Environmental Leader

Wal-Mart Canada will build the country’s largest rooftop solar-energy system, the Toronto Star reports.

Ontario’s Ministry of Research and Innovation is contributing a $3-million forgivable loan to support a demonstration system at a Wal-Mart store in Markham. The Ontario project alone can reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 390 tons per year.

The technology comes from Menova Energy, which has created a “concentrated” solar-energy system that magnifies the sunlight by 1,000 times onto tiny solar cells.

Wal-Mart faced criticism at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali last year for installing solar panels on only one percent of its total supercenters in the U.S.