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President Obama to speak Friday at Mountain View Walmart [The Oakland Tribune :: ](Oakland Tribune (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 06--President Barack Obama will visit a Walmart store in Mountain View on Friday to talk about the importance of energy efficiency, a White House official said Tuesday. The president arrives in Silicon Valley on Thursday to do two fundraisers benefiting the Democratic National Committee. One is an exclusive tech round table for 20 -- at $32,400 per head -- at the Los Altos home of 23andMe CEO Anne Wojcicki. The other is a bigger event at the Mountain View headquarters of Y Combinator, co-hosted by company president Sam Altman and Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer, for which tickets cost from $1,000 to $32,400 per head. Further details on the Friday event in Mountain View will come soon, the White House said. "We are very excited," Walmart spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said Tuesday. But she didn't elaborate on details of the presidential visit. Walmart -- the retail giant that employs 1.3 million Americans but has drawn fire for squeezing out smaller businesses, offering meager pay and opposing labor unions -- has set a goal of being powered by 100 percent renewable energy sources. "Our buildings represent the largest piece of our carbon footprint that we directly control," the company's website says. "From lighting and water conservation to refrigeration systems and building materials, we view our facilities as laboratories of sustainability." The company was a leader in adopting energy-efficient LED lighting; installing "secondary loop refrigeration" that saves energy, prevents leakage and cuts greenhouse gas emissions; and using fly ash -- a byproduct of coal-fired electrical generation -- and slag from steel manufacturing in its building materials. Josh Richman covers politics. Contact him at 510-208-6428. Follow him at Twitter.com/josh_richman. Read the Political Blotter at IBAbuzz.com/politics. ___ (c)2014 The Oakland Tribune (Oakland, Calif.) Visit The Oakland Tribune (Oakland, Calif.) at www.insidebayarea.com Distributed by MCT Information Services |