AI سمٹ 2023، جس کا اہتمام 25 فروری کو 10Pearls کے ذریعے کیا گیا تھا اور اب اس کی تیسری تکرار میں، جس کا مقصد مصنوعی ذہانت (AI) کے سلسلے میں ملک میں کیے جانے والے تمام کاموں کو اجاگر کرنا تھا، ایک ایسی ٹیکنالوجی جس نے سمارٹ بوٹس جیسے نئے سرے سے دلچسپی حاصل کی ہے۔ چیٹ جی پی ٹی۔
10 پرل میں پیپلز اینڈ پروگرامز کی سینئر ڈائریکٹر سیدہ ثناء حسین نے کہا کہ اس تقریب سے امید ظاہر کی گئی کہ \”اے آئی میں کیے جانے والے کام کے لیے پاکستان کو نقشے پر لایا جائے گا اور انڈسٹری کو ایک ساتھ لایا جائے گا۔\”
انہوں نے مزید کہا کہ سربراہی اجلاس میں ایک کانفرنس شامل تھی جس میں پینل ڈسکشنز اور فائر سائیڈ چیٹس شامل تھے۔ ایک ایکسپو جہاں AI اسٹارٹ اپس نے اپنی مصنوعات کی نمائش کی۔ اور یونیورسٹی کے طلباء کے لیے مختلف AI ٹولز، ٹیکنالوجیز، اور تکنیکوں کے بارے میں معلومات۔
\”تمام ابھرتے ہوئے AI سٹارٹ اپس جنہوں نے اپنی مصنوعات کی نمائش کی، غیر معمولی ردعمل حاصل کیا، جس سے ممکنہ سرمایہ کاروں اور عوام کی دلچسپی یکساں طور پر راغب ہوئی۔ AI Summit 2023 کی یہ ناقابل یقین کامیابی یہ ظاہر کرتی ہے کہ AI آج کی دنیا کے پیچیدہ چیلنجوں سے نمٹنے میں کیا تبدیلی کا کردار ادا کر سکتا ہے۔\” کہا.
ڈیمو میں لاہور میں مقیم SeeVitals Solutions کی ملکیتی ہتھیلی کے سائز کا آلہ شامل تھا جو کسی تار کی ضرورت کے بغیر مریضوں کے وائٹلز کی نگرانی کر سکتا ہے اور ان کے فالج اور دل کے دورے کے خطرات کا اندازہ لگا سکتا ہے اور ہسپتالوں کو اپنے بوجھ کو بہتر طریقے سے سنبھالنے میں مدد فراہم کر سکتا ہے۔
اس کے علاوہ ہیلتھ اسپیس میں اسلام آباد کی نیشنل یونیورسٹی آف سائنسز اینڈ ٹیکنالوجی کی میڈیکل امیجنگ اینڈ ڈائیگنوسٹک لیب، این سی اے آئی تھی جو کہ ایم آر آئی، سی ٹی اسکین، ایکس رے اور الٹراساؤنڈ جیسی مختلف تصویری طریقوں پر AI پر مبنی تکنیک اور اپروچ استعمال کرتی ہے۔
دریں اثنا، Deutics Global جو کاروباروں کو AI سے بااختیار پلیٹ فارم کے ذریعے آپریشنز کو بہتر بنانے میں مدد کرتا ہے جو \”سیکیورٹی اقدامات اور ڈیٹا کی بصیرت کو پیش رفت کے نتائج میں تبدیل کرتا ہے\” بھی اس تقریب میں تھا، جیسا کہ VisionRD تھا، جو آٹوموبائل اور پارٹ مینوفیکچرنگ کمپنیوں کو دستی معیار کے معائنہ کے عمل کو خودکار بنانے میں مدد کرتا ہے۔ AI کا استعمال کرتے ہوئے.
اس تقریب کا اہتمام ڈیجیٹل سروسز کمپنی 10Pearls نے ITCN (انفارمیشن ٹیکنالوجی اینڈ ٹیلی کام شو) ایشیا میں پاک چائنا فرینڈ شپ سینٹر اسلام آباد میں کیا تھا۔
اس نے \”AI کی تبدیلی کی دنیا کی تلاش\” کے موضوع پر روشنی ڈالی، خلا میں ہونے والی تازہ ترین پیشرفت اور AI کاروباریوں کی جانب سے تسلیم شدہ اختراعات کا اشتراک کیا۔
تقریباً 30 سے زائد مقررین نے تکنیکی بات چیت، پینل ڈسکشنز اور فائر سائیڈ چیٹ کی۔
\’Explainable AI & Healthcare 5.0\’ پر ایک سیشن، جس کا انتظام ثمر حسن (بانی اور CEO، Epiphany) نے کیا، صحت کی دیکھ بھال میں Explainable AI (مشین لرننگ ماڈلز کے ذریعے کی جانے والی پیشین گوئیوں کو سمجھنے اور ان کی تشریح میں مدد کرنے کے لیے ٹولز اور فریم ورک کا ایک سیٹ) کے کردار پر تبادلہ خیال کیا، بشمول طبی فیصلہ سازی، منشیات کی دریافت، اور طبی امیجنگ کی حمایت کرنے کی صلاحیت۔
\’سائبر سیکیورٹی گیٹس اسمارٹ\’ پر ایک ٹاک پیٹر ہیس (EVP اور CSO، 10Pearls) نے دی جبکہ طارق مالی، جو جی ایچ کیو میں سابق چیف ٹیکنالوجی آفیسر تھے، نے \’AI اور نیشنل گورننس\’ کے بارے میں بات کی۔
عمار کریم، ہیڈ آف BI اور ڈیٹا سائنس، Telenor Easypaisa، نے بتایا کہ کس طرح AI کارکردگی کو بہتر بنا کر، کسٹمر کے تجربے کو بڑھا کر اور دھوکہ دہی کو کم کر کے فنٹیک کی جگہ کو تبدیل کر رہا ہے۔
جب آپ نام لیتے ہیں۔ آپ کی کمپنی بوسٹن ڈائنامکس، آپریشن میں کچھ جغرافیائی رکاوٹیں ڈالی جاتی ہیں۔ اگرچہ اسپاٹ بنانے والا، بہت سے اکاؤنٹس کے مطابق، ایک عالمی برانڈ ہے، یہ وہ ہے جو میساچوسٹس سے گہرا تعلق رکھتا ہے، یہاں تک کہ اس نے کیلیفورنیا، جاپان اور حال ہی میں، جنوبی کوریا کے مالکان کے درمیان ہاتھ بدلے ہیں۔
والتھم، میساچوسٹس کے شہر بوسٹن سے ایک درجن میل باہر ہیڈ کوارٹر، روبوٹکس فرم کی جڑیں بین ٹاؤن میں مضبوطی سے لگائی گئی ہیں۔
بانی اور چیئرمین مارک رائبرٹ نے ٹیک کرنچ سٹی اسپاٹ لائٹ ایونٹ میں ایک انٹرویو میں کہا کہ \”میں نیو جرسی میں پلا بڑھا ہوں، لیکن میری والدہ یہیں پروان چڑھی ہیں اس لیے میرا تعلق بوسٹن سے بہت کم عمری سے تھا۔\” \”میں بوسٹن سے محبت کرتا ہوں. میں یہاں اسکول گیا، 10 سال کے لیے چھوڑ دیا، اور بالآخر MIT میں فیکلٹی تھا۔ میں بوسٹن ڈائنامکس شروع کرنے سے پہلے 10 سال تک وہاں پروفیسر تھا۔ جب ہم نے شروع کیا تو یہ بوسٹن ڈائنامکس کا ہاف ٹائم ایم آئی ٹی تھا۔
یہ ایک ایسا تعلق ہے جس میں کمپنی نے حالیہ برسوں میں مزید جھکایا ہے، شاید سب سے خاص طور پر 2022 مقامی سپر باؤل اشتہار جس نے سیم ایڈمز کے بوسٹن کزن کردار کو بوسٹن ڈائنامکس ہیڈکوارٹر میں مختلف روبوٹ کے ساتھ پارٹی کرتے ہوئے پایا۔
