Posted on November 5, 2007

Clinton Climate Initiative Partners with U.S. Mayors, Wal-Mart to Make Green Products Accessible

The Clinton Foundation has announced that the Clinton Climate Initiative will partner with the U.S. Conference of Mayors and Wal-Mart Stores to make green products more affordable and accessible to city governments and consumers across the United States.

The partnership will enable an additional eleven hundred cities to gain access to volume discounts on energy-efficient and clean-energy products and technologies through CCI's purchasing consortium. Previously, these benefits were available only to the C40 Large Cities Climate Leadership Group, a group of forty of the world's largest cities working in concert to fight climate change. Wal-Mart and CCI will use their combined purchasing resources to drive down the price of green technologies and to identify and examine new energy-efficient products and methods to procure and utilize clean energy.

CCI's purchasing consortium has already negotiated discounted pricing agreements with twenty-five manufacturers of energy-efficient products, including indoor lighting, clean vehicles, traffic and street lighting, building products, advanced waste management technologies, water system components, and alternative-energy technologies. These and additional products will be offered to interested municipal governments with discounts of 5 percent to 15 percent for commodity items and 15 percent to 70 percent for non-commodity items.

"This shows what can be achieved when business, government, and the nonprofit sector work together on some of the biggest challenges facing the world today," said Wal-Mart president and CEO Lee Scott. "By combining our resources, we can help drive innovation, create new technology markets, and ultimately reduce this country's dependence on foreign oil."