Kroger (NYSE: KR), the nation’s largest grocery chain, installed its first rooftop solar systems on two of its Smith’s Food & Drug stores in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Smith’s was selected because of New Mexico’s favorable sunny climate and the economic incentives offered by energy provider PNM for installing solar.
The solar systems will generate 320,000 kilowatt-hours a year, enough to heat and cool about 30 homes in New Mexico for one year.
Kroger is also planning to put solar on stores in Oregon and Ohio.
The company has reduced energy demand 30% since 2000, equal to the electricity needed to power every single-family home in Fort Worth, Texas for a year.
As part of this effort, Kroger’s 25 Smith’s stories in New Mexico retrofitted walk-in coolers, dairy coolers, meat counters and grocery freezers with LED lighting systems that use 75% less energy than fluorescent bulbs, last longer, and are 100% recyclable.
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Fact: Burning methane is a good idea, it is in iestlf a potent greenhouse gas – 25 times worse than CO2; does not hang around for very long, 50 years or so vs 200 years for CO2, but we don’t have 50 years.This is misleading. When combusted, CH4 produces CO2. CO2 does not disappear from the flux in 200 years. The long tail of CO2 means that about 7% of the CO2 being emitted as I type these lines will still be moving between the various atmospheric, marine and terrestrial sinks 50kyr from now. Silicate weathering and other processes will eventually remove it, but these are very slow indeed. That’s the main reason that atmospheric and marine inventories are increasing.The sinks themselves are not yet saturated of course, and that’s a good thing but they are a finite resource and we aren’t exactly clear how long they will continue to absorb at their current rate. In the meantime, as is widely known, the seas are becoming less basic and this is having consequences for phytoplankton, coccolithophores etc not good.It is true that combusting methane as an alternative to harvesting and combusting coal is relatively rational. That’s not the same as saying that it is adequate in the long run especially if this methane is methane that would have remained (or could have remained) in the ground if we hadn’t dug it up and burned it.So combusting methane from landfills or gassy mines (that we are determined must operate anyway) or other decomposing matter great. Methane from fracking? Horrible.