IKEA Planning To Double Its Investment In Renewable Energy By 2020

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

The world’s largest furniture retailer, the IKEA group, recently revealed its plans to greatly increase its investment in renewable energy. It is planning to double its current investment by 2020, bringing the total up to $4 billion dollars, and receiving 100% of the energy consumed at its stores and by its subcontractors from renewable sources by the same date.
20130125-034704.jpg

The decision was made, in part, as a way to reduce costs, helping the company to remain affordable into the future. IKEA’s CEO, Mikael Ohlsson, stated in an interview that the projects will be a necessity if the company continues its fast rate of expansion.

“I foresee we’ll continue to increase our investments in renewable energy,” said Ohlsson. “Looking at how quickly we’re expanding and our value chain, we will most likely have to double the investments once more after 2015.”

Currently, IKEA owns a quarter of a million solar panels, and 126 wind turbines, covering 34% of its energy consumption.

The company has also been working to expand its range of energy efficiency, lighting, and water-use efficiency products, while also “testing out some solar solutions for customers in the U.K.”

This is a welcome development. Just last year, IKEA announced its plan to sell only LED lights by 2016, and to receive 70-80% of its power from renewable energy sources by 2015. Though its reasoning for doing this is, as noted above, mostly because it’s good business and will save the company money, it is still a positive development. It will hopefully serve as a wakeup call to other large corporations, showing that not only are renewables cost-competetive, but they will very likely save you significant money.

Source: Bloomberg
Image Credits: IKEA Group


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

James Ayre

James Ayre's background is predominantly in geopolitics and history, but he has an obsessive interest in pretty much everything. After an early life spent in the Imperial Free City of Dortmund, James followed the river Ruhr to Cofbuokheim, where he attended the University of Astnide. And where he also briefly considered entering the coal mining business. He currently writes for a living, on a broad variety of subjects, ranging from science, to politics, to military history, to renewable energy.

James Ayre has 4830 posts and counting. See all posts by James Ayre