Big business taps into energy conservation

Officials with Bass Pro Shops and O’Reilly Automotive say their companies are looking to save money and reduce their environmental footprints through techniques ranging from new lighting to motion sensors.

Wal-Mart hopes to make big environmental strides through small changes in its existing stores and big changes in its new locations, Special Projects Engineer Don Moseley told a crowd at Drury University’s Hammons School of Architecture during a Feb. 28 presentation.

Moseley, who managed the design of Wal-Mart’s two experimental energy-conserving stores in McKinney, Texas, and Aurora, Colo., said Wal-Mart’s prototype for new stores is incorporating solar panels in building façades and skylights to better capture daylight. Also, existing stores are being retrofitted with new lighting and monitoring systems.

One example: replacing traditional fluorescent bulbs in freezer cases with LEDs, or light-emitting diodes. Some stores also are being equipped with motion sensors for those lights, so that during low-traffic periods, the lights will stay off until a customer approaches.

The lighting change, which is now part of the company’s prototype for all of its stores, including Supercenters, Sam’s Clubs and Neighborhood Markets, also is slowly being incorporated into the company’s 3,900 existing U.S. stores, Moseley said.

While the change to LEDs may seem small, Moseley said it could save as much as 3 percent on a store’s total electric bill – a savings of nearly $50 million if implemented in all U.S. stores.

The environmental initiative is all part of Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott’s Sustainability 360 initiative, which aims to reduce energy consumption by 20 percent in existing stores by 2011 and to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas production by 30 percent in newly built stores by 2009.

Fishing for green

Springfield-based Bass Pro Shops has been employing energy conservation techniques in its stores since 1998, according to Director of Facilities Dan Hoy. They include the use of fluorescent lamps and compact metal halide lamps to light merchandise in Bass Pro’s 40 locations.

Hoy noted that the company was named a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Large Business Partner of the Year in 2000 for energy conservation efforts.

Environmental friendliness, however, goes beyond energy for Bass Pro – the company also uses recycled building materials in new construction and décor, and floor and wall finishes that emit lower levels of volatile organic compounds.

Hoy said savings, however, are difficult to quantify.

“We’ve been doing this for a very long time, and it’s such standard practice that we don’t have a data set to compare to one of our buildings that doesn’t operate under these guidelines,” Hoy said.

However, he points to International Facility Management Association data that indicates Bass Pro stores use about 15 percent less energy per square foot than the national benchmark. The average retailer spends about $1.94 per square foot on utilities, IFMA data shows.

One of the company’s biggest efforts, Hoy said, is in waste management.

While Bass Pro recycles the standard commodities – aluminum, glass and plastic – Hoy said the company has several salvaging programs in place, including one called Cardboard for Conservation. That program allows Bass Pro, in coordination with its recycling partners, to recapture rebates it receives for cardboard recycling and use that money to fund other conservation efforts.

“In Springfield, (the program) funds the James River Basin Partnership,” Hoy said, adding that the partnership received about $32,000 from the program in 2006.

Live Green

O’Reilly Automotive is also looking to decrease its environmental impact.

In addition to its free used-motor-oil drop-off service, the company is considering several methods to reduce its own energy usage, according to Greg Henslee, O’Reilly’s co-president.

One is a new Web-based system the company is rolling out in all of its 1,640 stores that allows O’Reilly to monitor electricity usage in individual stores. Another method would be used in the company’s distribution centers, where Henslee said there are products that see very little turnover.

“Recently, in many of our distribution centers, we put in motion-detecting devices at the entrance of the aisles of these slower-moving bin storage (units), and the lights simply go off if no one’s present,” Henslee said. “It’s resulted in significantly less usage of energy and significant savings.”

Henslee said tests show that the motion-sensitive lights can reduce electric bills at the distribution centers by up to 20 percent.

O’Reilly also is monitoring its fleet of trucks; several have been fitted with on-board computers so the company can watch for excess fuel consumption due to unnecessary idling and incorrect shifting patterns.

While the company’s “Live Green” slogan doesn’t refer specifically to the environment, Henslee said it’s a good fit nonetheless.

“As a company, we want to be as environmentally friendly as we can,” Henslee said, pointing to the aforementioned conservation programs and updated lighting that are helping to cut energy costs. “At the same time, many of the things that make us environmentally friendly work in the best interest of driving profits as well.”[[In-content Ad]]