This is excellent news. Even if you do not like Wal-mart for whatever reason, big companies that help to drive initiatives like this really do change the world... at least get the ball rolling. This is one of those very positive initatives, thankfully. Hopefully we'll see more companies follow suit.

Bravo to Wal-Mart. Let's see those Walmart haters turn this into a negative.

If more companies start taking this approach, hopefully prices will come down if production is able to ramp up. As was said, let the big companies get the ball rolling, and then hopefully the benefits, ecologically and costs wise, will trickle down.

I can turn this into a negative. They could do all the stores in 10 states and barely make a dent. Besides, they still have huge parking lots that are creating heat and not producing oxygen with plants. There. Happy?

More bullcrap PR from WalMart. Gotta counter-act all the female glass cieling lawsuits somehow...

solar panels, just like assfault create heat as well... well they're black. God damn assfault....
God damn blue ray enders....God damn ghetto incorporated......GOD DAMN TRAFFIC CREATORS. Fuckers

Should make wind turbines more economical

well it is a good initiative to use renewable resources, however with the amount of money they make should they not try a little harder than 30% of their electricity use in only 24/1063 stores!? This is just a PR stunt to cover up other activities, like throwing some spare change in the church bowl to "clense" one of sin.

Anyone who has researched buying a solar photovoltaic system knows that the first thing you do is replace all your power-hungry appliances with the most efficient ones you can find...because PV panels are extremely expensive...far more so than the extra money you would spend on efficient appliances. Is Wal-Mart doing this? All this will accomplish is raising the price of PV panels.

If they were truly interested in reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they would shift back to stocking merchandise from American suppliers (in the US, anyway), which does not have to be shipped 10,000 miles. That would be good for a couple of million tons of greenhouse gasses at least. http://future.iftf.org/2007/04...m_shi.html

I'd like to see some solars installed at their Phoenix area stores as well. The only downside I can see is the safety factor of the rare high winds we get here.
ass-fault(asphalt) doesn't create heat, you dee-dee-dee. It ABSORBS heat. NOTHING is green here, so no big loss on vegetation.

I, personally, am witness to some of Walmart's philanthropic involvement. Funny...no banners, no press releases. If they're trying to improve something more than their image, I say back off and give them room to try.

With the 30% savings, maybe they can afford to pay everyone an extra nickel an hour or maybe something nice like health insurance. nah.

Will they start mass marketing their own brand of inexpensive, reasonable quality solar panels too?

People bash big companies for being unethical etc, then when they try to do something good, whether its for their image or not, they get bashed aswell. IT DOESNT MATTER WHY THEY ARE DOING IT AS LONG AS THEY ARE. plus it will encourage more companies to follow suit, as they need to compete with Wal-marts 'image.' if every large store in USA, or anywhere else for that matter, produced 30% of their energy from renewable sources, it WILL make a difference.
WELL DONE TO WAL-MART FOR LEADING THE WAY, FOR WHATEVER REASONS.
I dont expect you cynicals out there to agree, cos you'll always find something to moan about.
sorry about the rant to everybody else.

Something people don't pay attention to about solar panels...they may not produce greenhouse gasses...but they're produced using arsenic...you can't tell me that none of that escapes into the environment...I guess it really comes down to the lesser of two evils, but still...

Hydrogen power is much more efficient...and can be supported using current technologies...CH4, AKA methane or natural gas, is mass produced these days, and can be used to make hydrogen through steam stripping. I can't remember exactly, but I think hydrogen releases about 4 times the energy that most fossil fuels produce per mass.

If they go through with it that is excellent. Why should I care if they do it to get publicity or not, it's a good thing in the end regardless.

They want to look like less of the shitty company they are that ruins small businesses, brings stores to areas that don't want them (my parents neighborhood is strongly against the planned Walmart), brings crime and traffic to the areas they go to (crime can double when a Walmart opens near you), and pays its employees almost nothing while providing the shittiest health care possible.

They claim that all their employees have health insurance. Fact. 50% of Walmart employees are on Medicare. Another 25% are on their spouses insurance, not Walmart's. The final 25% is paying for Walmart's ridiculously high priced insurance thats not even fully active for 6 months after you're hired and you have to pay so much per year out of pocket in medical expenses before it kicks in.

Not to mention you have to donate money to charities in order to get simple things like dress down days. I'm not against donating to charities. I am against employees donating to charities, and then Walmart touting how much money it gives to charities when its actually the employees that do it.

No vacation time for a year after you're hired either. Bonuses? Once every two years if you even get one.

I'm all for people using renewable sources of energy. But it doesn't matter what Walmart does to look environmentally friendly. They'll still be a shitty company that sells cheap crap, comes into neighborhoods that don't want them (and won't shop there either), and treats its employees like dirt.

Been to a few of the new stores in my area and they use the sun via skylights to light the place during the day. No flouresent lights are on.

Walmart shoppers are just as much to blame. If the shoppers choose shops with lower prices as opposed to shops that sell goods that where made in a FAIR way and where employees are paid in a fair way, then it is the shoppers that forces businesses to use these practices in order to be successful again competition.

With the electricity savings the first thing that Walmart would prob do is pay for the cost of setting the systems up. But after this, I hope they choose to pass the rest of the savings onto the low paid employees and low paid manufacturing employees . Instead of using this cost lowering to lower prices or to give even more money to walmarts owners.

I'm glad to hear WalMart is doing this. Solar panels are slowly coming down in price and will eventually be very cost-effective and, of course, will help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our CO2 emissions. It might convince other companies to do the same. Solar power will soon have its 'day in the sun.' ;)

People have reasons to be suspicious of Walmart. I still can't stand the fact that they don't treat their employees well and use overly aggressive business tactics.

I am willing to bet that the solar panels are made in China along with almost everything else WalMart sells.

In response to the Hydrogen suggestion:

Hydrogen power is the logical long-term choice for portable power that doesn't flow through an electric grid. However, the infrastructure to support it is not there yet.

You mention making hydrogen from natural gas on an industrial scale. That totally defeats the purpose of using hydrogen, because: a) you are still dependent on fossil fuels, and b) you are still releasing carbon dioxide! (The C in CH4 has to go somewhere.)

While Hydrogen will produce more energy per mass than a fossil fuel, that is only because Hydrogen has less mass than all the other elements. A more relevant comparison would be energy per molecule, because that determines how much gas you have to store to provide equivalent energy. On this measure hydrogen is way below fossil fuels, because there aren't as many chemical bonds to break.

The best, clean way to produce Hydrogen is through electrolysis. Unfortunately, the electricity for electrolysis has to come from somewhere. For now this means coal, which once again defeats the purpose. Until we can produce electricity from green sources, hydrogen cannot be produced greenly. Additionally, electrolysis requires a large amount of electricity to perform. This means that electricity will have to be cheap for electrolysis to be economically viable.

Hydrogen is our future, but it will be a while before our electrical infrastructure can produce cheap electricity without fossil fuels. For now, it's off-the-table as a green fuel.

it would be hilarious if wallmart started feeding much energy into the grid, that it became a power plant its self.....
Oh no....I got a cease and desist letter for pirating
electricity.....

the day will it be when they sell those suckers inside their own store.

no matter how green US WallieMart stores become it will never off set the tons of toxic waste and air pollution created by their products. Which are almost all made by Contracted Chinese factories. This going green is just a marketing and political ploy to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy inside...

AMD's CEO plans to reduce the cost for solar cells to 75 cents/KWH.


If so, then the result could be far more reaching than the "computer revolution" of the last 30 years....