Eco Factor: Wal-Mart to purchase wind-generated electricity to power 360 stores.
America’s largest grocery retailer, Wal-Mart, has escalated its efforts to go green by purchasing wind-generated electricity from Duke Energy. Wal-Mart says that the energy purchased would be enough to power 18,000 homes. Duke Energy will be generating this enormous amount of electricity in the 150 MW Notrees Wind Power Project that is expected to begin commercial operations in December.
Once the deal is through, it would be supplying 15% of the electricity in 360 Wal-Mart stores in Texas. Apart from giving Wal-Mart a green image, 139,000 tons of CO2 would be saved from entering the atmosphere annually, which Wal-Mart compares to washing 108 million loads of laundry.
The Dark Side:
The stores would still get 85% conventional grid electricity. Hence the deal would not be able to give a completely green status to even one of the stores. Wal-Mart could have done much better if the energy purchased would have taken about 50 of its stores off the conventional grid.
Via: Treehugger