رائبرٹ، جو فی الحال کسی حد تک ڈھیلے طریقے سے منسلک Hyundai کی مالی اعانت سے چلاتے ہیں۔ بوسٹن ڈائنامکس اے آئی انسٹی ٹیوٹ کیمبرج کے کینڈل اسکوائر میں، نوٹ کرتا ہے کہ اس نے کمپنی کے قیام سے تقریباً ایک دہائی قبل شہر چھوڑا تھا۔ اس نے وہ وقت پٹسبرگ میں کارنیگی میلن اور کیلیفورنیا کی جیٹ پروپلشن لیبارٹری میں کام کرتے ہوئے گزارا۔
وہ JPL میں اپنے وقت کے بارے میں کہتے ہیں، \”یہ نوخیز تھا، لیکن ان کے پاس 70 کی دہائی میں مارس روور کا مذاق اڑایا گیا تھا۔\” \”یہ ایک کار کی طرح لگ رہا تھا، اور اس میں اسٹینفورڈ کے پرانے بازو تھے جن میں سلائیڈنگ جوائنٹ تھا۔ اس میں کچھ کیمرے تھے، اور اس پر کچھ مختلف گروپ کام کر رہے تھے۔
یقیناً رائبرٹ اس خروج میں اکیلا نہیں ہے۔ بوسٹن جیسے یونیورسٹی کے شہروں کے لیے برین ڈرین ایک دیرینہ تشویش رہی ہے، جس میں بہت سے اسٹارٹ اپ بانی اور دیگر ہنر مندوں نے سلیکن ویلی اور نیویارک جیسی جگہوں کو چھوڑنے کا انتخاب کیا ہے۔ لالچ کے باوجود، تاہم، وہ وضاحت کرتا ہے کہ جب بھرتی کی بات آتی ہے تو بوسٹن ڈائنامکس کے لیے یہ رجحان کوئی بڑا مسئلہ نہیں رہا ہے۔
\”مجھے نہیں لگتا کہ ہم نے مغربی ساحل پر بہت سارے لوگوں کو کھو دیا ہے،\” رائبرٹ کہتے ہیں۔ \”کبھی کبھی ایسا ہوتا ہے۔ جب ہم گوگل کا حصہ تھے، بوسٹن ڈائنامکس سے ہم میں سے ایک گروپ تھا جو ویسٹ کوسٹ چلا گیا تھا، اور میرے خیال میں ان میں سے زیادہ تر لوگ ٹھہرے ہوئے تھے۔ جب ہم گوگل سے باہر نکلے تو وہ ہمارے ساتھ واپس نہیں آئے۔ لیکن بوسٹن کی اپنی دلکشی اور کشش ہے، اور یہاں بہت ساری ٹیکنالوجی موجود ہے۔ بہت سارے اسکول اچھی چیزیں کر رہے ہیں۔\”
پچھلے سال اگست میں اعلان کیا گیا، AI انسٹی ٹیوٹ Raibert اور Boston Dynamics کی تحقیقی جڑوں پر واپس آ گیا۔ یہ حالیہ برسوں میں پروڈکٹائزیشن کی طرف کمپنی کی تبدیلی سے ایک قدم دور ہے، جس نے اسے اسپاٹ اور ہینڈل جیسی مصنوعات کو مارکیٹ میں لاتے ہوئے پایا ہے۔ جبکہ ہنڈائی فی الحال انسٹی ٹیوٹ کا واحد اسٹاک ہولڈر ہے، رائبرٹ کا کہنا ہے کہ فی الحال کار ساز یا اس کے نام کی روبوٹکس فرم کے لیے اپنی تحقیق کو تیار کرنے کے لیے کوئی دباؤ نہیں ہے۔
\”آپ کو بعد میں کبھی معلوم نہیں ہوگا کہ قیام کی طاقت کیا ہے،\” وہ عملی طور پر بتاتے ہیں۔ \”ابھی، میرا مقصد مصنوعات سے بچنا ہے، کیونکہ مصنوعات آپ کو سہ ماہی اور سالانہ کام پر مجبور کرتی ہیں۔ مصنوعات آپ کو تمام مختلف صارفین کی مختلف ضروریات میں مجبور کرتی ہیں۔ ان کے پاس بہت اچھی معلومات ہیں، لیکن وہ آپ کو بہت سی سمتوں میں بھی لے جاتے ہیں۔ اگر آپ آگے کیا ہونے والا ہے اس کا ویژن کرنا چاہتے ہیں، تو اسے ان تکنیکی لوگوں سے آنا ہوگا جو اسے تیار کررہے ہیں۔ میں فخر سے کہتا ہوں کہ ہم مصنوعات نہیں کر رہے ہیں۔ اس وقت کوئی بھی مجھے چلانے کی کوشش نہیں کر رہا ہے۔\”
انسٹی ٹیوٹ کے مستقبل کے پیٹنٹ اور دیگر آئی پی کے لیے بہت سارے اختیارات موجود ہیں، بشمول اس کے اسپن آؤٹ اسٹارٹ اپس کو تیار کرنے کا امکان۔
\”ہمارے پاس ایک کثیر الجہتی منصوبہ ہے،\” وہ مزید کہتے ہیں۔ \”ہم اسپن آؤٹ کر سکتے ہیں۔ کچھ لوگوں کے لیے، اسپن آؤٹ کو تجارتی بنانے کے طریقے کے طور پر دیکھا جاتا ہے۔ میرے لیے، یہ انسٹی ٹیوٹ کو مصنوعات سے بچانے کا ایک طریقہ ہے۔\”
پاکستان مسلم لیگ نواز (پی ایم ایل این) کے رہنما شاہد خاقان عباسی نے بدھ کو پاکستان تحریک انصاف (پی ٹی آئی) کے چیئرمین عمران خان کو جیل میں ڈالنے کی مخالفت کردی۔
سیاسی انتقام کے خلاف اپنے خیالات پر قائم رہتے ہوئے، عباسی نے اسلام آباد میں صحافیوں سے بات کرتے ہوئے کہا: \”میں کسی کو جیل میں ڈالنے کے حق میں نہیں ہوں۔\”
پی ٹی آئی کے سربراہ کے خلاف مقدمات پر تبصرہ کرتے ہوئے، مسلم لیگ (ن) کے رہنما نے کہا: \”عمران خان کو سزا دیں اگر انہوں نے کچھ کیا ہے تو مقدمات منطقی انجام تک پہنچ جائیں گے۔\”
عباسی نے مزید کہا کہ عمران نے خود اپنی غلطیوں کا اعتراف کیا۔ عمران خان نے بغیر کسی حد کے بات کی ہے۔ میں سنی سنائی باتوں کا حوالہ نہیں دے رہا ہوں بلکہ اس کے اعترافات کے بارے میں بات کر رہا ہوں۔ مسلم لیگ ن کے رہنما نے کہا کہ پی ٹی آئی کے سربراہ نے خود لوگوں کو جیلوں میں ڈالنے اور پکڑنے کا اعتراف کیا۔
عمران خان کو کیسز بنانے کا اختیار کس نے دیا؟ اصولی طور پر، کسی کو کسی سیاستدان کو جیل میں ڈالنے کا اختیار نہیں ہونا چاہیے کیونکہ یہ طاقت انتقام میں بدل جاتی ہے،‘‘ عباسی نے کہا۔
انہوں نے اس بات پر بھی روشنی ڈالی کہ سابق وزیر اعظم محمد خان جونیجو واحد وزیر اعظم تھے جو جیل نہیں گئے جبکہ باقی تمام لوگ 1973 کے آئین کے تحت گزشتہ 50 سالوں میں قید تھے۔
اس سے قبل عباسی نے سابق وزیر خزانہ شوکت ترین کو بین الاقوامی مالیاتی فنڈ (آئی ایم ایف) کے ساتھ پاکستان کے مذاکرات میں رکاوٹ ڈالنے کی مبینہ کوشش کے الزام میں گرفتار کرنے کے منصوبے کی بھی مخالفت کی تھی۔
As the US attempts to wean itself off its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner energy sources, many experts are eyeing a promising solution: your neighborhood big-box stores and shopping malls.
