Wal-Mart: cleantech solutions wanted

At the Cleantech Forum XVI in San Francisco today, worldwide retail giant Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) invited cleantech vendors to submit solutions to it in a handful of specific areas.

As a way of accelerating formal RFP processes with Wal-Mart, the company has established a web site where cleantech companies can submit details of their products and services for the company's consideration, intially in the areas of:

• Sustainable management of organic waste
• Sustainable management of oil-based waste
• Sustainable management of household hazardous waste
• Alternative battery technologies for forklifts
• Wind harvesting
• Sustainable building materials, and
• Closed-loop water processing

Wal-Mart has been actively pursuing sustainable technology solutions since CEO Lee Scott declared in 2005 that "sustainability is good for the environment, it will save us money and it will actually add profits to our bottom line."

The company already has a network of companies that provide it with related technologies (for instance, see Fuel cell trucks complete trials at Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart shops at SunPower, BP Solar and SunEdison). The new initiative announced today is intended to help it find even more providers.

"If we were to look at lighting in our stores, there are 5, 6, 7 vendors we deal with around lighting. But there are hundreds, if not thousands, of companies in the lighting space, and we want to gain access to those that have the newest technologies that are the most innovative, and make sure we're not leaving some really good stones unturned," said Wal-Mart Senior Director of Sustainability Strategy Rand Waddoups to the Cleantech Group.

"What we're trying to do is cast the net a little more broadly as we seek for innovation. We realize as an organization there are many opportunities that require technology innovation to make them beneficial and make business sense."

In casting its net wider, Wal-Mart is looking for newer, and ideally lower cost, opportunities than those it's currently pursuing.

"When it's the right thing to do, Wal-Mart will pay more," said Waddoups. "But Wal-Mart believes sustainability has to make business sense, or at least be cost neutral. The key to getting these new technologies adopted in meaningfully ways will be to get them less expensive than today's alternatives."

"Everybody would have solar panels and windmills if they were cheaper than today's power."

For cleantech vendors, today's new cleantech program marks "an opportunity to do business with a very large customer," said Waddoups, and a way to "engage in a way that's not extremely high pressure."

Wal-Mart says it could use the best cleantech solutions it finds in its 4,000 stores in the U.S., and potentially in its other 2,800 stores internationally.

"For technologies that are successful in the U.S., we would obviously want to expand those technologies to our international businesses. And that's not necessarly a slow process, either. We can scale it pretty quickly internationally."

Wal-Mart's new initiative, called the Cleantech Accelerator, is a partnership with the Cleantech Group, which is aggregating submissions and qualifying vendors for Wal-Mart executives. The partnership was first acknowledged last year (see Wal-Mart & Microsoft's new cleantech deals), though today marked its formal introduction.

"If you are one of a 1,000 potential vendors in a technology field, and you and one other are truly viable, the Accelerator's job is to identifiy those two of the 1,000 and then focus in on those two, as opposed to weeding through the 1,000 ourselves," said Waddoups.

"With our Accelerator program, we are able to leverage our breadth of industry knowledge and network in support of global corporations' sustainability efforts," said Nicholas Parker, co-founder and chairman of the Cleantech Group, which is now offering the service for other companies.

Waddoups called the Cleantech Group a natural partner, because it gives the company "extraordinary access to the people in cleantech: the companies, the venture capitalists, the people with the money and the people with the ideas."

"We looked around. Because of their time in the space and because of the size of the contact list that they have, they have greater access to the right people than any other group we could find."

Wal-Mart's cleantech web portal is publicly available here.