Walmart – Shengshui You – 2016

Goals 

Leading multinational corporation, Walmart, enlisted EDF Climate Corps fellow Shengshui You to identify and analyze energy efficiency opportunities at two China-based suppliers: Sunrise and Bestway. Both Sunrise–a home textile factory, and Bestway–a factory producing inflatable pools, were interested in reducing energy costs and GHG emissions. The goal was to provide suppliers with an “Energy Efficiency Handbook” that summarized the methodologies and key takeaways of implementing efficiency projects at their facilities. 

Solutions

Shengshui designed questionnaires to collect technical parameters of equipment and historical energy use data at Sunrise and Bestway. He continued to gather consumption data through two onsite investigations, discussions with energy managers and reviews of materials on energy use equipment and the production process. Having already implemented more than 10 energy efficiency projects over the past five years, Shengshui had to look beyond the “low-hanging fruit” to find additional saving opportunities. After discussions with EDF experts and examinations of national equipment standards, he identified six energy projects for the two factories to implement. To make these projects scalable, Shengshui put together a handbook of best practices, which included 16 different technologies, or types of equipment, to be distributed among Wal-Mart’s suppliers. 

Potential Impact

Shengshui identified annual savings of 1.6 million kWh, 20 thousand tons of water and 528 metric tons CO2 emission for the two supplier factories. The total annual savings is 969,025 yuan ($146,104) and the total net present value is about 4,732,558 yuan ($ 713,551). Moving forward, the Energy Efficiency Handbook will help Wal-Mart’s suppliers implement more energy efficiency projects and achieve greater cost savings.