“Carbon is a cost. If we can remove carbon from a supply chain, ultimately they become more competitive. If they can use less energy in the manufacturing of the product, or if the consumer uses less energy, they are certainly reducing their costs or putting dollars in the pockets of their customer,” said Walmart SVP of Sustainability Matt Kistler. Results of their efforts will be audited by outside companies.
They also plan to go to 100% renewable energy.
They’re serious about this. Not so much because they want to hug trees but because it saves them money and resources. That how cleantech and renewable energy will be become mainstream in the capitalist business world. Because they gain by doing so.
Awesome. Now if they’d just buy local instead of shipping everything they sell from China, half way around the world, maybe the fuel used to ship all that crap won’t get burned and be an even bigger carbon saver?
Actually sending goods by ship at 417 BTU/ton-mile uses as much energy for a ton sent 6,500 miles from China, as shipping it by truck for 780 miles. So it’s more energy efficient to bring it from China to the west coast than to truck it in from Detroit or Kansas City.
Rail, if they’d user it, uses only 377 BTU’s per ton-mile, more efficient than either. But then you wouldn’t have the advertising effect of 53,000 or so Wal-Mart trucks on the highway…
Local is better than any of these, but can a chain that size source every store from different vendors? That sort of defeats the advantage of scale they hold.