The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.
At the IKEA store in Baltimore, installing solar panels on the roof and over the store’s parking lot cut the amount of energy it needed to purchase by 84%, slashing its costs by 57% from September to December of 2020, according to the company. (The panels also provide some beneficial shade to keep customers’ cars cool on hot, sunny days.)
As of February 2021, IKEA had 54 solar arrays installed across 90% of its US locations.
Big-box stores and shopping centers have enough roof space to produce half of their annual electricity needs from solar, according to a report from nonprofit Environment America and research firm Frontier Group.
Leveraging the full rooftop solar potential of these superstores would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million average homes, the report concluded, and would cut the same amount of planet-warming emissions as pulling 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has 180,000 square feet of rooftop, according to the report. That’s roughly the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar energy that could power the equivalent of 200 homes, the report said.
“Every rooftop in America that isn’t producing solar energy is a rooftop wasted as we work to break our dependence on fossil fuels and the geopolitical conflicts that come with them,” Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s campaign for 100% Renewable, told CNN. “Now is the time to lean into local renewable energy production, and there’s no better place than the roofs of America’s big-box superstores.”
Advocates involved in clean energy worker-training programs tell CNN that a solar revolution in big-box retail would also be a significant windfall for local communities, spurring economic growth while tackling the climate crisis, which has inflicted disproportionate harm on marginalized communities.
Yet only a fraction of big-box stores in the US have solar on their rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots, the report’s authors told CNN.
CNN reached out to five of the top US retailers — Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target — to ask: Why not invest in more rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar as a relatively simple solution to cut down on costs and help rein in fossil fuel emissions, but the companies point to several roadblocks — regulations, labor costs and structural integrity of the rooftops themselves — that are preventing more widespread adoption.
The need for these kinds of clean energy initiatives is becoming “unquestionably urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates, said Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.
“We are behind the eight ball, to put it mildly,” Cowen told CNN. “I would have loved to see policy help incentivize rooftop solar 15 years ago instead of five years ago in the commercial space. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, possesses by far the largest solar potential. Walmart has around 5,000 stores in the US and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — an area larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential, according to the report.
It’s enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes, the report said.
Walmart spokesperson Mariel Messier told CNN the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company has reported having completed on- and off-site wind and solar projects or had others under development with a capacity to produce more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Neumann said Environment America has met with Walmart a few times, urging the retailer to commit to installing solar panels on roofs and in parking lots. The company has said it’s aiming to source 100% of its energy through renewable projects by 2035.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart stands to make the biggest impact if they put rooftop solar on all of their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just underscores just how much of an impact they could make if they make that decision.”
