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Hertz follows electric car act with solar installation rollout

By | February 10, 2011, 3:07 PM PST

This one caught my eye, since literally I just saw a serviceman hoisting a solar panel onto a telephone line pole here in my hometown. Rental car company Hertz, which has taken a leadership position in adding electric vehicles to its fleet including the Nissan Leaf, is embarking of the first phase of its solar energy initiative.

By the third quarter of 2011, the company is planning to install panels at 15 facilities in Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. Hertz already has installed a 235-kilowatt system at its facility near the Denver International Airport. That installation is expected to produce 342,766 kilowatt-hours per year, which the company hopes will offset approximately 650,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.

The generating capacity of the 15 new systems will be more than 2.3 megawatts.

In North America, Hertz’s Green Initiatives include investments in energy-optimized lighting technology, including LED, solar glass and solar shades. It also embraced a formal electronic waste disposal policy early on: almost seven years ago. That policy comes in the form of a deal with Redemtech, an e-Stewards certified technology asset disposition company, which covers all of the electronics equipment used in its American facilities. Since the two began working together, Hertz has kept an estimated 891,000 pounds of electronic equipment, 34,225 pounds of lead, 8 pounds of arsenic, 51 pounds of cadmium and 12 pounds of mercury from reaching landfills. And it has adopted power management technology for saving electricity on its computers: if a system is unused for more than three minutes, the monitor is idled.

Related posts about rental car companies and green initiatives:

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Heather Clancy

About Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy is a contributing editor for SmartPlanet.

Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy

Contributing Editor, Business

Heather Clancy has written for United Press International, ZDNet, Entrepreneur, Fortune Small Business, the International Herald Tribune and the New York Times. She holds a degree from McGill University. She is based in New Jersey.

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Heather Clancy

Heather Clancy
Writing publicly about what the high-tech industry is actually doing to help itself and the world get greener or more sustainable is one way I figure I can contribute more meaningfully to said effort. I'm also a big OMG-kind-of-fan of smart leadership, which is why the goodly folks who publish this blog let me go on about this topic and why I am always on the hunt for forward-looking business management ideas.

My daily writing is focused on looking for topics for my blogs, GreenTech Pastures and Business Brains. I also write often about emerging technology trends such as mobile computing, unified communications and cloud computing. Occasionally, I will pop up at an industry conference in some sort of speaking capacity. In cases where a speaking engagement involves a sponsor that may be covered in this blog, that fact will be disclosed in coverage as appropriate.

My corporate writing work usually consists of crafting research white papers about some aspect of technology. In the event that my commentary (in written, audio or video form) mentions a company for which I have provided consulting advice, I will disclose that fact. However, there is no connection between these projects and the topics that I'm covering in my blog.

She writes for SmartPlanet and is not an employee of CBS.

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RE: Hertz follows electric car act with solar installation rollout
please find our electric cars:
www.chinaeu.de
Posted by chinaeu
16th Feb 2011
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