Wal-Mart saves energy costs to boost profits

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The new Wal-Mart Supercenter in Las Vegas is like those in any other part of the country. Except when the monthly power bill arrives.

Despite its location in the middle of the desert, where 100-degree days are the norm, the power bills at the store here are about half as much as those at similar-sized Wal-Marts in the region.

It’s “the most efficient store in the US,” said Charles Zimmerman, Wal-Mart’s vice-president for prototypical design.

A special evaporative cooling system—akin to an old-time swamp cooler—pushes air-chilled water through a mesh of tiny pipes beneath the floor of the store, all but eliminating the need for traditional air- conditioning.

More than 200 skylights provide almost all the lighting the store needs on bright days. The skylights are part of a “daylight harvesting system” that automatically dims or brightens electric overhead lights as needed.

Display cases for food are equipped with LED lights that turn on only when a customer trips a motion sensor. Waste heat from equipment is used to warm the water in the bathrooms and elsewhere. Waste cooling from freezer chests is all that’s needed to keep some parts of the store completely cool.

It’s definitely the most energy-efficient store Wal-Mart has ever built. It’s probably the most efficient that any retailer has ever built anywhere.

The store, developed with the lessons Wal-Mart learnt at experimental Supercenter stores it built in McKinney, Texas and Colorado is attracting a lot of attention. Since opening in March, store manager Lynne Leckie has given more than 20 tours, for everyone from executives of competing retailers to the US Department of Energy to a busload of foreign shopping centre executives that showed up at the entrance one day.

“You don’t really appreciate everything we’re doing here until others come to see it and tell you what they think about it,” Leckie said.

Some of the innovations were adapted from other Wal-Marts and simply improved and expanded for the Las Vegas store. Others, such as the evaporative cooling and “radiant” floor system, are new. The store is just one example of how the world’s biggest retailer is also becoming one of the world’s most energy-efficient businesses, not necessarily because it’s the right thing to do, but because it saves money and boosts profits.

Ever since CEO Lee Scott issued an ultimatum in 2005 to make Wal-Mart a more sustainable business—environmentally and otherwise—the retailer has been on a tear to cut energy costs.