Swedish furniture-giant IKEA wants to bring the power of the sun into U.S. homes.
The company announced on May 12 that it was partnering with residential solar provider SunPower to make “home solar solutions” available to its U.S. customers.
“At IKEA, we’re passionate about helping our customers live a more sustainable life at home,” IKEA U.S. CEO and Chief Sustainability Officer Javier Quiñones said in a press release. “We’re proud to collaborate with SunPower to bring this service to the U.S. and enable our customers to make individual choices aimed at reducing their overall climate footprint.”
The name of the new initiative is Home Solar, and the program will first launch in certain California markets in the fall of 2022. The program will enable IKEA Family customer loyalty program members to purchase solar energy infrastructure for their homes through SunPower that allow them to both generate and store clean energy.
“The launch of Home Solar with IKEA will allow more people to take greater control of their energy needs, and our goal is to offer the clean energy service at additional IKEA locations in the future,” Quiñones said.
The new program builds on IKEA’s broader sustainability initiatives both in the U.S. and abroad. The company has pledged to model a circular economy and be climate positive by 2030. It has already pledged to phase out plastic packaging by 2028. Further, it exceeded its goal of generating more renewable energy than it uses by 2020, according to Fast Company. It invested in two solar farms in the U.S. and a wind farm in Romania and also installed solar panels on nearly 90 percent of its stores worldwide and 90 percent of its U.S. stores.
It is also not new to offering home solar: It sells solar panels in 11 non-U.S. markets including the UK, according to Insider. Last year, it also launched a program in Sweden that allowed homeowners to purchase renewable energy from wind and solar parks and track their energy usage via an app, as Reuters reported at the time. IKEA Sweden head of sustainability Jonas Carlehed said he hoped that both the renewable energy program and residential solar panels would be available to all of its markets eventually.
“IKEA wants to build the biggest renewable energy movement together with co-workers, customers and partners around the world, to help tackle climate change together,” the company said in a statement reported by Reuters.
IKEA’s partner in bringing home solar to the U.S. is the California-based SunPower, The Hill reported. The company has been in the solar business for more than 35 years, according to the press release.
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