Ikea's Retail Arm Invests $2.8 Billion in Renewable Energy Infrastructure

The firm claims to be the only global consumer brand to own and operate its own renewable energy infrastructure.

| Sep 22, 2019 08:36 AM EST

Created: Sep 22, 2019 08:36 AM EST

Ikea’s holding company Ingka Group has invested $2.76 billion in solar and wind energy systems over the last decade. The firm already has 49% shares in two solar parks in the U.S., a wind farm in Romania, 534 wind turbines in 14 countries, and nearly a million solar panel units on stores and warehouses everywhere.

Generating more electricity than it consumes

Ikea claims to be the only global consumer brand to own and operate its own renewable energy infrastructure and reports that its clean energy infrastructure is already producing more electricity than it consumes. The company is planning to have its entire supply chain be climate positive by 2030.

For Ingka, it's all about intelligent business solutions. “Being climate smart is not an added cost. It’s actually smart business and what the business model of the future will look like," said Ingka Group CEO Jesper Brodin to Reuters. “Everything around fossil fuels and daft use of resources will be expensive.”

Brodin also emphasized that Ingka plans to go on investing in wind farms and solar parks. But Ikea is also dedicated to doing more than generating energy for its own activities. The firm is working on an affordable solar scheme for customers worldwide.

Home solar service

“We want to empower millions of customers to produce and use renewable energy,” said to Quartz Pia Heidenmark Cook, Ingka Group’s chief sustainability officer. "Our home solar service is today available in seven countries, and we continue investing heavily to develop our home energy service offering, with the aim to make it available across all our 30 markets by 2025.”

The firm is truly dedicated to sustainability as its most recent sustainability strategy outlined. "The IKEA sustainability strategy – People & Planet Positive– was launched in 2012 with ambitious goals to transform the IKEA business, the industries in the IKEA value chain and life at home for people all across the world," reads the report.