Nov 18 2010
Walgreens declared open the nation’s premier drugstore chain with an installed geothermal energy system, for both cooling and heating.
This store located in Oak Park, III, a Chicago suburb, would consume a reduced energy of almost 46%, due to the installation of the geothermal system. According to Walgreens’s Vice President, Tom Connolly, this facility would be a state of the art drugstore using innovative technologies. He also mentioned that Walgreens was delighted to showcase their dedication to the environmental issues in this Oak Park Store. The company was forever looking for newer and more ingenious ways of reducing their carbon footprint.
During the previous year, the Oak Park Village had voted for an ordinance, which required that any individual or organization building a commercial property inside the village limits should make use of geothermal energy for their energy requirements. The ordinance was one of the many methods used by Oak Park to facilitate the development of a clean and sustainable community.
Evanston, III-based Indie Energy collaborated with Walgreens on the Oak Park site for the installation of the geothermal system. Its Smart Geothermal technology system notably reduces cooling and heating expenses, and also decreases greenhouse gas discharges. According to Daniel Cheifetz, CEO of Indie Energy, implementing the Smart Geothermal Technology makes Walgreens one of the topmost national retailers with regard to energy efficiency, providing real-time and online evidence of both cost and carbon savings, and thus becoming an exemplar model of sustainability. The technology exploits the earth’s natural heat through a network of boreholes installed at depths of 650 feet, and a heat exchange system controlled by Indie’s EnergyLoop technology, which would monitor and optimize the exchange on a real-time basis.
Other than the geothermal system, the Walgreens store also includes a number of green features such as LED and ceiling accent lighting; polished concrete flooring made from recycled materials, reducing maintenance costs; and a dimming system of lights wherever sunlight is predominant.