Wal-Mart Unveils HE.5 Energy Efficient Store Prototype

Love them or hate them, Wal-Mart has been making news for a while now with their environmental efforts including asking vendors to reevaluate their packaging and trying to decrease energy usage in their stores.

As the world’s largest retailer and also the globe’s largest private electricity user according to an Associated Press report, Wal-Mart is in the perfect position to make positive change and show other retailers how it’s done.

Wal-Mart unveiled a new store prototype, the HE.5 last month that is designed specifically around the store's location and unique climate in order to use 45% less energy as compared to their baseline Supercenters. 

The first HE.5 store (pictured above) opened last month in Las Vegas, NV.

Their goal is to open store prototypes by 2009 in western states. The energy efficient design features include new technologies in heating, cooling, refrigeration and lighting. The stores pump water through roof-mounted cooling towers and then the water runs underneath the retail floor to cool the store for comfort and decreased energy use. Most of the interior lighting during the day will come from skylights and will be supplemented by fluorescents lights.

The data from the energy usage being monitored by Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas will be shared with the Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Lab in Denver and the University of California at Davis so that the findings can be shared with other retailers.

 

Comments

[Nathan Aaron]

Great. I mean, it's really good news Walmart is trying to change things; but I'm just REALLY hoping this doesn't give them YET another excuse to close their old stores, leaving giant empty shells of deserted building, while they go buy up new plots of land to build on. They REALLY shouldn't be allowed to do that, and it happens all the time with Walmart. If you want to build a better store, bull-doze the one you have, and build a new one. Don't leave it desolate to ugly up the landscape. All I do is rant on sustainable is good! lol sorry.

[Liz]

Does anyone know the address of this walmart?