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IKEA, the world's leading home furnishings retailer, today announced it officially has 'flipped-the-switch' on a fuel cell system installed at its retail location in Emeryville, CA - one of two San Francisco-area stores for the Swedish company. Consistent with the IKEA focus on emerging energy technologies, this project represents the first IKEA endeavor globally to convert biogas into electricity through a clean electro-chemical process

Furniture retailer IKEA sold its development and supply chain division to a group set up by founder Ingvar Kamprad, and it will invest $1.06 billion of the $5.5 billion sale proceeds in forests and recycling ventures, the company said. IKEA owns forests in the Baltic region and Romania, and it uses recyclable packaging.

Some of the world's biggest companies are seeing waste reduction and energy efficiency as opportunities to help the bottom line. Wal-Mart is changing its sell-by labeling to reduce food waste, while IKEA is running furniture-recycling and clean-energy initiatives to reduce its costs. "We've taken power from a cost to profit center," says IKEA Chief Sustainability Officer Steve Howard.

IKEA, the world's leading home furnishings retailer, today announced it had officially plugged-in Kansas' largest rooftop solar array, atop the recently opened IKEA Merriam. The 92,000-square-foot solar array consists of a 730.17-kW DC system, comprised of 2,394 panels, and will produce approximately 986,800 kWh of electricity annually for the store, the equivalent of reducing 680 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) - equal to the emissions of 143 cars or providing electricity for 94 homes yearly (calculating clean energy equivalents at www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/calculator.html).

IKEA Group is considering internal carbon pricing as a way to tackle emissions and build a "new and better" company, says CEO Peter Agnefjall. "We see sustainability as a driver of building a new and better IKEA," Agnefjall says. "It is a driver of a renewal of our business, renewal of our products and a driver of innovation of all kinds."

IKEA achieved its goal to source 100% of its cotton from sustainable farmers that use less water, less chemical fertilizers, and pesticides. As a result, IKEA has become the first major retailer to achieve this goal across all product categories.

IKEA wants to become a net exporter of renewables by 2020 and plans to spend another $670.5 million on renewable energy development. It currently sources 53% of its total electricity needs from renewables, controlling 314 turbines and 700,000 solar panels worldwide. The company will continue to embrace energy-efficiency measures, reduce supply chain emissions and make its products more sustainable.

IKEA has installed a 1.14 MW rooftop solar PV system - comprised of more than 3,600 panels - at its new store in Las Vegas. The installation is the largest of its kind in Nevada.

IKEA is launching a campaign aimed at persuading its customers to stock up on energy-efficient light bulbs while highlighting the company's commitment to stop selling nonefficient bulbs by 2016. "This is a sustainability campaign but also a brand campaign. We need to explain what we stand for and celebrate that," says Peter Wright, IKEA's UK and Ireland marketing manager

Ikea has reportedly had its certificate suspended by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) after the discovery that the furniture chain has been cutting 600-year-old trees in Russia.

IKEA soon will become the first major retail chain to offer electric-car charge points at all of its U.K. stores.

IKEA plans to nearly double the solar array completed in April atop its Perryville, Maryland distribution center, the state's largest such solar energy system. 

IKEA announced a new 2015 goal to source 100% certified sustainable palm oil from segregated sources, a process that ensures the separation of certified palm oil from non-certified product.

IKEA just bought the Hoopeston Wind farm, comprising 49 turbines in Vermillion County, Ill. This is its first wind farm investment in the U.S. and its largest renewable energy project. Set to become operational in 2015, Hoopeston will generate 380 GWh per year ­- nearly 1.5 times the energy needed to operate all of IKEA's U.S. operations.

Largely recognized as a furniture retailer, IKEA also derives revenue from its store-based restaurants, where the company says it is working to make sustainable, affordable, transparent, traceable and animal welfare-friendly practices the norm.

IKEA, the world's biggest furniture retailer, plans to spend 1 billion euros ($1.13 billion) on renewable energy and steps to help poor nations cope with climate change, the latest example of firms upstaging governments in efforts to slow warming.

For a growing number of companies, fighting climate change is a zero-sum game. In late September, several organizations associated with nonprofit sustainability outfit The B Team declared a "net zero by 2050" (PDF) aspiration pertaining to greenhouse gas emissions. Among them: consumer products giant Unilever; apparel company Kering; Chinese construction company Broad Group; African telecommunications carrier Econet; Brazilian cosmetics manufacturer Natura; and British-born investment group Virgin - a geographically diverse group that underscores the global nature of climate challenges.

IKEA recently got a slap on the wrist from the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), which suspended IKEA's certification after discovering that the Swedish furniture giant's subsidiary, Swedwood, has been cutting 600-year-old trees in Karelia, Russia, near the border of Finland

A growing number of billion-dollar companies are showing that sustainability can be a real driver of profits, writes Freya Williams. Companies such as Tesla, Chipotle Mexican Grill, IKEA, Nike and Whole Foods Market are making serious money through eco-friendly business models. "The green giants are turning a strategy of sustainability or social good into a billion-dollar business proposition, and profiting in the process," Williams explains