According to Environment America, Walmart had installed almost 194 megawatts of solar capacity on its US facilities as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year and additional capacity in off-site solar farms. The company’s installations in California were expected to provide between 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
Target ranked No. 1 for on-site solar capacity in 2019, according to industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s most recent report. It currently has 542 locations with rooftop solar — around a quarter of the company’s stores — a Target spokesperson told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough energy to meet 15% to 40% of Target properties’ energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, the chief financial officer at Costco, said the company has 121 stores with rooftop solar around the world, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN what their biggest barriers are to adding rooftop or parking lot solar panels to more stores.
Approximate number of households companies could power with rooftop solar
Walmart — 842,700
Target — 259,900
Home Depot — 256,600
Kroger — 192,500
Costco — 87,500
Source: Environment America, Frontier Group report, “Solar on Superstores”
“My suspicion is that they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business-as-usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all those roofs have done is cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] use their buildings and thinking of them as energy generators, not just protection from rain, requires a small change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has around 2,300 stores, currently has 75 completed rooftop solar projects, 12 in construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power generates around half of these stores’ energy needs on average, he said.
Aging rooftops at stores are a “huge impediment” to solar installation, D’Arcy added. If a roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal of implementing solar rooftop where the economics are attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also reached out to Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores across the US. Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson, said the company currently has 15 properties — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. One of the “multiple factors affecting the viability of a solar installation” was the stores’ ability to support a solar installation on the roofs, Howard said.
Cowen, the engineering professor at Cornell, said solar is already attractive, but that labor costs, incentives and the different layers of regulation likely pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, this means usually hiring a local site firm that can do that installation that also knows local policy,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is beginning to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but it needs kind of reopening that door of getting into an existing building.”
Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-chairs the power sector task force in the House, said the US has “failed to provide the incentives to people who have the expertise to go in and build these things.” The reason both retail companies and the power sector have not made much progress on solar is because “our system is so disjointed” and has a complex regulation structure, Casten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy where we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction, and we penalize clean energy production,” Casten told CNN. “For a long, long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the rooftop of Walmart, your biggest enemy was going to be your local utility because they didn’t want to lose the load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Casten added. “And had we done it, we would not be in this dire position with the climate, but we’d also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
For Charles Callaway, director of organizing at the nonprofit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, strengthening the rooftop solar capacity in big box retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to reap benefits either through installation jobs or sharing the electricity produced later.
Either way, it would put a massive dent in curbing the climate crisis and help usher in an equitable transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New York City resident led a worker training program that helped train more than 100 local community members, mostly people of color, to become solar installers. He also formed a solar workers cooperative to ensure many of the participants of the training program get jobs in a tough market.
In the last two years, Callaway said his group has not only installed solar panels on roofs of affordable housing units, but also equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar energy on shopping malls up in upstate New York. He emphasized that hiring locally would be most beneficial since local installers know the community and local regulations best.
“One of my huge concerns is social equity,” Cowen said. “Access to renewable energy is a fairly privileged position these days, and we’ve got to figure out ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, WE ACT’s energy justice policy manager, said the potential of building rooftop solar on big box superstores is encouraging, only “if these projects use local labor, if they are paying prevailing wages, and if this solar is being used in a manner such as community solar, which would allow [utility] bill discounts for folks that live in the same utility zone.”
Pressure is mounting for global leaders to act urgently on the climate crisis after a UN report in late February warned the window for action is rapidly closing.
Neumann believes the US can meet its energy demand with renewables. All it takes, she said, is the political will to make that switch, and the inclusion of the local community so no one gets left behind in the transition.
“The sooner we make that transition, the sooner we’ll have cleaner air, the sooner we’ll have a more protected environment and better health and the sooner we’ll have a more livable future for our kids,” Neumann said. “And even if that requires investment, it is an investment worth making.”
As the US attempts to wean itself off its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner energy sources, many experts are eyeing a promising solution: your neighborhood big-box stores and shopping malls.
The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.
At the IKEA store in Baltimore, installing solar panels on the roof and over the store’s parking lot cut the amount of energy it needed to purchase by 84%, slashing its costs by 57% from September to December of 2020, according to the company. (The panels also provide some beneficial shade to keep customers’ cars cool on hot, sunny days.)
As of February 2021, IKEA had 54 solar arrays installed across 90% of its US locations.
Big-box stores and shopping centers have enough roof space to produce half of their annual electricity needs from solar, according to a report from nonprofit Environment America and research firm Frontier Group.
Leveraging the full rooftop solar potential of these superstores would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million average homes, the report concluded, and would cut the same amount of planet-warming emissions as pulling 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has 180,000 square feet of rooftop, according to the report. That’s roughly the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar energy that could power the equivalent of 200 homes, the report said.
“Every rooftop in America that isn’t producing solar energy is a rooftop wasted as we work to break our dependence on fossil fuels and the geopolitical conflicts that come with them,” Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s campaign for 100% Renewable, told CNN. “Now is the time to lean into local renewable energy production, and there’s no better place than the roofs of America’s big-box superstores.”
Advocates involved in clean energy worker-training programs tell CNN that a solar revolution in big-box retail would also be a significant windfall for local communities, spurring economic growth while tackling the climate crisis, which has inflicted disproportionate harm on marginalized communities.
Yet only a fraction of big-box stores in the US have solar on their rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots, the report’s authors told CNN.
CNN reached out to five of the top US retailers — Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target — to ask: Why not invest in more rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar as a relatively simple solution to cut down on costs and help rein in fossil fuel emissions, but the companies point to several roadblocks — regulations, labor costs and structural integrity of the rooftops themselves — that are preventing more widespread adoption.
The need for these kinds of clean energy initiatives is becoming “unquestionably urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates, said Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.
“We are behind the eight ball, to put it mildly,” Cowen told CNN. “I would have loved to see policy help incentivize rooftop solar 15 years ago instead of five years ago in the commercial space. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, possesses by far the largest solar potential. Walmart has around 5,000 stores in the US and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — an area larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential, according to the report.
It’s enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes, the report said.
Walmart spokesperson Mariel Messier told CNN the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company has reported having completed on- and off-site wind and solar projects or had others under development with a capacity to produce more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Neumann said Environment America has met with Walmart a few times, urging the retailer to commit to installing solar panels on roofs and in parking lots. The company has said it’s aiming to source 100% of its energy through renewable projects by 2035.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart stands to make the biggest impact if they put rooftop solar on all of their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just underscores just how much of an impact they could make if they make that decision.”
