Whole Foods Market announces efforts to reduce energy use

AUSTIN, Texas Whole Foods Market announced it is strengthening efforts to reduce energy consumption company-wide by 25% per square foot by 2015.

Whole Foods said it has designed new stores to be more energy efficient and that several have been awarded the Environmental Protection Agency's GreenChill certification, which recognizes eco-friendly commercial refrigeration systems. One early example of reduced energy is California's Santa Barbara store, which uses 45% less energy than a nearby store of comparable size.

As part of a Department of Energy partnership, the company was awarded resources to design new stores and retrofit older ones. The program pairs Whole Foods Market with National Renewable Energy Labs to create, test and validate design concepts that will move toward net-zero energy commercial buildings.

This is the fourth year that Whole Foods Market will offset 100% of its North American electricity use with wind energy credits. This year, the company said it will purchase more than 810,000 mWh of renewable energy credits, adding clean energy to power grids.

The company also reported that it has 15 locations supplementing traditional power with solar with more in development. The San Jose store recently announced it would host a fuel cell, making it the first supermarket in California that will generate enough electricity on site to meet 90% of its needs. This store joins the Glastonbury, Conn., and Dedham, Mass., stores, which already have on-site hydrogen fuel cells.

Whole Foods reported that it has close to 30 stores that are either LEED or Green Globes certified, registered or in development. The latest store to announce LEED Gold is the Upper West Side store.

The company said it is tracking energy and emissions from energy usage, refrigerant gas leakage, and fuel usage for the internal truck fleet using a baseline year of 2008.