Ingka Group, a retailer that runs the majority of IKEA stores, has allocated an additional €4 billion (US$4.8 billion) to invest in solar and wind plants.
Having already invested €2.5 billion in the past ten years on clean energy projects, Ingka said the latest announcement marks the next step towards 100% renewable energy across the firm’s value chain.
The company now owns and manages ten PV projects in 15 countries as well as 547 wind turbines and 935,000 solar panels on the roofs of IKEA stores and warehouses, bringing its total installed renewable energy power to more than 1.7GW.
The announcement comes a week after Ingka Investments, the investment arm of Ingka Group, said it will acquire a 49% stake in eight solar projects in Russia with a total capacity of 160MW that will provide enough electricity to power all 17 IKEA stores in the country. According to Ingka, the transaction marks the first large-scale foreign investment into renewable energy in Russia by a non-utility company.
Ingka Investments last year completed an acquisition of a 49% interest in two PV plants in Utah and Texas that have a combined capacity of 403MW. The deal was the company’s first investment in utility-scale solar.
Using renewable energy across the company’s operations is a significant part of delivering on its commitment to the Paris Agreement, said Pia Heidenmark Cook, Ingka Group chief sustainability officer. “We have already come a long way, and in this critical decade we need to come together to accelerate a just transition to a society powered by renewable energy,” she added.
Amid surging stakeholder interest in corporate sustainability and increased access to renewables globally, a recent BloombergNEF report found that that corporations purchased a record of 23.7GW of clean energy in 2020, with the US once again the largest market.
The research organisation found that Amazon was the leading buyer clean energy in 2020, announcing 35 clean energy power purchase agreements totalling 5.1GW. It was followed by French oil major Total, which bought 3GW of solar power last year.
Amazon this week announced plans for nine new utility-scale solar and wind projects globally, including its first PV-plus-storage installation, which will be located in California. The company said these installations put it on track to powering all its business activities with renewables by 2025.