Everybody's Going Green

Within the past week a couple of articles popped up in quick succession that showed an interesting trend. On May 7th Wal-Mart announced that they would purchase solar power for 22 stores in California and Hawaii from 3 suppliers. Then within days Rupert Murdoch of News Corp called his entire staff together for a global video conference and declared that News Corp would become Carbon Neutral by 2010!

Now Rupert Murdoch has always been known to be a shrewd businessman and Wal-Mart has made cost cutting its mantra. Although altruism and publicity might have played some part in these announcements, you can be sure that cold hard economics was what was driving these decisions. Increasingly businesses are realizing that going green is good for the bottom line too.

Both businesses have taken a hard look at the environment and have come to the same conclusion. A sound ecological foundation is increasingly necessary for sustaining growth and profitability in the future. In his remarks to his employees Mr. Murdoch said “Reducing our use of energy reduces costs”. One of the examples he highlighted was that just switching the bulbs on their exit signs would reduce carbon emissions by 200 tons equivalent to 200 flights from New York to LA. That’s a lot of energy and a lot of dollars ! And News Corp estimates its global carbon footprint is around 650,000 tons ! From converting to LED lighting in their news centers to replacing lights in their plants, News Corp is looking to reduce energy consumption across the board.

Beyond their immediate impact, Mr. Murdoch realizes the multiplicative impact of his global media empire. He made this very clear in his speech In his words “We can set an example, and we can reach our audiences. Our audience's carbon footprint is 10,000 times bigger than ours...That's the carbon footprint we want to conquer.” A courageous vision !

Wal-Mart is no slouch environmentally either. Its latest foray is just a part of its overall emphasis on sustainability. A major portion of its company website is devoted to sustainability and the environment and the message is coming down from the top.


With 4000 plus stores averaging over 180,000 sq. ft. squeezing energy efficiencies and using renewable energy is as much an economic necessity as an environmental one. When finally implemented, the total solar power of the 22 initial sites will be as much as 20 million kwhr per year. And this is the first step towards their goal of being supplied by 100 percent renewable energy. More importantly, Wal-mart has pulled this off by leveraging its buying power and offloading some of the costs to its suppliers. As reported in Red Herring, the price of electricity generated by the solar systems will be less than what the company currently pays for electricity from the grid because the suppliers will be fronting the capital costs of the solar systems. Always low prices, always!

What are some of the other new business initiatives and models that need to be put in place? Are there emerging technologies that will change the landscape? And will it be soon enough ? Fortunately we have a panel that will help you figure this out at TIECON. On Saturday June 16th, Jeff Andrews from Atlas Ventures will bring together a panel of experts from diverse fields – Solar, Cellulosic Biomass, Electron beams – and probe into the future of Energy. Hope to see you there.

Raj Melville