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IKEA is one of the world’s largest renewable energy retail consumer. 90% of IKEA’s stores in the U.S. have solar systems, and some have geothermal projects or wind farms. The Swedish home furnishings retailer is launching a new investment plan focusing on developing 1MW of fuel cell systems at four of its stores in California.
The four stores, including Costa Mesa store opened in 2003, Covina store opened in 2003, East Palo Alto store opened in 2003, and San Diego store opened in 2000, have already been complemented solar arrays atop of the rooftops. IKEA U.S. plans to develop respectively 300kW, 200kW, 300kW, and 200kW fuel cell program at these four stores by this Fall.
In advance to this phase of programs, IKEA has completed two installations at the company’s San Francisco-area stores such as IKEA Emeryville, totaling 300kW. With the new portfolio expansion, IKEA will have 1.3MW of fuel cell generation capacity in the U.S.
“Based on the success of the system installed last year in Emeryville, we are excited about further increasing our renewable portfolio with four more fuel cell projects,” explained IKEA U.S. president Lars Petersson. “Fuel cells represent another way we can contribute to our goal of generating renewable energy equal to the amount of power we consume worldwide.”
For the design, development and installation of these fuel cell systems, IKEA contracted with Sunnyvale-based Bloom Energy a provider of breakthrough solid oxide fuel cell technology generating clean, highly-efficient on-site power.
