Thursday, June 25, 2009 at 11:11:34 AM - by Nate Lew

In Texas, where natives say the sun shines 360 days a year, a local grocery retailer called H-E-B – Here Everything’s Better – is in the process of installing 2,500 square feet of solar panels on an Austin store and effectively removed 32,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from earth’s atmosphere for the coming year by not getting electricity from a fossil-fuel burning power plant.

The system also prevents pollutants like mercury, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and even soot from getting into the air, and delivers 31,000 kilowatt hours of renewable energy a year. This is enough to power three homes.
The system should be up and running by late July, and the slight angle at which the panels are mounted optimizes the amount of sunlight they can collect and convert to energy.

H-E-B, which is not only the first store in the Texas grocery chain to go solar, but the first in Austin, is gradually reducing its footprint in other ways as well, like a rainwater collection system and recycling and reusing plastic bags. When the system, designed and installed by Meridian Solar, is complete, a kiosk inside the store will allow customers to see exactly how much the store is saving, not merely in terms of dollars but in terms of emissions as well.

The system cost about $195,000, but it’s not H-E-B’s first foray into renewable energy. The grocery retailer also has a wind turbine at its Weslaco distribution center. Some of the cost of the solar array will be offset by Austin Energy’s solar rebate program, but it’s still an expensive proposition, and one that shows American retailers and the American public are beginning to take global warming seriously.

H-E-B, which has a history of innovative approaches to energy efficiency and renewables, also recently installed freezer lights that only go on when the door is opened in all its newer stores.

Like most truly revolutionary changes in history, the switch to renewable energy is a grassroots movement, beginning in Middle America and spreading like ripples in a pond. The Obama administration has done a lot to support this change, but never let it be said that Americans have lost their innovative spirit.

Texas, which did not even place on the May, 2009 Solar Electric Power Association’s ranking of the top ten utilities in 2008, has a lot of catching-up to do. Those honors (first, second and third place) went to California, with Colorado a surprising fourth. Which is surprising, given the size of Texas and its usually sunny weather. But this, and the 68 other Austin renewable energy initiatives visible on commercial roofs, is likely to just the type of kick-start the state needs to capture its wealth of solar energy.