Kohl’s, Intel lead in ranking of renewable energy users

Intel Corp., the world’s largest chip maker, and the U.S. department-store chain Kohl’s Corp. are the top corporate users of renewable energy, Bloomberg New Energy Finance said in a report for Vestas Wind Systems A/S.

Intel bought 1,493 gigawatt-hours of electricity from renewable sources in 2010, and Kohl’s purchased 1,418 gigawatt- hours, according to New Energy Finance’s Corporate Renewable Energy Index, or CREX. In terms of renewables as a proportion of total power use, Kohl’s and Whole Food Markets Inc. had 100 percent. Intel’s 35 percent didn’t make the top 20.

Vestas, the world’s largest wind-turbine maker, commissioned the index to provide transparency to consumers, policymakers and companies on how goods are produced. Energy from wind, solar, hydro and other renewables accounted for 12.1 percent of electricity purchased by the 102 companies in 16 countries that provided data for 2010.

“There’s a lot of discussion going on about how green companies are and how much renewable energy they’re using,” Vestas Chief Executive Officer Ditlev Engel said in an interview in London. “This index can set a benchmark for how we measure these things.”

Much as corporations like to know the safety record of other companies before they work with them, renewable energy usage will be a subject that business partners increasingly want to know about, Engel said.

New Energy Finance compiled the ranking from responses to an online survey, information from groups such as the Carbon Disclosure Project and Bloomberg data. For the survey, the London-based analyst contacted more than 1,000 companies, chosen on the basis of the MSCI World Index and a Bloomberg ranking of the top 500 companies worldwide by market capitalization.

Because only the largest companies were contacted, “the survey has an inevitable tilt toward the developed world, where these organizations are headquartered,” it said.