Clean & Green: Wal-Mart Hits Solar Panel Milestone

This past week, Walmart – the Bentonville-based retail giant – reached a major milestone in renewable energy as it placed solar panels on its 100th store in California.

The panels provide about 10-30% of a store’s electricity needs.

While 100 stores comes nowhere near covering Walmart’s 3,800 U.S. stores, in California — where sunshine is a commodity — it’s making a difference.

Walmart said that the 100-store milestone will generate 70 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable clean power each year. That’s enough to power more than 5,400 homes. It also means more than 21,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year will be taken out of the atmosphere, the equivalent of taking 4,100 cars off the road.

And, it’s creating jobs — more than 3,000 contract construction jobs in the state of California.  And SolarCity — the company creating the solar panels — they’ve hired more than 1,200 new workers since their work with Walmart began.

To learn more about this initiative, click on this radio report from our Talk Business radio program.