Commercial, Demand Management, Distributed Energy Resources, Energy Efficiency, Energy Procurement, Commercial, Distributed Generation, Sourcing Renewables, Wind  -  December 8, 2016

At 71% green power, IKEA looks to efficiency, storage

Photo provided by IKEA: One of IKEA's Bloom Energy fuel cell installations.

IKEA has spent more than 1.5 billion euros on renewable energy to-date since 2009 and has pledged another 600 million euros as it looks to achieve its goal of producing as much green power as all of the energy it consumes throughout its operations by 2020.  

According to the Swedish home furnishing retailer's recently released fiscal year 2016 sustainability report,  IKEA produced renewable energy equivalent to 71% of its global energy consumption this year, excluding its shopping centers. Including the shopping centers, the share of renewable energy is 61%, which the company said is due to the low energy generation of the locations in comparison to their energy use. 

IKEA said in its report that the 2.1 billion euros investment is associated with purchasing its own wind and solar power generation equipment. Outside of the clean energy it generates itself, certain IKEA sites also purchase renewable energy directly from the grid, according to the report: In fiscal 2016, 61% of the electricity IKEA purchased from the grid was renewable. 

In other energy-related sustainability measures, IKEA's report also outlines its activities in energy storage, including pilots with lithium-ion batteries in Austrailia and Sweden, and energy efficiency advancements and projects that aim to improve the efficiency of its buildings. In the U.S., the company has installed fuel cells to store and generate power at five of its locations.

"This is estimated to save 104,000 MWh and over 1.3 million USD every year," the company said of its five U.S. fuel cell pilot programs. "Longer-term, we are exploring whether we could use hydrogen fuel cells to capture and store energy from wind turbines."

A summary of the company's innovations in energy management is below, or check out IKEA's full sustainability report on its website.  

Table source: IKEA

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