According to Environment America, Walmart had installed almost 194 megawatts of solar capacity on its US facilities as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year and additional capacity in off-site solar farms. The company’s installations in California were expected to provide between 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
Target ranked No. 1 for on-site solar capacity in 2019, according to industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s most recent report. It currently has 542 locations with rooftop solar — around a quarter of the company’s stores — a Target spokesperson told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough energy to meet 15% to 40% of Target properties’ energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, the chief financial officer at Costco, said the company has 121 stores with rooftop solar around the world, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN what their biggest barriers are to adding rooftop or parking lot solar panels to more stores.
Approximate number of households companies could power with rooftop solar
Walmart — 842,700
Target — 259,900
Home Depot — 256,600
Kroger — 192,500
Costco — 87,500
Source: Environment America, Frontier Group report, “Solar on Superstores”
“My suspicion is that they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business-as-usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all those roofs have done is cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] use their buildings and thinking of them as energy generators, not just protection from rain, requires a small change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has around 2,300 stores, currently has 75 completed rooftop solar projects, 12 in construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power generates around half of these stores’ energy needs on average, he said.
Aging rooftops at stores are a “huge impediment” to solar installation, D’Arcy added. If a roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal of implementing solar rooftop where the economics are attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also reached out to Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores across the US. Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson, said the company currently has 15 properties — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. One of the “multiple factors affecting the viability of a solar installation” was the stores’ ability to support a solar installation on the roofs, Howard said.
Cowen, the engineering professor at Cornell, said solar is already attractive, but that labor costs, incentives and the different layers of regulation likely pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, this means usually hiring a local site firm that can do that installation that also knows local policy,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is beginning to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but it needs kind of reopening that door of getting into an existing building.”
Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-chairs the power sector task force in the House, said the US has “failed to provide the incentives to people who have the expertise to go in and build these things.” The reason both retail companies and the power sector have not made much progress on solar is because “our system is so disjointed” and has a complex regulation structure, Casten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy where we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction, and we penalize clean energy production,” Casten told CNN. “For a long, long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the rooftop of Walmart, your biggest enemy was going to be your local utility because they didn’t want to lose the load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Casten added. “And had we done it, we would not be in this dire position with the climate, but we’d also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
For Charles Callaway, director of organizing at the nonprofit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, strengthening the rooftop solar capacity in big box retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to reap benefits either through installation jobs or sharing the electricity produced later.
Either way, it would put a massive dent in curbing the climate crisis and help usher in an equitable transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New York City resident led a worker training program that helped train more than 100 local community members, mostly people of color, to become solar installers. He also formed a solar workers cooperative to ensure many of the participants of the training program get jobs in a tough market.
In the last two years, Callaway said his group has not only installed solar panels on roofs of affordable housing units, but also equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar energy on shopping malls up in upstate New York. He emphasized that hiring locally would be most beneficial since local installers know the community and local regulations best.
“One of my huge concerns is social equity,” Cowen said. “Access to renewable energy is a fairly privileged position these days, and we’ve got to figure out ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, WE ACT’s energy justice policy manager, said the potential of building rooftop solar on big box superstores is encouraging, only “if these projects use local labor, if they are paying prevailing wages, and if this solar is being used in a manner such as community solar, which would allow [utility] bill discounts for folks that live in the same utility zone.”
Pressure is mounting for global leaders to act urgently on the climate crisis after a UN report in late February warned the window for action is rapidly closing.
Neumann believes the US can meet its energy demand with renewables. All it takes, she said, is the political will to make that switch, and the inclusion of the local community so no one gets left behind in the transition.
“The sooner we make that transition, the sooner we’ll have cleaner air, the sooner we’ll have a more protected environment and better health and the sooner we’ll have a more livable future for our kids,” Neumann said. “And even if that requires investment, it is an investment worth making.”
As the US attempts to wean itself off its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner energy sources, many experts are eyeing a promising solution: your neighborhood big-box stores and shopping malls.
The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.
At the IKEA store in Baltimore, installing solar panels on the roof and over the store’s parking lot cut the amount of energy it needed to purchase by 84%, slashing its costs by 57% from September to December of 2020, according to the company. (The panels also provide some beneficial shade to keep customers’ cars cool on hot, sunny days.)
As of February 2021, IKEA had 54 solar arrays installed across 90% of its US locations.
Big-box stores and shopping centers have enough roof space to produce half of their annual electricity needs from solar, according to a report from nonprofit Environment America and research firm Frontier Group.
Leveraging the full rooftop solar potential of these superstores would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million average homes, the report concluded, and would cut the same amount of planet-warming emissions as pulling 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has 180,000 square feet of rooftop, according to the report. That’s roughly the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar energy that could power the equivalent of 200 homes, the report said.
“Every rooftop in America that isn’t producing solar energy is a rooftop wasted as we work to break our dependence on fossil fuels and the geopolitical conflicts that come with them,” Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s campaign for 100% Renewable, told CNN. “Now is the time to lean into local renewable energy production, and there’s no better place than the roofs of America’s big-box superstores.”
Advocates involved in clean energy worker-training programs tell CNN that a solar revolution in big-box retail would also be a significant windfall for local communities, spurring economic growth while tackling the climate crisis, which has inflicted disproportionate harm on marginalized communities.
Yet only a fraction of big-box stores in the US have solar on their rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots, the report’s authors told CNN.
CNN reached out to five of the top US retailers — Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target — to ask: Why not invest in more rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar as a relatively simple solution to cut down on costs and help rein in fossil fuel emissions, but the companies point to several roadblocks — regulations, labor costs and structural integrity of the rooftops themselves — that are preventing more widespread adoption.
The need for these kinds of clean energy initiatives is becoming “unquestionably urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates, said Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.
“We are behind the eight ball, to put it mildly,” Cowen told CNN. “I would have loved to see policy help incentivize rooftop solar 15 years ago instead of five years ago in the commercial space. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, possesses by far the largest solar potential. Walmart has around 5,000 stores in the US and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — an area larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential, according to the report.
It’s enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes, the report said.
Walmart spokesperson Mariel Messier told CNN the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company has reported having completed on- and off-site wind and solar projects or had others under development with a capacity to produce more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Neumann said Environment America has met with Walmart a few times, urging the retailer to commit to installing solar panels on roofs and in parking lots. The company has said it’s aiming to source 100% of its energy through renewable projects by 2035.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart stands to make the biggest impact if they put rooftop solar on all of their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just underscores just how much of an impact they could make if they make that decision.”
