Swedish furniture giant IKEA is investing more money into its renewables offerings, particularly its solar storage solutions and their development in Australia.
The company plans to convert one of its stores to being 100% renewables-powered. This will be the first store to go 100% renewable and this move comes after IKEA rolled out its retail solar solution, Solstråle.
Last year saw IKEA invest $2.8 billion into green energy
In 2019, IKEA invested $2.8 billion in green energy, installing one million solar panels in 370 of its stores and warehouses around the world. The company also bought sizeable shares with two US solar plants with a total capacity of 403MW.
Fast forwarding to 2020, IKEA is furthering its commitment to renewable energy by revealing plans for solar energy in the 10 branches it has in Australia. There’ll be solar carports, battery storage systems and, if there’s enough spare electricity, energy export back to the grid.
IKEA is focussing on renewables
The Swedish company has two big goals to reach in the next decade. It plans to cut its emissions from home deliveries to zero by 2025 and it also wants to use only renewable and recyclable materials in its manufacturing processes.
IKEA is hoping to both eliminate its carbon output and also to generate more renewable electricity than it uses each year by 2030. At present the company is already generating more renewable energy than it uses, so that target may well be in the bag ten years early.
Selling sunshine
IKEA has been selling solar systems through its retail stores in Europe for over a decade now. Recently, the company decided to expand this service into its Australian stores and partnered with Aussie panel provider Solargain. The systems are known as Solstråle (pronounced “soohl-stroll”) because this word means “sunbeam” in Swedish and you can buy a microinverter and battery as well as the panels. Basic packages are between $3,000 and $4,000, with packages including batteries coming in at between $10,000 and $11,000.
