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Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the greenest of them all? Well, if you're in the retail sector the obvious answer to that is Wal-Mart. There was much skepticism initially of Wal-Mart's attempts to go green. Many believed its quest to reduce energy consumption, embrace rooftop solar systems and clean up its transport fleet was yet another attempt at feel-good marketing -- a bid to win over consumers who believed Wal-Mart was an evil retail monster aimed at taking over every small town in America. At the recent Cleantech Forum in Toronto, Rand Waddoups, senior director of corporate strategy and sustainability at Wal-Mart, admitted that the retailer's green strategy was initially adopted from a defensive posture. "We started by saying 'this could be a real problem for us, we need to understand how big of a problem this could be.' Over time, we realized this wasn't a problem, it was a real opportunity for us."

The chart above shows domestic fuel prices for Great Britain from 1914 to 2007. The data up to 1985 was compiled by Horace Herring and Rodney Evans using this source and been updated with more recent figures from UK government statistics. It is expressed in UK pounds for the year 2000, adjusted by the retail price index (i.e the price of energy related to other 'real' goods such as food).

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's lamp and electricity producers joined forces with the retail sector on Monday to encourage consumers to buy more energy-efficient light bulbs and help the European Union in its fight against climate change. An agreement signed by three pan-European industry associations aims to promote and support the distribution of Compact Fluorescent Lamps (CFLs) as an alternative to conventional incandescent lamps -- so consuming far less energy.

SUEZ Energy Resources NA, the U.S. retail energy business of SUEZ Energy North America announced that it has won a contract to supply the city of Dallas with approximately 90% of it's electricity, 40% of which will be from renewable energy sources.

All high-energy light bulbs will be removed from sale in Britain within four years under a pioneering deal between the Government and major retailers.Bulbs rated at 150 watts will be taken off the shelves as early as January under the voluntary agreement launched yesterday by a string of high street names.Millions of 100-watt bulbs will be removed a year later, with all incandescent lights phased out by 2011, under the timetable agreed by the stores.

According to today’s article by Michael Howie in Scotsman.com, the Trust is “calling on responsible retailers to reconsider the sale of patio heaters in light of the substantial amount of carbon emissions they produce.”

The island of Barbados is 99% dependent on fossil fuel imports to satisfy its energy needs, which is unsustainable. This study proposes a 10 MW distributed wind energy scheme using micro wind turbines (WT) of horizontal (HAWT) and vertical axis (VAWT) configurations. These units are rated less than 500 W, and the scheme is hereafter referred to as mWT10. mWT10 is compared to the proposed 10 MW medium WT farm by the Barbados Light & Power Company (BL&P). The economic bottom line is the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The results highlight the BL&P proposal as the best economic option at BDS$0.19 per kWh, while that of both mWT10 configurations exceeds the conventional cost of BDS$0.25 by two to nine times. This is attributed to significantly higher relative installation and operational costs. However, the financial gap between mWT10 LCOE and the retail price of electricity is much smaller due to a large fuel surcharge passed on to each customer. Annual additional benefits of using wind energy include: greenhouse gas emissions savings of 6–23 kt of carbon dioxide; and anavoided fuel costs of BDS$1.5–5.3 million.

My colleagues at Clean Edge have just released the Utility Solar Assessment (USA) Study, making the case that solar power has the potential to reach cost parity with retail-electricity rates in most regions of the U.S. in less than a decade — but only if electric utilities step up to the plate.