 barcode scanners. The Group says it will save 1.68 million kilowatt hours of energy per annum by using the system, which has been developed by the Group’s in-house IT team who worked in collaboration with IBM to re-engineer the Group’s InControl store end-of-day batch process system.

Savings on its energy bills are expected to be around £120,000 per annum along with a reduction of 722 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The introduction of the programme will also significantly prolong the life of the hardware, and therefore reduce the environmental impact still further by less frequent renewal. Implementation starts this month and is expected to be completed by the summer.

Mark Hale, Director of IS Food Retail, said: “The re-engineering of the EPOS system so it can be shut down at night clearly underlines The Co-operative Group’s continued commitment to the environment and to finding new ways of saving energy.”

Janine Cook, Director of Retail Store Solutions, IBM UK Ltd, commented: IBM has a commitment to developing products that reduce consumption of energy, and working with The Co-operative Group we’ve helped them release savings they can plough back into their business.”

The Co-operative has set itself a target of reducing energy use at all its premises by 25% by 2012.