According to Environment America, Walmart had installed almost 194 megawatts of solar capacity on its US facilities as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year and additional capacity in off-site solar farms. The company’s installations in California were expected to provide between 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
Target ranked No. 1 for on-site solar capacity in 2019, according to industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s most recent report. It currently has 542 locations with rooftop solar — around a quarter of the company’s stores — a Target spokesperson told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough energy to meet 15% to 40% of Target properties’ energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, the chief financial officer at Costco, said the company has 121 stores with rooftop solar around the world, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN what their biggest barriers are to adding rooftop or parking lot solar panels to more stores.
Approximate number of households companies could power with rooftop solar
Walmart — 842,700
Target — 259,900
Home Depot — 256,600
Kroger — 192,500
Costco — 87,500
Source: Environment America, Frontier Group report, “Solar on Superstores”
“My suspicion is that they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business-as-usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all those roofs have done is cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] use their buildings and thinking of them as energy generators, not just protection from rain, requires a small change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has around 2,300 stores, currently has 75 completed rooftop solar projects, 12 in construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power generates around half of these stores’ energy needs on average, he said.
Aging rooftops at stores are a “huge impediment” to solar installation, D’Arcy added. If a roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal of implementing solar rooftop where the economics are attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also reached out to Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores across the US. Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson, said the company currently has 15 properties — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. One of the “multiple factors affecting the viability of a solar installation” was the stores’ ability to support a solar installation on the roofs, Howard said.
Cowen, the engineering professor at Cornell, said solar is already attractive, but that labor costs, incentives and the different layers of regulation likely pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, this means usually hiring a local site firm that can do that installation that also knows local policy,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is beginning to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but it needs kind of reopening that door of getting into an existing building.”
Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-chairs the power sector task force in the House, said the US has “failed to provide the incentives to people who have the expertise to go in and build these things.” The reason both retail companies and the power sector have not made much progress on solar is because “our system is so disjointed” and has a complex regulation structure, Casten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy where we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction, and we penalize clean energy production,” Casten told CNN. “For a long, long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the rooftop of Walmart, your biggest enemy was going to be your local utility because they didn’t want to lose the load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Casten added. “And had we done it, we would not be in this dire position with the climate, but we’d also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
For Charles Callaway, director of organizing at the nonprofit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, strengthening the rooftop solar capacity in big box retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to reap benefits either through installation jobs or sharing the electricity produced later.
Either way, it would put a massive dent in curbing the climate crisis and help usher in an equitable transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New York City resident led a worker training program that helped train more than 100 local community members, mostly people of color, to become solar installers. He also formed a solar workers cooperative to ensure many of the participants of the training program get jobs in a tough market.
In the last two years, Callaway said his group has not only installed solar panels on roofs of affordable housing units, but also equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar energy on shopping malls up in upstate New York. He emphasized that hiring locally would be most beneficial since local installers know the community and local regulations best.
“One of my huge concerns is social equity,” Cowen said. “Access to renewable energy is a fairly privileged position these days, and we’ve got to figure out ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, WE ACT’s energy justice policy manager, said the potential of building rooftop solar on big box superstores is encouraging, only “if these projects use local labor, if they are paying prevailing wages, and if this solar is being used in a manner such as community solar, which would allow [utility] bill discounts for folks that live in the same utility zone.”
Pressure is mounting for global leaders to act urgently on the climate crisis after a UN report in late February warned the window for action is rapidly closing.
Neumann believes the US can meet its energy demand with renewables. All it takes, she said, is the political will to make that switch, and the inclusion of the local community so no one gets left behind in the transition.
“The sooner we make that transition, the sooner we’ll have cleaner air, the sooner we’ll have a more protected environment and better health and the sooner we’ll have a more livable future for our kids,” Neumann said. “And even if that requires investment, it is an investment worth making.”
As the US attempts to wean itself off its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner energy sources, many experts are eyeing a promising solution: your neighborhood big-box stores and shopping malls.
The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.
At the IKEA store in Baltimore, installing solar panels on the roof and over the store’s parking lot cut the amount of energy it needed to purchase by 84%, slashing its costs by 57% from September to December of 2020, according to the company. (The panels also provide some beneficial shade to keep customers’ cars cool on hot, sunny days.)
As of February 2021, IKEA had 54 solar arrays installed across 90% of its US locations.
Big-box stores and shopping centers have enough roof space to produce half of their annual electricity needs from solar, according to a report from nonprofit Environment America and research firm Frontier Group.
Leveraging the full rooftop solar potential of these superstores would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million average homes, the report concluded, and would cut the same amount of planet-warming emissions as pulling 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has 180,000 square feet of rooftop, according to the report. That’s roughly the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar energy that could power the equivalent of 200 homes, the report said.
“Every rooftop in America that isn’t producing solar energy is a rooftop wasted as we work to break our dependence on fossil fuels and the geopolitical conflicts that come with them,” Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s campaign for 100% Renewable, told CNN. “Now is the time to lean into local renewable energy production, and there’s no better place than the roofs of America’s big-box superstores.”
Advocates involved in clean energy worker-training programs tell CNN that a solar revolution in big-box retail would also be a significant windfall for local communities, spurring economic growth while tackling the climate crisis, which has inflicted disproportionate harm on marginalized communities.
Yet only a fraction of big-box stores in the US have solar on their rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots, the report’s authors told CNN.
CNN reached out to five of the top US retailers — Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target — to ask: Why not invest in more rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar as a relatively simple solution to cut down on costs and help rein in fossil fuel emissions, but the companies point to several roadblocks — regulations, labor costs and structural integrity of the rooftops themselves — that are preventing more widespread adoption.
The need for these kinds of clean energy initiatives is becoming “unquestionably urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates, said Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.
“We are behind the eight ball, to put it mildly,” Cowen told CNN. “I would have loved to see policy help incentivize rooftop solar 15 years ago instead of five years ago in the commercial space. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, possesses by far the largest solar potential. Walmart has around 5,000 stores in the US and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — an area larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential, according to the report.
It’s enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes, the report said.
Walmart spokesperson Mariel Messier told CNN the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company has reported having completed on- and off-site wind and solar projects or had others under development with a capacity to produce more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Neumann said Environment America has met with Walmart a few times, urging the retailer to commit to installing solar panels on roofs and in parking lots. The company has said it’s aiming to source 100% of its energy through renewable projects by 2035.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart stands to make the biggest impact if they put rooftop solar on all of their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just underscores just how much of an impact they could make if they make that decision.”
