Big-box stores could help slash emissions and save millions by putting solar panels on roofs. Why aren’t more of them doing it?
“This is the way that we have to go,” says Stephen King with the Institute for Energy Research, a think tank in Palo Alto, Calif. “We must shift to renewable electricity, the type of power that our homes and businesses require. We can’t spend another decade building coal plants and keeping our economy and the planet’s in the balance.”
To that end, King and others are now promoting what they call “solar power at large centers.” The idea is to get the big box stores that are already generating power from rooftop panels to turn the power on their own sites.
“Why does your local grocery store still have refrigerators, and why does your local office building maintain air conditioners, even though they don’t use them?” King asks. “We’d better get out there and start installing solar panels on those rooftops. We don’t have any choice.”
In California, where the state’s largest cities, San Diego and San Jose, are already seeing solar power in their largest new buildings, several big-box retailers are already installing solar on their sites, on the assumption that it will reduce their own energy and carbon emissions costs. They are hoping that their customers will do the same.
In a handful of large retail stores — Target, Best Buy, Staples — solar power is already being used as a backup capacity. At Staples, solar power is being used at the store’s distribution center, which distributes electricity to stores in the area.
At Best Buy, which is in the process of building a large distribution center in a former industrial area, the company is installing a power-management system that uses solar power to balance the power at the site. The system could potentially let the Best Buy stores buy electricity from the company at a reduced rate, which would reduce carbon emissions.
“The power-management system at the Best Buy distribution center in Ohio includes photovoltaic arrays on the roofs of the buildings