Aurora – Wal-Mart has seen the light, and it’s solar-powered.
The world’s largest retailer today will open the second of two test stores designed to demonstrate a variety of environmentally friendly and energy-efficient technologies.
On Tuesday, Wal-Mart officials hosted a media preview of the Wal-Mart Supercenter at 3301 N. Tower Road. The store includes 50 “tests,” ranging from solar cells and wind energy to boilers that use motor oil from the tire-and-lube center and fat from chicken fryers in the deli to heat the store. Wal-Mart declined to say how much it cost to build the store.
The company has contracted with the U.S. government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden to determine the effectiveness of the technologies, which if successful may be incorporated into future stores. The agency also is monitoring a Wal- Mart store in Centennial for a baseline comparison.
“We’ll get quarterly reports. … Once we see what’s working and what’s not, we can tweak it and make better decisions for store design,” said Don Moseley, Wal-Mart’s director of experimental projects.
Local environmental groups and Wal-Mart critics reacted to the Aurora store with caution Tuesday, saying they think the store still needs to do more to improve its environmental track record.
“It’s an important first step in the right direction for a company with an abysmal record on environmental issues,” said Nu Wexler, a spokesman for Wal- Mart Watch, a union-backed nonprofit that opposes the company’s business practices. “We hope the changes they’re proposing are long-lasting and not just a short-term distraction.”
Wal-Mart chief executive Lee Scott last month announced companywide environmental initiatives that included a $500 million annual investment in environmentally efficient technologies and the creation of a new store prototype that would be 25 percent to 30 percent more efficient within four years.
The Aurora store and a similar Supercenter that opened over the summer in McKinney, Texas, will help the company figure out how to reach those efficiency goals in a cost-effective manner, Moseley said.
The Aurora store is designed to be 20 percent more efficient than a typical Wal-Mart Supercenter. The McKinney store is operating at levels 6 percent to 10 percent more efficient, but Moseley expects that to increase.
Experiments in the Aurora store range from the obvious – a 120-foot-tall wind turbine providing about 1.25 percent of the store’s energy – to the discreet – such as radiant heating systems to warm floors and melt snow on sidewalks and crosswalks. The store is designed to take advantage of natural lighting, and interior lights will be dimmed or turned off during daylight.
Wal-Mart is testing a variety of concrete and asphalt types in the parking lot, including some that allow water to pass through to reduce stormwater runoff. Additionally, the company has placed bat houses on the edge of the property to manage pests naturally.
Wal-Mart intends to monitor the Aurora store for three years before determining which experiments to expand and which to drop. The store includes several backup systems that can be used if the experiments fail or prove too costly.
For example, while the men’s bathrooms contain waterless urinals, the walls behind them have been built with traditional plumbing that could be used later.
Staff writer Kristi Arellano can be reached at 303-820-1902 or karellano@denverpost.com.