According to Environment America, Walmart had installed almost 194 megawatts of solar capacity on its US facilities as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year and additional capacity in off-site solar farms. The company’s installations in California were expected to provide between 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
Target ranked No. 1 for on-site solar capacity in 2019, according to industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s most recent report. It currently has 542 locations with rooftop solar — around a quarter of the company’s stores — a Target spokesperson told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough energy to meet 15% to 40% of Target properties’ energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, the chief financial officer at Costco, said the company has 121 stores with rooftop solar around the world, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN what their biggest barriers are to adding rooftop or parking lot solar panels to more stores.
Approximate number of households companies could power with rooftop solar
Walmart — 842,700
Target — 259,900
Home Depot — 256,600
Kroger — 192,500
Costco — 87,500
Source: Environment America, Frontier Group report, “Solar on Superstores”
“My suspicion is that they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business-as-usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all those roofs have done is cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] use their buildings and thinking of them as energy generators, not just protection from rain, requires a small change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has around 2,300 stores, currently has 75 completed rooftop solar projects, 12 in construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power generates around half of these stores’ energy needs on average, he said.
Aging rooftops at stores are a “huge impediment” to solar installation, D’Arcy added. If a roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal of implementing solar rooftop where the economics are attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also reached out to Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores across the US. Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson, said the company currently has 15 properties — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. One of the “multiple factors affecting the viability of a solar installation” was the stores’ ability to support a solar installation on the roofs, Howard said.
Cowen, the engineering professor at Cornell, said solar is already attractive, but that labor costs, incentives and the different layers of regulation likely pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, this means usually hiring a local site firm that can do that installation that also knows local policy,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is beginning to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but it needs kind of reopening that door of getting into an existing building.”
Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-chairs the power sector task force in the House, said the US has “failed to provide the incentives to people who have the expertise to go in and build these things.” The reason both retail companies and the power sector have not made much progress on solar is because “our system is so disjointed” and has a complex regulation structure, Casten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy where we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction, and we penalize clean energy production,” Casten told CNN. “For a long, long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the rooftop of Walmart, your biggest enemy was going to be your local utility because they didn’t want to lose the load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Casten added. “And had we done it, we would not be in this dire position with the climate, but we’d also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
For Charles Callaway, director of organizing at the nonprofit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, strengthening the rooftop solar capacity in big box retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to reap benefits either through installation jobs or sharing the electricity produced later.
Either way, it would put a massive dent in curbing the climate crisis and help usher in an equitable transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New York City resident led a worker training program that helped train more than 100 local community members, mostly people of color, to become solar installers. He also formed a solar workers cooperative to ensure many of the participants of the training program get jobs in a tough market.
In the last two years, Callaway said his group has not only installed solar panels on roofs of affordable housing units, but also equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar energy on shopping malls up in upstate New York. He emphasized that hiring locally would be most beneficial since local installers know the community and local regulations best.
“One of my huge concerns is social equity,” Cowen said. “Access to renewable energy is a fairly privileged position these days, and we’ve got to figure out ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, WE ACT’s energy justice policy manager, said the potential of building rooftop solar on big box superstores is encouraging, only “if these projects use local labor, if they are paying prevailing wages, and if this solar is being used in a manner such as community solar, which would allow [utility] bill discounts for folks that live in the same utility zone.”
Pressure is mounting for global leaders to act urgently on the climate crisis after a UN report in late February warned the window for action is rapidly closing.
Neumann believes the US can meet its energy demand with renewables. All it takes, she said, is the political will to make that switch, and the inclusion of the local community so no one gets left behind in the transition.
“The sooner we make that transition, the sooner we’ll have cleaner air, the sooner we’ll have a more protected environment and better health and the sooner we’ll have a more livable future for our kids,” Neumann said. “And even if that requires investment, it is an investment worth making.”
As the US attempts to wean itself off its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and shift to cleaner energy sources, many experts are eyeing a promising solution: your neighborhood big-box stores and shopping malls.
The rooftops and parking lot space available at retail giants like Walmart, Target and Costco is massive. And these largely empty spaces are being touted as untapped potential for solar power that could help the US reduce its dependency on foreign energy, slash planet-warming emissions and save companies millions of dollars in the process.
At the IKEA store in Baltimore, installing solar panels on the roof and over the store’s parking lot cut the amount of energy it needed to purchase by 84%, slashing its costs by 57% from September to December of 2020, according to the company. (The panels also provide some beneficial shade to keep customers’ cars cool on hot, sunny days.)
As of February 2021, IKEA had 54 solar arrays installed across 90% of its US locations.
Big-box stores and shopping centers have enough roof space to produce half of their annual electricity needs from solar, according to a report from nonprofit Environment America and research firm Frontier Group.
Leveraging the full rooftop solar potential of these superstores would generate enough electricity to power nearly 8 million average homes, the report concluded, and would cut the same amount of planet-warming emissions as pulling 11.3 million gas-powered cars off the road.
The average Walmart store, for example, has 180,000 square feet of rooftop, according to the report. That’s roughly the size of three football fields and enough space to support solar energy that could power the equivalent of 200 homes, the report said.
“Every rooftop in America that isn’t producing solar energy is a rooftop wasted as we work to break our dependence on fossil fuels and the geopolitical conflicts that come with them,” Johanna Neumann, senior director for Environment America’s campaign for 100% Renewable, told CNN. “Now is the time to lean into local renewable energy production, and there’s no better place than the roofs of America’s big-box superstores.”
Advocates involved in clean energy worker-training programs tell CNN that a solar revolution in big-box retail would also be a significant windfall for local communities, spurring economic growth while tackling the climate crisis, which has inflicted disproportionate harm on marginalized communities.
Yet only a fraction of big-box stores in the US have solar on their rooftops or solar canopies in parking lots, the report’s authors told CNN.
CNN reached out to five of the top US retailers — Walmart, Kroger, Home Depot, Costco and Target — to ask: Why not invest in more rooftop solar?
Many renewable energy experts point to solar as a relatively simple solution to cut down on costs and help rein in fossil fuel emissions, but the companies point to several roadblocks — regulations, labor costs and structural integrity of the rooftops themselves — that are preventing more widespread adoption.
