California Stores ignore pleas on energy

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Published Wednesday, September 20, 2000, in the San Jose Mercury News

Stores ignore pleas on energy GOBBLING IT UP : BUSINESSES SAY IT'S TOUGH TO ATTRACT CUSTOMERS INTO A HOT BUILDING

BY ANNE ROCHELL KONIGSMARK Mercury News

Conserving energy to prevent blackouts during a heat wave is a nice idea. For someone else.

That seemed to be the message many area businesses were sending Tuesday as they blasted air conditioners and blazed lights in defiance of utilities' pleas to cut back on energy use.

Walking down University Avenue in Palo Alto on Tuesday was like swimming through the cold spots in a lake: Every other store had its doors wide open, with waves of chilly air billowing out to the hot street.

``People come into the store expecting air conditioning,'' said Kristin Depominville, sales associate at Z Gallerie on University Avenue. ``It's hard as a business to conserve.''

And leaving the doors open entices wilting window shoppers inside. The store has been extra busy since the heat wave began, Depominville said.

Retail outlets from San Francisco to San Jose were ignoring calls for conservation.

``Unfortunately, businesses have to be a little selfish,'' said Victory Martin, a sales associate at Virgin Records on Market Street in San Francisco. ``If a customer walks into a hot, sweaty store, they're gonna walk right out of there.''

At least 1,000 lights burned at Coast Lighting in Redwood City. They glowed behind stained glass, winked under shades and twinkled from chandeliers.

``When customers come in, they see a lamp and they say, `Well, it's not lit, so what's it look like when it's lit?' '' said salesman Richard Hart. ``It's easier just to leave them on.''

It's hotter, too. All those lights were sucking the life out of one of the showroom's two air-conditioning units. Hart was getting ready to flip the second unit's switch on.

Champagnes and chardonnays were enjoying meat-locker-like conditions at K&L Wine Merchants in Redwood City. It was a brisk 68 degrees Tuesday in the 3,000-square-foot store on El Camino Real, and it was even colder in the warehouse next door.

``We have to keep it refrigerated,'' said Gary Westby, a champagne specialist at the store. ``Wines need to be kept at a constant temperature. And we've got irreplaceable bottles here.''

Westby caressed a bottle of burgundy.

``There's just not that much 1959 Grands-Echezeaux left in the world,'' he said. ``We're actually very, very concerned about losing power.''

K&L was trying to save a little energy by making the shipping department work without lights.

What about energy-consuming operations like computer companies? Redwood Shores-based Oracle Corp. wasn't doing anything special to conserve energy, said spokeswoman Jennifer Glass. ``It seems to be business as usual,'' she said.

Not everyone was hogging power. It felt like the old country at Trattoria Buon Gusto in Menlo Park. Owner Palma Costa insisted the air conditioning was on, but the place was quite warm, and no air seemed to be coming from the ceiling vents.

At Netscape in Mountain View, employees were asked to draw blinds so the air conditioning would run more efficiently, and security guards were making rounds to turn off lights in empty rooms.

Overall, power savings from conservation probably was only ``in the hundreds'' of megawatts, said Kellan Fluckiger, chief operating officer at the California Independent System Operator, which oversees reliability for most of the state's power grid.

That's a relatively small portion of the 43,485 megawatts that were consumed Monday in the parts of California that are controlled by Fluckiger's agency. He said the non-profit agency has no way of knowing how much energy is being saved through conservation.

In the East Bay, some companies imposed voluntary restrictions on energy use. At Lam Research in Fremont, employees have done everything from shutting down idle computers to keeping thermostats at 78 degrees, said spokeswoman Lisa Garber, who said she was sitting in the dark.

Dr. Mike Rosenblatt, a retired podiatrist, said he and his neighbors in the Villages in San Jose were doing everything they could to conserve energy. ``We have all of our lights off, and we turn the A/C on just for a while,'' he said.

He was pleased when he went to a Home Depot in San Jose on Tuesday and most of the lights in the lighting section were off. Normally, they are on, he said.

``That was great, and it was much cooler,'' he said.

http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/local/docs/wasters20a.htm

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), September 20, 2000

Answers

Compliance, 1%. Ignoring the whole thing, 99%.

Human nature.

-- Buck (bigbuck@trailways.net), September 20, 2000.


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