Over the past four years, $19 billion food distribution company US Foods has cut its energy consumption by 8 percent, or about 34 million kilowatt-hours, simply by investing in lighting retrofits.
In 2011 alone, the retrofits saved about 2 million kilowatt-hours, or roughly the amount of energy it would take to run 174 U.S. homes for a period of one year.
The company’s energy management director, John Jepsen, said even small changes can make a huge difference in power consumption. Among the changes that the company has made are replacing older lighting fixtures, adopting high-intensity fluorescent lights, and adding motion sensor technologies to help create better lighting usage schedules.
“Projects already slated for 2012 are expected to reduce our energy use by another 3 million kilowatt-hours and further reduce our environmental footprint,” Jepsen said.
(Image courtesy of Stock.xchng)
