IKEA wants to have Baneasa store run on solar power

Sweden’s IKEA, the biggest domestic furniture retailer in terms of sales, has started research so that it can fuel its Romanian operations only with renewable energy in the future.

While the most developed green energy now is wind energy, IKEA’s option now goes, at least for the domestic market, to solar panels.

“We’ve started research for an investment that will allow us to secure the needed energy for IKEA’s domestic operations through solar energy. Taking into account our consumption, we may need around 20,000 solar panels, but we do not have the final data for this investment, yet, as we are in the research stage,” says Cornel Oprisan, retail manager of IKEA Romania. He did not specify where the future investment is likely to be located, a detail now being considered.

The move is not a random one, but is part of IKEA’s global strategy.

An IKEA store would need installed capacity of around 2.6 MW on average. As sun power investments are almost twice as expensive as those in wind farms, the Romanian investment could thus amount to some 8m euros, only for the store through which the retailer is present domestically, the one of Baneasa, Bucharest.