Mayors, Wal-Mart Team to Lower Green Building Products' Cost

The Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI) partnered with Wal-Mart and the U.S. Conference of Mayors Thursday to make energy efficient building products more affordable.

CCI will enable its purchasing consortium to offer cheaper environmentally friendly products to the 1,100 cities involved in the U.S. Conference of Mayors, which is holding its Climate Protection Summit this week. The consortium has discounted pricing agreements with 25 manufacturers of energy-efficient products, including GE, 3M, Siemens and Volvo. Previously, these discounts only were available for the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group comprised of 40 of the world's biggest cities working together to address climate issues.

"By offering these products at a discounted rate, we can ensure that more cities and citizens have access to them and that the market for clean-energy technology will grow," said former President Bill Clinton. The discounted items cost between 5 percent to 15 percent under current levels for commodity items, and up to 70 percent below current prices for non-commodity items.

Also Wal-Mart previously committed to sell only concentrated liquid laundry detergent to trim water usage. Thanks to Thursday's announcement Wal-Mart company will also join the Clinton Climate Initiative to advance the design of new green products. One technology the pair are working on is energy efficient, high performance LED lights for parking lots and street lamps. Cities could save 50 percent on street lamp energy consumption, Wal-Mart said.

And that’s not the only thing CCI works on. In May, they announced its worldwide Energy Efficiency Building Retrofit Program that brings together the globe's largest banks and energy companies to reduce energy consumption in existing buildings across 17 cities.

Nils De Groote

Source: GreenBiz.com

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