Wind energy is becoming the go-to environmentally cautious option for energy-consuming corporations across the country. Windmill farms are primarily composed of multiple wind turbines that convert kinetic energy from the wind into electrical power that can be used to power factories.
Corporations like Intel, Whole Foods, Walmart and Google have been active investors in wind power as well as alternative renewable energy sources, and the popular Swedish furniture store Ikea has joined the club. The Ikea Company recently purchased a 98-megawatt wind farm in Illinois, acquiring the company’s largest source of renewable energy.
The company has been taking steps in hopes to lessen its carbon footprint — it has committed to using renewable energy and minimizing its carbon emissions as much as possible. Although things such as solar panels are not the fiscally responsible choice, there are many environmentally friendly options that double as economically smart business decisions. With goals to be energy independent by 2020, Ikea, along with a handful of other corporations, has taken an initiative to keep the planet safe.The company hopes to have the wind farm up and running by 2015. It is expected to generate up to 380-gigawatt hours of renewable energy a year. This amount of energy is equivalent to removing over 50,000 cars off the road each year. Ikea executives say the proposed outlook is that the wind energy will cover up to 18 percent of the electricity used by the Ikea organization worldwide.
Ikea is not an American company, so although this is its first wind farm in the U.S., Ikea owns a substantial amount of wind farms in various countries such as Canada, France, Sweden, Germany and Denmark. In addition to wind energy, the Ikea Company has been increasing its reliance on solar power. As of 2012, 90 percent of Ikea stores within the United States generate solar power. As Ikea proceeds to move into the environmentally cautious business world, we can only hope that others will follow.
