By Carmel McQuaid, Head of Sustainable Business

As a business that’s been around for 138 years, M&S knows how important it is to look to the future.

That’s why we launched our sustainability programme as Plan A in 2007 – because there is no Plan B when it comes to our planet. And it’s why just last year, we reset Plan A with a singular focus on becoming a net zero business across all our operations and our entire value chain by 2040.

We take this commitment very seriously, setting ourselves near-term, science-based targets to make sure we keep pace with our road map to net zero, and as Head of Sustainable Business at M&S, it’s my role to oversee and help drive us all towards meeting these stretching targets.

With the recent inquiry into our plans to redevelop M&S Marble Arch, you therefore might think I’d be nervous about how this project could impact on our sustainability goals – but I’m not – and here’s why.

If we leave M&S Marble Arch to continue trading as it is, not only is the store likely to become less productive for the business over time, the building’s energy efficiency – which is unfortunately already very poor – will only continue to deteriorate too.

In short, for every year that Marble Arch stays open in its current form, it will become harder and harder for M&S to meet our emissions reduction targets.

Some have asked why we decided against a retrofit approach in Marble Arch. After all, M&S does have expertise in upgrading our existing stores with over 40 stores renewed in the last year alone and historic town centre stores such as Chelmsford and Cheltenham being retrofitted.

However, a full and lengthy review of the potential refurbishment and redevelopment options was carried out prior to coming to the conclusion that retrofit would be unfeasible due to this particular site’s poor structure – as it is three separate, poorly joined buildings. Even with a retrofit, these structural flaws would remain, limiting our options to improve energy efficiency in the future. This was supported by leading environmental experts such as sustainability consultant Arup which concluded the new build offered significant sustainability advantages over refurbishment.

The reality is that modernising our store estate to be fit for the future is at the heart of delivering a business that is more sustainable – both commercially and environmentally.

Upon completion, the new Marble Arch building will be in the top 1% of sustainability performance in London with a BREEAM outstanding rating – the industry’s leading sustainability benchmark – and use less than a quarter of the energy than it does today.

The new Marble Arch scheme will also deliver carbon payback within 11 years of construction. This means the building, which has a planned lifespan of 120 years, will deliver an overall positive contribution to the environment 11 years after completion – a significant achievement for a new scheme.

These plans, which were created in consultation with and approved by both Westminster City Council and the Greater London Authority, will transform M&S Marble Arch from an energy-wasting site with inadequate insulation, single glazing and inefficient room configuration, into a modern building which uses just a quarter of the energy used by today’s structure.

The science is complex as are the debates, and we are very alive to the impact of embodied as well as operational carbon, but our approach is akin to replacing a polluting car with a new electric one. There is a significant embodied energy component required in the manufacture of the replacement electric vehicle, yet their long-term impact is undeniably beneficial in carbon terms.

If you put this together with other initiatives like an all-electric servicing strategy using solar panels to provide local air quality improvement and opportunity for connection to future district heating networks, a greywater harvesting system (reducing drinking water consumption by 55%) and plans to reuse 95% of materials from the existing buildings, it’s a lot easier to see why the Marble Arch development isn’t just a step forward for M&S and Oxford Street, but also a crucial contributor to our sustainability journey.

We’ve been serving customers at Marble Arch for nearly a century – and these proposals will not only enable us to remain at the heart of Oxford Street for the next century and beyond, but will also make a big step towards net zero operations while creating a better place to work and shop for our colleagues and customers.