The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency named several large chain businesses with Connecticut stores to its Top 20 Retail list as the country’s largest green power purchasers.
The top seven companies on the list all have a Connecticut presence including No. 1 Kohl’s Department Stores followed by Whole Foods Market, Starbucks, Staples, Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., Lowe’s and Best Buy.
Also included in the Top 20 were No. 12 FedEX Office, No. 16 Office Depot and No. 18 Price Chopper Supermarkets.
The use of energy from environmentally friendly sources such as solar and wind varied greatly among the Top 20 with Kohl’s achieving 101 percent of its power needs from 1.4 billion kilowatt hours and Price Chopper achieving 3 percent of its power needs from 12 million kilowatt hours.
Companies can obtain green power by either installing distributed generation on their property, buying renewable energy credits from the power plants that produce the green energy, or a combination of both.
