Inside each dome, three computer-aimed mirrors track the sun and bounce its light down a reflective shaft and through a milky white lens, illuminating the stockroom below.

The skylight idea is centuries old. But the mirrors, lenses and other energy- and environment-saving innovations are new, and they're showing up not just at Wal-Mart, but at other companies, schools and public agencies.

In addition to the Wal-Mart's legion of skylights, the store's foundation is made of ground-up chunks of runway recycled from Denver's old Stapleton International Airport. Porous paving in its parking lot soaks up and filters polluted stormwater runoff. Huge north-facing windows provide most of the store's interior light.

Don Moseley, the Wal-Mart engineer for environmental innovation, said these and other efforts "are good for the environment and good for our business."

That's the mantra of a building movement sweeping the nation. Among the adherents are financial institutions such as Citigroup, PNC and Bank of America; automakers such as Toyota, General Motors, Ford and Honda; and such retailers as Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, Lowe's, Chipotle and Patagonia.

The key to the movement is a new set of standards that's far more demanding, environmentally, than local building codes.

The U.S. Green Building Council, a Washington-based alliance of 7,200 architects, builders, land-use planners and academics, issued the first set of standards in 2000, covering big commercial construction projects. Standards for existing buildings and commercial interiors came out in 2004. Criteria for new single-family homes, public schools, hospitals and cookie-cutter commercial buildings such as bank and retail store branches are to come in the next year or two.

The council's goal is to "transform the marketplace" in real estate in the United States and globally, said Rick Fedrizzi, the council's founding chairman and chief executive. "We'll be at that point" in the movement, Fedrizzi said, "when it's no longer called 'green building;' it's just the way building is done, and they are simply called 'buildings.' "