The answer: 16 turkeys -- but more on that in a minute. Shaky consumer confidence may mean so-so holiday profits for retailers – particularly in electronics, with some analysts predicting a dogfight among TV retailers as they lure cautious shoppers into Black Friday 2011.

Here in the Northwest, there's an unusual retail bright spot: Super energy-efficient "Energy Forward" televisions, which even in this sour economy are capturing a growing share of the TV market. The nonprofit Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA) partnered with the EPA and regional utilities to create Energy Forward in late 2009.
 
Throughout Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana, retailers including Best Buy, Walmart, Sears and Costco are promoting certain HDTVs with bright orange "Energy Forward" stickers and displays. The stickers are a tool to help consumers identify the most technologically-advanced, energy-efficient TVs on the market -- the best of ENERGY STAR.

The impact?
After less than two years, the initiative is helping to shift the regional market toward the most-efficient TVs. At the start of 2011, TVs that were promoted with the Energy Forward sticker represented 12 percent of televisions sold in the Northwest by participating retailers. NEEA anticipates that by the end of 2011, 35 to 40 percent of TVs sold in the region will be Energy Forward.
 
Before NEEA launched Energy Forward at the end of 2009, there was no way to easily distinguish super-efficient TVs from TVs that met minimum energy-efficiency standards. Now retailers representing 80 percent of TVs sold in the Northwest are partnering with NEEA to promote Energy Forward TVs.
 
So far, NEEA's TV initiative has saved the region approximately 13.7 average megawatts in energy savings, the equivalent to powering 10,453 homes each year.
 
As for the 16 turkeys? What can you do with the energy saved by switching to an Energy Forward TV. Bottom line, it's a lot of food.

Stop Gobbling Energy from energyefficientelectronics.org, facebook.com/energyefficientelectronics.

Crazy talk. In fact, when I first heard the term, I dipped my head closer and asked him to repeat it again. “Energy Generation business unit” is what he said. We were in the offices of Grays Harbor Paper (GHP), talking to the new CEO, John Begley. 17 years ago, visionary Bill Quigg rescued this abandoned mill situated along the beautiful Olympic Peninsula and turned it into a manufacturing leader in sustainability. Using100% biomass to power the plant, Quigg’s leadership style elevated the conversation of environmental impact and profitability among the resource heavy pulp and paper industry.

Since Quigg’s retirement, John Begley’s keen foresight echoes Bill's legacy. “We recently divided the company into two business units –a traditional Paper Production unit and a new Energy Generation business unit”. With the pulp and paper industry ranked as the second most energy intensive industry group in the manufacturing sector, GHP’s decision to elevate energy as a business practice equal to paper production may be the next evolution for the industry as a whole. “There’s so many opportunities in energy. They are very diverse and they are not all in one place,” Begley points out.

Since installing its last of three turbines powered by biomass in 2007 and creating effective energy management strategies, the mill produces enough excess energy to spark the formation of a business unit designed to manage and capitalize on energy generation. “In our morning meetings, we devote a section to energy generation and energy savings. We also have energy a part of people’s performance standards. We want people to know how energy impacts the bottom line,” states Begley.

Grays Harbor Paper may be part of a growing trend of energy pioneers, blazing trails towards new energy business models and practices. Google, the leader in information distribution, has begun to redefine its role with energy. Recently, the company was awarded a FERC license for purchasing and selling energy. Although the company maintains this a strategic approach designed to battle the impact a volatile energy market has on its data centers, its not a far jump to see how Google can go from being the biggest distributor of knowledge to an energy distributor contender.

Even last month’s issue of Fast Company touched on the growing $171 billion energy management market. Experiencing first hand the role technology, forward thinking business leaders and business restructuring will play in the next three years, we suspect that leaders like Grays Harbor Paper and Google will not only be the vanguards to turning industry on its head, but will be well on their way to the next cycle of innovative thinking, keeping those wagon trails fresh for the rest of us.