Retailers Look To Sun For Savings

The New York Times reports on a growing trend among retailers to cash in on tax credits from states and the federal government to install solar arrays to power their stores around the nation.

In recent months, chains including Wal-Mart Stores, Kohl’s, Safeway and Whole Foods Market have installed solar panels on roofs of their stores to generate electricity on a large scale. One reason they are racing is to beat a Dec. 31 deadline to gain tax advantages for these projects.

So far, most chains have outfitted fewer than 10 percent of their stores. Over the long run, assuming Congress renews a favorable tax provision and more states offer incentives, the chains promise a solar construction program that would ultimately put panels atop almost every big store in the country.

The trend, while not entirely new, is accelerating as the chains seize a chance to bolster their environmental credentials by cutting back on their use of electricity from coal.

“It’s very clear that green energy is now front and center in the minds of the business sector,” said Daniel M. Kammen, an energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “Not only will you see panels on the roofs of your local stores, but I suspect very soon retailers will have stickers in their windows saying, ‘This is a green energy store.’ ”

In the coming months, 85 Kohl’s stores will get solar panels; 43 already have them. “We want to keep pushing as many as we possibly can,” said Ken Bonning, executive vice president for logistics at Kohl’s.

Macy’s, which has solar panels atop 18 stores, plans to install them on another 40 by the end of this year. Safeway is aiming to put panels atop 23 stores. And other chains, including Whole Foods Market, BJ’s Wholesale Club and REI, the purveyor of outdoor goods, are planning projects of their own.

It's a good thing to reduce their power usage and demand on the power grid to say nothing of helping their bottom line, but I think there's a simpler way that retailers aren't doing as well as they should.

They need to seriously improve their usage of CFLs in places like lighting departments. I've spent considerable time in Home Depot, Lowes, Target, and specialty lighting stores while buying stuff for the house, and the lighting departments in these stores takes almost no advantage of the power savings through CFLs.

These stores clearly have the access to the specialty lighting products that would make those light fixtures sell, and it would also subconsciously give customers the idea that they too can light their homes with CFLs.

Instead, you walk through the lighting departments and you find that the temperatures in those areas are significantly higher than the rest of the store, and you can only imagine the electricity meter spinning furiously to show off those fixtures.

The initial cost of installing the CFLs would be high, but the payoff would be considerable and given that those lights are on during the entirety of business hours, these businesses could get significant cost savings that help the bottom line within months, especially during the summer.