DC Velocity - June 2010

don’t raise the roof—lease it!

In challenging times, leasing space within a DC’s four walls may not be enough. Sometimes, you have to lease the roof.

ProLogis, one of the world’s leading developers of warehouse and DC space, announced in May it will lease solar-paneled rooftop space on five of its buildings to a California utility. The agreement calls for the developer to supply Southern California Edison (SCE) with energy generated from rooftop panels on five properties located in Southern California. The utility will distribute the power drawn from the panels to its customers.

In the first phase of the agreement, Denver-based ProLogis will provide SCE with 11. 1 megawatts of solar power generated from the panels. In total, the agreement will provide SCE with about 100 megawatts of solar power generated from panels covering 2. 5 million square feet of roof space in Southern California, ProLogis said.

Under the agreement, SCE will own and operate the system, with the power generated from the panels feeding directly into the utility’s electrical system. As the project’s site host, ProLogis will receive roof rental income and construction management fees. Construction is expected to begin this summer.

“Our partnership with SCE works well for both parties—we have flat, available roof space and local construction management expertise in place to support the growth of SCE’s renewable energy program,” said Drew Torbin, vice president of renewable energy for ProLogis, in a statement.

“We are pleased to expand this relationship with a company that shares our vision for converting otherwise unused urban rooftop real estate into solar power stations,” said John Fielder, president of SCE, in the same statement.

This is the second rooftop solar project between the two companies. The first installation, separate from the May announcement, was at a ProLogis facility in Fontana, Calif.

ProLogis now has solar projects installed or under construction on 32 buildings throughout France, Germany, Japan, Spain, and the United States. The installations cover more than 10. 6 million square feet (984,800 square meters) of roof space and total 24. 6 megawatts.

The developer, which created a Renewable Energy division last year, said it has more than 450 million square feet ( 42 million square meters) of roof space worldwide available for solar installations. ProLogis controls 475 million square feet of industrial space in its three-continent network.

Transportation and environmental interests said May 14 they would collaborate in an effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions from trucks serving the nation’s ports, beginning with ports in the Southeast that don’t have clean truck programs in place.

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and the Coalition for Responsible Transportation (CRT), a logistics group whose members include some of the world’s most prominent manufacturers and retailers, said they plan to work with port and trucking industry officials to remove older, higher-polluting trucks from the nation’s port environs. The groups said they would explore financing strategies to help port drivers— many of whom are smaller operators without much capital—fund the acquisition of cleaner, more modern vehicles.

The groups made the announcement at a meeting of South Atlantic and Caribbean port executives in Jacksonville, Fla. Most of CRT’s members are local cartage companies that make their living providing drayage service at the nation’s ports. But its roster also includes the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., the Home Depot Inc., Nike Inc., and Target Corp.

James Jack, CRT’s executive director, said there wasn’t any specific Southeast port that the groups were talking to at this time.

Most Southeast ports do not have programs in place to phase out older trucks. By contrast, many West Coast ports have launched these types of initiatives.

The one glaring exception is Los Angeles, where the American Trucking Associations (ATA) mounted what has become a long-running legal challenge to the port’s plan to block independent truck operators from serving the port regardless of their trucks’ age or emission levels.

ATA alleges the port wants to grant itself discretion to decide which federally qualified carriers should operate there, an illegal intrusion of a local body in the functions of interstate commerce. Los Angeles argues that because it subsidized the purchase of 2,800 clean trucks, it should be exempted from federal law barring states and localities from regulating truck operations in interstate commerce.