As of February 2021, IKEA has installed 54 solar panels in 90% of its US locations.
The report concludes that tapping the full solar potential on the rooftops of these supermarkets would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million homes on average and cut the same amount of planet-damaging emissions as taking 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has a rooftop area of 180,000 square feet, according to the report. The report says that’s about the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar power that could power 200 homes.
“Every rooftop in America that doesn’t produce solar power is an empty rooftop as we work to wean ourselves off our fossil fuel dependency and associated geopolitical conflicts,” Joanna Neumann, Environment America Campaign Senior Director for 100 % Renewable. told CNN. “Now is the time to get into local renewable energy production, and there is no better place than the rooftops of big American supermarkets.”Advocates for clean energy worker training programs tell CNN that the solar revolution in large-scale retail will also come as a significant surprise to local communities, spurring economic growth and combating a climate crisis that has disproportionately harmed marginalized communities.
However, the authors of the report told CNN that only a small percentage of large stores in the US have solar panels on rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots.
CNN contacted five leading US retailers – Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target – and asked why not invest in rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar power as a relatively easy solution to cut costs and help curb fossil fuel emissions, but companies point to several hurdles — regulations, labor costs, and the structural integrity of the roofs themselves — that prevent wider adoption. . Adoption.
According to Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University, the need for such clean energy initiatives is becoming “undoubtedly urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates.
“To put it mildly, we’re behind the G8,” Cowan told CNN. “I would really like to see policies encourage rooftop solar 15 years ago rather than five years ago in commercial space. There is still a huge amount of work to be done.”
What’s the delay?
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, has the biggest potential for solar power. According to the report, Walmart has about 5,000 U.S. stores and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential.
The report says there is enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes.
Walmart spokeswoman Marielle Messier told CNN that the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company announced the completion of on- and off-site wind and solar projects or the development of other projects capable of generating more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy. undertake to install solar panels on rooftops and in parking lots. The company has stated that by 2035 it intends to get 100% of its energy from renewable energy sources.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart will have the biggest impact if they put solar panels on the roofs of all their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just highlights the impact they can have if they make this decision.”
As of the end of fiscal 2021, Walmart has installed nearly 194 megawatts of solar panels at its U.S. facilities, as well as additional capacity at remote solar farms, according to Environment America. The company’s installations in California were expected to supply 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
According to the industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s latest report, Target ranked #1 for on-site solar power in 2019. It currently has 542 rooftop solar-powered stores, about a quarter of the company’s stores, a Target spokesman told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough power to meet 15% to 40% of Target’s energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, Costco’s chief financial officer, said the company has 121 rooftop solar stores worldwide, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN their biggest barriers to adding solar panels to rooftops or parking lots in more stores.
“I suspect they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business as usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all these rooftops did was cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] using their buildings and thinking of them as power generators and not just rain protection requires a slight change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has about 2,300 stores, currently has 75 rooftop solar projects completed, 12 under construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power supplies, on average, about half of these stores’ energy needs, he said.
D’Arcy added that aging shop roofs are a “huge hurdle” for solar installations. If the roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal to implement a solar roof where the economy is attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also contacted Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores in the US. Krystal Howard, a spokesman for Kroger, said the company currently has 15 sites — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. According to Howard, one of the “many factors influencing the viability of a solar installation” was the ability of stores to support rooftop solar installations.
Cowan, an engineering professor at Cornell, said solar power is already attractive, but labor costs, incentives and varying levels of regulation are likely to pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, that usually means hiring a local firm that can do the installation and knows the local regulations,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is starting to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but you have to sort of open that door again to get into the existing building.”
Rep. Sean Kasten of Illinois, who co-chairs the energy sector task force in the House of Representatives, said the US “failed to provide incentives for people with experience to get to work and build these things.” The reason both retailers and the energy sector haven’t made much progress in solar is because “our system is so fragmented” and has a complex regulatory structure, Kasten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy in which we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction and penalize clean energy production,” Kasten told CNN. “For a long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the roof of a Walmart, your biggest enemy was the local utility because they didn’t want to lose load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Kasten added. “And if we did, we wouldn’t have such a terrible climate situation, but we would also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
Equitable climate impact
For Charles Callaway, director of organization for the non-profit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, boosting solar power on the rooftops of large retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to benefit either through installation or by sharing power produced later.
Either way, it would deal a major blow to curbing the climate crisis and help kickstart a just transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New Yorker spearheaded a worker training program that helped train over 100 members of the local community, mostly people of color, how to install solar panels. He also formed a solar workers’ cooperative to ensure that many participants in the training program get jobs in tough market conditions.
Over the past two years, Callaway says his group has not only installed solar panels on the rooftops of affordable housing, but also installed equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar power in malls in upstate New York. He stressed that hiring locally would be the most beneficial, as local installers know the local population and local regulations best.
“One of my biggest concerns is social justice,” Cowan said. “Access to renewable energy is a pretty privileged position these days, and we need to find ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, energy equity policy manager for WE ACT, said the potential for building solar panels on the roofs of large supermarkets is only encouraging “if these projects use local labor, if they pay prevailing wages, and if that solar energy is used in this way.” , such as public solar power, which would allow [utility] discounts on bills for people who live in the same communal area.”
Pressure is mounting on world leaders for urgent action on the climate crisis, after a UN report in late February said the window for action was rapidly closing.
Neumann believes that the US can meet its energy needs through renewable energy sources. All it takes is the political will to make this transition, and the involvement of the local community so that no one is left behind in the transition, she says.
“The sooner we make this transition, the sooner we will have cleaner air, the sooner we will have a more secure environment and better health, and the sooner we will have a more livable future for our children,” Neumann said. “And even if it requires an investment, it’s worth it.”
Judson Jones of CNN contributed to this report.