Retailers Seek to Conserve Energy to Cut Costs

The following is an excerpt from an article in 

The New York Times
Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Retailers Seek to Conserve Energy to Cut Costs

By KEN BELSON

FOR most people, talking about commercial air filters is a great way to end a conversation. To Charlie Brantl and Bob Devine, it is an invitation to an hourlong discussion.

They are engineers, in charge of finding ways to conserve energy and reduce waste at the Mall of America south of Minneapolis, the country’s largest shopping and entertainment complex. And they talk excitedly about everything related to saving energy, including skylights, low-flush toilets and, yes, commercial air filters.

Their enthusiasm is a prime reason the Mall of America, now in its 20th year, can claim to continually reduce costs through conservation. But it is a complicated process because the mall is not just large, but also composed of hundreds of enterprises — stores, restaurants and an amusement park. And it is heated not conventionally but by skylights, electric lights and the body heat of 45 million visitors annually.

Still, because the Mall of America is so vast — 4.2 million square feet and growing, a space that could fit seven Yankee Stadiums — companies with energy savings to sell clamor to have Mr. Brantl and Mr. Devine test and, they hope, order their products. As a result, the mall has become a proving ground for the most energy-efficient and reasonably priced technology.

“We get calls about new technology and dig into it and see if it is smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Brantl said, adding that many products he sees do not meet his employer’s requirement that investments pay for themselves in energy savings within four years. “We only purchase what we’ve tested.”

The Mall of America is among the many companies investing more in energy efficiency. For years, “conservation was sometimes seen as a penalty, a heavy cost, a cutting-back, a reduction in living standards, a form of self-denial,” Daniel Yergin wrote in his book “The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World.”

That view has changed, he and others say, because developing nations are consuming more of the world’s resources, leading to higher costs for all in a sluggish economy. To many, energy efficiency has become the “Fifth Fuel” — after coal, petroleum, nuclear power and renewables like wind and solar — and an important way to address environmental concerns like global warming.