By 2010, Wal-Mart and its suppliers are going to be a lot more energy efficient.
The retailing giant has set a goal of getting suppliers to increase the energy efficiency of its products by 25 percent in three years. For some suppliers, the standards are a little more stringent. By 2010, the company will only sell Energy Star-rated air conditioners. Flat panel TVs will have to be 30 percent more energy efficient than they are now.
"If we achieved our 25 percent goal just in the U.S. we would save enough electricity to power 3 million homes per year or the equivalent of 10 million barrels of oil," said CEO Lee Scott in a speech to employees earlier this week. "We do not know exactly how we will get there. We do not even now if our suppliers can make times like hair dryers that user 25 percent less energy. But we do know that our approach works--to partner with suppliers, to help customers make better decisions, and to use our business model to drive out waste."
The company might also start building charging stations (powered by solar panels) so that customers can charge up their plug-in hybrids or electric cars, Scott said. General Motors has been working with Wal-Mart to install ethanol pumps, which ordinary gas stations recoil from. Families in the U.S., he asserted, spend on average 17 percent of their income on energy.
Wal-Mart has been one of the leaders among large corporations to cut its carbon footprint. The company, for instance, has tested out solar lighting and electricity at certain stores and is swapping out conventional lights for LEDs in freezer cases. It saved a $1 million a year in power bills just by taking out the light bulbs in coke machines.
It has also encouraged suppliers to change their packaging and distribution techniques to cut energy consumption as well. Wal-Mart's mandates don't work. A few years ago it told suppliers to start using RFID tags or else, and only some have. Still, the company can have a big impact because of the sheer number of products that flow through its doors.
The company's also not shy about telling its suppliers about its goals. "We will favor--and in some cases even pay more--for suppliers that meet our standards and share our commitment to quality and sustainability," Scott said.
Wal-Mart, he further added, will also try to keep the price of energy-efficient cost-competitive with standard products. The company, for instance, cut the price of some 3M air filters by $2.
"Our goal is to double the sale of products that help make home more energy efficient," he said.
An injection of graphite foam is giving new life to the venerable lead acid battery, according to Firefly Energy.
A standard lead acid membrane.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET Networks)The Peoria, Ill.-based company has come up with a way to coat the membrane, a fan-like lead lattice that allows the battery to generate electrons, with graphite foam. This change results in a more efficient battery that can extract more electricity from the electrolyte, release more electricity per charge, and endure more charging cycles. The battery also will last longer. The foam gives the membrane a larger surface area for reactions.
Firefly's Oasis batteries are designed for long-haul trucks. Truckers typically run their diesel rigs all night, mostly to keep the air conditioning or heating going in their sleeping units, not to mention the TV. Next year, California will impose regulations that only allow truckers to run their rigs in idle for five minutes every hour. The new regulations are designed to cut down on diesel fumes and greenhouse gases. That leaves truckers the option of broiling (or freezing) or waking up every hour.
Firefly's batteries are designed to provide enough power to run the electronics in the sleeping cabin the entire night without depleting the batteries.
The company will come out with samples of so-called Group 31 batteries for long-haul trucks in the first quarter of next year and begin full production in the fourth quarter of 2008. Negotiations with large customers are already under way, according to Firefly executives.
Now with graphite foam.
(Credit: Michael Kanellos/CNET News.com)Lead acid batteries were invented more than 100 years ago, but there haven't been many major architectural changes since manufacturers figured out a way to produce batteries that didn't need to be refilled with a hose a few decades ago, Firefly co-founder Mil Ovan said in an interview. Lead acid batteries, though, have a lot of advantages over nickel-metal hydride batteries (which are more expensive) and lithium-ion batteries (which can blow up.)
Firefly's basic technology comes from Caterpillar.
Initially, the membranes in the batteries Firefly will make will contain lead. The foam essentially covers it. But over time, it will try to remove the lead.
Plug-in hybrids have emerged as the favorite form of transportation for reducing greenhouse gases in the near term, but calculating their energy efficiency can be a little complicated.
Plug-ins won't conk out after 130 to 200 miles, like electric cars, and they don't require major technological breakthroughs, like hydrogen cars. Converting a Prius to a plug-in hybrid costs about $10,000 to $15,000 now--that's part of the reason only about 50 exist--but if car manufacturers decide to make these at the factory, the additional cost may only run $6,000 or so, say proponents. That's a lower premium than what electric cars will run, by the way.
Plug-ins have more batteries than regular hybrids and can get charged from a wall socket.
A plug-in hybrid
(Credit: Tom Krazit/CNET News.com)But there's some disagreement over how much energy these cars actually consume. Owners report their cars going 70 to over 100 miles on a gallon of gas. But that doesn't include the electricity used the charge the batteries. The cars do get 100 MPG, but what is the total energy consumption?
When you add in the electricity, plug-ins get the equivalent of 59 miles per gallon, according to John Shore, who is organizing the X Prize for automobiles. He gets this number by examining data from Google's experiments with plug-ins.
"The most reliable information available today about PHEVs is from the Google project RechargeIT, in which they report actual data from real driving conditions for a Prius modified to be a PHEV. Google currently reports that, on average, the vehicle gets 73.6 MPG (gasoline) and uses 118.1 watt-hours/mile of electrical energy--these equate to 59 MPGe, considerably less than the AXP goal of 100 MPGe," he wrote in an e-mail.
Shore, by the way, is a big fan of plug-ins. However, those numbers mean that current plug-ins won't be able to waltz away with the automotive X Prize, which will likely give more than $10 million to inventors who can come up with a car that can get 100 miles a gallon and win a cross-country race.
Not so fast, say Felix Kramer and Ron Gremban of CalCars, one of the chief organizations promoting plug-ins. Argonne National Labs has a plug-in that reportedly gets 150 miles a gallon. If you go through the equivalency calculations, you end up with 103 miles per gallon equivalent.
Regardless of the actual mileage, Gremban points out that the important thing is that plug-ins reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on foreign oil, and there is not a lot of debate about that.
If you live in a state where coal is the main source of electricity, like Ohio, the emissions from a plug-in are about the same as a regular hybrid. But in California, the emissions are much lower because of hydroelectric power, wind and other renewables. (Coal accounts for approximately 52 percent of U.S. electricity, according to the Department of Energy.)
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