Charles R. Zimmerman is the vice-president of Prototype and New Format Development for Wal-Mart. His specialty is in energy management for retail buildings. On November 9th at UCLA, I attended the sustainable business conference Opportunity Green, where Charles gave a presentation. These are the proceedings.
Following some quick opening remarks, Charles first asked everyone to stand up, raise their hand, and pledge to make energy efficiency a priority in their home. Nowhere else do we as individuals have as much influence and control in our lives - we should take advantage of that opportunity. Then Charles mentioned having seen only two CFL bulbs in the building, and that in the speakers waiting area he saw a variety of lights on that served absolutely no purpose. He shut them off. The point was definitely not missed. Being that this was a conference about sustainability at a well-known university that like many others is trying to green itself up, incandescent bulbs are everywhere and being on with no one around, that’s a lot of wasted energy.
Among all their stores worldwide, their U.S. stores are the most energy efficient. Why? Because Wal-Mart’s philosophy is that EDLC (Everyday Low Cost) -> EDLP (Everyday Low Price). In order to be profitable and keep prices low, attacking and reducing costs is the only way to go. For WM, energy is their 2nd largest expense. But it is a controllable expense. Their goals are to consistently beat California’s standards, and a 20% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in existing stores by 2012.
White roofs and skylights are the standardized across stores, and according to Charles are the most important first steps to take before considering photovoltaics. White roofs allow for them to realize an 8-10% cooling load reduction. Imagine the difference it’d make if that was mandatory across all roofs in sunny states. Additionally, they have what’s known as a daylight harvesting system which monitors the available light on the sales floors, and progressively dim and brighten the store throughout the day. Charles showed us a graph with a wave sequence of peaks and valleys, with energy consumption on the y-axis and the hours of the day on the x-axis for a one week period. Minute spikes appeared here and there, indicating the presence of a cloud or other occurrence. This system was piloted in 1995 and is now in roughly 2,700 stores. They cost $250k per store, save $100k per year, and have a 2.5 year payback period.
Also regarding lighting is the use of LEDs for exterior signage and parking lots. The interesting thing is that the primary savings from LEDs is not from energy, but rather the maintenance cost of replacing fluorescent bulbs every two years.
HVAC (Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning) is another big area they’ve tackled, by shoving manufacturers to innovate much further than the going technical specs in the marketplace, along with implementing variable speed fans and motors. A particular innovation they’re excited about is what’s known as CO2 Secondary Loop refrigeration system. This requires 60-80% less refrigerant, reduces 60,000 tons of CO2, results in fewer spoiled products from variable cooling, and lower maintenance costs. Next, they installed heat reclamation systems from fridges and other sources to heat their water systems.
Capping this all off, is a centralized energy monitoring and management system linked directly to their Bentonville, Arkansas headquarters. This system allows them to see for example that store #626 in Pensacola, Florida has a warehouse door unnecessarily open, and they can call the store to let them know. Talk about Big Brother huh? As Charles said it best, store managers and associates should only need to mind to their job functions and keep customers happy.
Wal-Mart doesn’t just want to keep these savings for itself. They’re sharing best practices with government agencies, universities, and other retailers so they can realize the benefits too. They have enough strength and clout that competitors becoming more energy efficient and saving money couldn’t make a small difference to them. It’s simply the right thing to do.
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