The need for these kinds of clean energy initiatives is becoming “unquestionably urgent” as the climate crisis accelerates, said Edwin Cowen, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.
“We are behind the eight ball, to put it mildly,” Cowen told CNN. “I would have loved to see policy help incentivize rooftop solar 15 years ago instead of five years ago in the commercial space. There’s still a tremendous amount of work to do.”
Neumann said Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, possesses by far the largest solar potential. Walmart has around 5,000 stores in the US and more than 783 million square feet of rooftop space — an area larger than Manhattan — and more than 8,974 gigawatt hours of annual rooftop solar potential, according to the report.
It’s enough electricity to power more than 842,000 homes, the report said.
Walmart spokesperson Mariel Messier told CNN the company is involved in renewable energy projects around the world, but many of them are not rooftop solar installations. The company has reported having completed on- and off-site wind and solar projects or had others under development with a capacity to produce more than 2.3 gigawatts of renewable energy.
Neumann said Environment America has met with Walmart a few times, urging the retailer to commit to installing solar panels on roofs and in parking lots. The company has said it’s aiming to source 100% of its energy through renewable projects by 2035.
“Of all the retailers in America, Walmart stands to make the biggest impact if they put rooftop solar on all of their stores,” Neumann told CNN. “And for us, this report just underscores just how much of an impact they could make if they make that decision.”
According to Environment America, Walmart had installed almost 194 megawatts of solar capacity on its US facilities as of the end of the 2021 fiscal year and additional capacity in off-site solar farms. The company’s installations in California were expected to provide between 20% to 30% of each location’s electricity needs.
Target ranked No. 1 for on-site solar capacity in 2019, according to industry trade group Solar Energy Industries Association’s most recent report. It currently has 542 locations with rooftop solar — around a quarter of the company’s stores — a Target spokesperson told CNN. Rooftop solar generates enough energy to meet 15% to 40% of Target properties’ energy needs, the spokesperson said.
Richard Galanti, the chief financial officer at Costco, said the company has 121 stores with rooftop solar around the world, 95 of which are in the US.
Walmart, Target and Costco did not share with CNN what their biggest barriers are to adding rooftop or parking lot solar panels to more stores.
Approximate number of households companies could power with rooftop solar
Walmart — 842,700
Target — 259,900
Home Depot — 256,600
Kroger — 192,500
Costco — 87,500
Source: Environment America, Frontier Group report, “Solar on Superstores”
“My suspicion is that they want an even stronger business case for deviating from business-as-usual,” Neumann said. “Historically, all those roofs have done is cover their stores, and rethinking how [they] use their buildings and thinking of them as energy generators, not just protection from rain, requires a small change in their business model.”
Home Depot, which has around 2,300 stores, currently has 75 completed rooftop solar projects, 12 in construction and more than 30 planned for future development, said Craig D’Arcy, the company’s director of energy management. Solar power generates around half of these stores’ energy needs on average, he said.
Aging rooftops at stores are a “huge impediment” to solar installation, D’Arcy added. If a roof needs to be replaced in the next 15 to 20 years or sooner, it doesn’t make financial sense for Home Depot to add solar systems today, he said.
“We have a goal of implementing solar rooftop where the economics are attractive,” D’Arcy told CNN.
CNN also reached out to Kroger, which owns about 2,800 stores across the US. Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson, said the company currently has 15 properties — stores, distribution centers and manufacturing plants — with solar installations. One of the “multiple factors affecting the viability of a solar installation” was the stores’ ability to support a solar installation on the roofs, Howard said.
Cowen, the engineering professor at Cornell, said solar is already attractive, but that labor costs, incentives and the different layers of regulation likely pose some financial challenges in solar installations.
“For them, this means usually hiring a local site firm that can do that installation that also knows local policy,” Cowen said. “It’s just another layer of complexity that I think is beginning to make sense because the costs have come down enough, but it needs kind of reopening that door of getting into an existing building.”
Rep. Sean Casten of Illinois, who co-chairs the power sector task force in the House, said the US has “failed to provide the incentives to people who have the expertise to go in and build these things.” The reason both retail companies and the power sector have not made much progress on solar is because “our system is so disjointed” and has a complex regulation structure, Casten said.
“Why aren’t we doing something that makes economic sense? The answer is this horribly disjointed federal policy where we massively subsidize fossil energy extraction, and we penalize clean energy production,” Casten told CNN. “For a long, long time, if you wanted to build a solar panel on the rooftop of Walmart, your biggest enemy was going to be your local utility because they didn’t want to lose the load.
“We could have done this decades ago,” Casten added. “And had we done it, we would not be in this dire position with the climate, but we’d also have a lot more money in our pocket.”
For Charles Callaway, director of organizing at the nonprofit group WE ACT for Environmental Justice, strengthening the rooftop solar capacity in big box retail stores is a no-brainer, especially if companies allow the local community to reap benefits either through installation jobs or sharing the electricity produced later.
Either way, it would put a massive dent in curbing the climate crisis and help usher in an equitable transition away from fossil fuels — and it’s doable, Callaway told CNN.
The New York City resident led a worker training program that helped train more than 100 local community members, mostly people of color, to become solar installers. He also formed a solar workers cooperative to ensure many of the participants of the training program get jobs in a tough market.
In the last two years, Callaway said his group has not only installed solar panels on roofs of affordable housing units, but also equipment capable of producing 2 megawatts of solar energy on shopping malls up in upstate New York. He emphasized that hiring locally would be most beneficial since local installers know the community and local regulations best.
“One of my huge concerns is social equity,” Cowen said. “Access to renewable energy is a fairly privileged position these days, and we’ve got to figure out ways to make that not true.”
Jasmine Graham, WE ACT’s energy justice policy manager, said the potential of building rooftop solar on big box superstores is encouraging, only “if these projects use local labor, if they are paying prevailing wages, and if this solar is being used in a manner such as community solar, which would allow [utility] bill discounts for folks that live in the same utility zone.”
Pressure is mounting for global leaders to act urgently on the climate crisis after a UN report in late February warned the window for action is rapidly closing.
Neumann believes the US can meet its energy demand with renewables. All it takes, she said, is the political will to make that switch, and the inclusion of the local community so no one gets left behind in the transition.
“The sooner we make that transition, the sooner we’ll have cleaner air, the sooner we’ll have a more protected environment and better health and the sooner we’ll have a more livable future for our kids,” Neumann said. “And even if that requires investment, it is an investment worth making.”
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