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The Whole Foods Market in Gowanus, Brooklyn features a rooftop greenhouse, and solar… more
Whole Foods is planning to install up to 100 additional solar rooftop units on its stores nationwide, but to see how renewable energy-centric supermarket looks, head no further than the Gowanus neighborhood in Brooklyn.
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The Austin, Texas-based supermarket chain announced a deal yesterday with San Mateo, California-based SolarCity and Princeton, N.J. –based NRG to provide solar panels and equip 100 of the retailer’s 434 U.S. stores with rooftop solar systems. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.
The Whole Foods Market in Gowanus, Brooklyn features a rooftop greenhouse, and solar… more
For Whole Foods (Nasdaq: WFM), going solar isn’t new. Its Berkeley,California store became the nation’s first major food retailer to introduce solar energy as its primary lighting power source back in 2002, and solar power is also utilized at its Brooklyn store, which opened in 2014 near the Gowanus Canal and was designed to be 60 percent more efficient than any other grocery store in the United States. The latter does not have rooftop solar units, but it has numerous other energy-efficient features.
The supermarket parking lot is covered by solar panel carports designed to offset nearly 30 percent of the 56,000-square-foot building’s electricity use. Both solar and wind energy are used to power two Skypump electric vehicle charging stations and 19 LED streetlights. Urban Green Energy, which installed the latter, had said at the time it opened in December 2013 that the lights would remain operational during regional outages because of their natural power sources.
Plus, since the streetlights and charging stations both produce more energy than they require, they help reduce energy consumption at the supermarket.
In addition, the Gowanus store also has a greenhouse on the roof which measures over 20,000 square feet and grows over 200,000 pounds of fresh leafy greens, herbs and tomatoes each year. It was the first commercial scale greenhouse farm integrated into a supermarket, according to its operator, Greenpoint,Brooklyn-based Gotham Greens.
The solar power plan from Whole Foods (Nasdaq: WFM) comes at a time when the chain is under pressure to reduce costs amid greater competition, and it should save the company money because it can buy electricity at cheaper prices from the solar providers.
“We feel that increasing support for renewable energy is a good thing for our company overall and hedging against potential rising energy costs going forward is also important,” Kathy Loftus, global leader in sustainability for Whole Foods Market, told CNBC.
If the goal of 100 stores were reached, the Whole Foods project would increase the market’s solar energy portfolio by up to 400 percent and it has potential to be among the 25 largest commercial rooftop solar installations in the country, the company says.
Teresa Novellino is entrepreneurs & enterprises editor at Upstart Business Journal in New York.
Solar-powered Whole Foods already grows (lettuce and tomatoes) in Brooklyn
