IKEA Going Green???

IKEA to Sell Solar Panels?
By Elsa Wenzel, CNET News
IKEA plans to pour $77 million into clean-technology start-ups within the next five years andcould add "green" goods such as solar panels to its inventory, according to Cleantech Group. The four-person, 50 million euro IKEA GreenTech fund has been operating for eight months, the report said. And it could invest in up to 10 fledgling companies in the next few years, perhaps first in Europe, where IKEA rings up about 82 percent of its sales.
Efforts to commercialize new and affordable green technologies within several years could lead to IKEA selling the resulting products at its growing collection of stores, currently 283 in more than 30 nations. The goods reportedly would relate to energy in the form of solar panels, efficiency meters, and lighting; as well as more sustainable materials, and water treatment and conservation.

In 2007, IKEA expanded sales of pre-fab, low-income, eco-friendly housing from Sweden into the United Kingdom. Could its catalog of 9,500 products someday add flat-packed, "smart" green homes available globally?
Given IKEA's sheer reach, an aggressive focus on green technologies might reshape the furnishings industry. For instance, green-business gurus credit Wal-Mart's controversial efforts to green its shelves and practices with shifting big-box stores and shoppers' tastes toward less toxic and wasteful products.
Among IKEA's latest moves in support of sustainability, by the fall, it will eliminate its checkout use of plastic bags, for which it began charging British customers about two years ago. More than 380 billion plastic bags are estimated to be trashed each year in the United States alone, polluting land and waterways with toxic chemicals.
In the early years of this decade, the modern-furnishings goliath pledged to phase out unhealthy formaldehyde and PVC in its core products, and to stock wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
Its Swedish stores use mostly renewable energy. Some of the 18,000 staff members use hybrid cars or bicycles. IKEA pledged to carry organic consumables, including coffee, jam, and schnapps within the year. But a nagging question remains: Would solar panels from IKEA require an Allen wrench?

101 Holes In The Ground Heat Up Latest IKEA
by April Streeter, Gothenburg, Sweden on 02. 5.08
Design & Architecture

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/02/100_holes_in_th.php

IKEA, that retailing paradox, has become more enamored of the big box store concept than ever - recently the company announced that it would eschew further development of web-based online sales in favor of more brick and mortar(!!!). While that's a somewhat untreehugger, last-century attitude, IKEA in Sweden is also going beyond the slightly shopworn 'we buy green energy' declarations of some retailers by generating a large portion of its own heating and cooling needs on site with geothermal heat pump systems.
At a new IKEA store in Karlstad, 101 separate holes drilled 120 meters (390 feet) into the ground tap 50 - 60 degree water that then provides 85 percent to the location's heating needs and 75 percent of air conditioning requirements (the actual pumping still uses electricity). The IKEA site is now one of Sweden's largest geothermal installations, and new stores at Uppsala, Helsingborg and Malmö are in line to get similar systems. Swedish IKEA stores get 91 percent of their energy/electricity needs from renewable sources (mainly hydro and wind), while globally the average is around 40 percent. Now if they could only figure out a way to get those cheap and (mostly) durable tables, chairs and kitchen doohickeys home to customers via sustainable transport! ::NyTeknik (Swedish only)