Wal-Mart Going Solar
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Business, Energy
Looks like the world’s largest retailer is getting serious about green.
The five latest stores in Walmart’s pilot program, which now totals 20 stores, Sam’s Clubs, and distribution centers in Hawaii and California, will all be located in sunny Puerto Rico. Their solar installations will be provided by SunEdison, described by Walmart as being “North America’s largest solar energy services provider.”Walmart, however, won’t be buying the solar systems from SunEdison. Instead, that panel punter will finance, own, build, and operate them itself, and sell the generated juice to Walmart. The systems will provide the stores with 25 to 35 per cent of their electrical needs, and are projected to produce 90 million kWh of power over the 15-year life of the project.
Walmart is dead serious about solar power, stating in their most recent Solar Power Fact Sheet that “our goal [is] 100 percent renewable energy.”
Obviously this is encouraging because, if it works and Wal-Mart can create a compelling enough business case, it’ll force other retailers to follow suit.
More as it develops…
This entry was posted on Sunday, August 2nd, 2009 and is filed under Business, Energy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 2nd, 2009 at 5:39 pm
I would expect a plan like this to expand soon to stores in Arizona, New Mexico and parts of Texas. Why not?
August 3rd, 2009 at 12:01 pm
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