For years Wal-Mart has driven the adoption of energy-efficient technologies for itself and its customers. Not surprisingly, retailers are among the top adopters of solar energy generation, given their need to power big-box buildings that offer plenty of roof space for sizable installations. Wal-Mart leads the pack, but also on the list of the Top 25 Companies by Solar Capacity are Target, Kohl’s, Costco, IKEA, and Macy’s (www.seia.org/...). The incentives are obvious: anything that drives down operating costs in the stores creates savings that can be passed along to shoppers. This is the War on Coal, even in states like California where coal isn’t a power source, because these best practices, developed under intense market and regulatory pressure in a laboratory state, achieve measurable proof that works anywhere, including on non-retail facilities with big roofs: distribution centers, data centers, corporate offices, and large manufacturing plants.
The map reveals a pattern of decisions based either on engineering or politics as the driver of solar state by state: predictably it’s been rapidly adopted in sunny states like California, Texas, and Arizona. Pennsylvania’s stores have added it. It’s largely missing, even missing completely, from Wyoming and West Virginia, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, where solar panels might be viewed by some as the flag of a conqueror. The War on Coal is over. Capitalism and engineering won. Now the questions are, how long it will be before the people still holding out decide to join the winners, and whether the party in power in Washington will be the one that extends the victory, or the one that stops it.