Green News From Home Improvement Giant

September 28, 2003 – Vol.8 No.27

GREEN NEWS FROM HOME IMPROVEMENT GIANT.

The Big Two U.S. home improvement chain stores - Home Depot and Lowe’s - both claim to be good environmental stewards, and both want to attract environmentally concerned customers. As October is Energy Awarness Month in the U.S. Lowe’s made a number of green announcements.

The company said that it has completed a 370-kilowatt solar electric system on the roof of its West Hills store in Los Angeles. The system of 2535 tiles covering 37,500 square feet is one of the largest in the U.S. and provides electricity to the store. PowerLight furnished the system of Shell Solar panels mounted in PowerLight’s PowerGuard roof-protecting, roof installation system.

The company also announced that since it had purchased a renewable energy product for 34 stores in Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama,and Georgia - Green Power Switch (tm) from the Tennessee Valley Authority - that the TVA was giving the national corporation the first ever Green Power Switch Leadership Award. Also in recognition of that power purchase the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation gave Lowe’s the Tennessee Energy Leadership Award.

And to keep the ball rolling in another southern state, Lowe’s also became the only corporation to sign on as a founding sponsor of the NC GreenPower program, a renewable energy program in North Carolina.

And there’s more.

Lowe’s also this week released a survey jointly with Osram Sylvania, a maker of compact fluorescent light bulbs, that studied the attitudes of consumers towards energy efficiency. The survey was aimed, of course, at homes, not vehicles.

The survey found that 90 percent of Americans would take action to reduce energy consumption if they knew what to do. Of all, 61 percent said they were more concerned about energy consumption than other environmental problems such as smog or water pollution. The motivation to save energy was because of financial savings, 46 percent, and saving the environment, 54 percent.

Of the respondents 82 percent said that if they could save money on energy by buying a specialized product they would do so and 91 percent said they would be willing to pay more for an appliance, for instance, if it would save them money down the road. However, only 39 percent rank energy efficiency as the most important factor when purchasing an appliance.

Visit Lowe’s at http://www.lowes.com/ , Osram Sylvania at http://www.sylvania.com/ , Green Power Switch at http://www.greenpowerswitch.com/ , NC Greenpower at http://www.ncgreenpower.org/ , PowerLight at http://www.powerlight.com/ Shell Solar at http://www.shell.com/solar .