Ikea's Zero-Emission Future
Shopping at Ikea is a rite of passage for many of us – a trip we make at important life milestones such as moving into a new house, needing to furnish a room when a new child arrives, or relocating to a new city. The home furnishing supplier has gained a huge following because of its affordable prices, large warehouses, and an aura of environmental friendliness.
And as part of Ikea’s goal to become a circular and climate-positive business by 2030, it recently announced a collaboration with Electrify America to bring ultra-fast charging stations to over 25 locations in the U.S. The move will quadruple the number of electric car charges at Ikea locations available at U.S. locations for customers – and also enables ultra-fast charging of commercial vehicles like electric delivery vans and trucks, further reducing their climate footprint.
By 2025, Ikea intends that all of its home deliveries will be achieved with zero emissions. And it wants relative emissions from customer and employee travel to be eliminated by 2030.
In total, the Electrify America partnership will up Ikea’s infrastructure to more than 200 individual ultra-fast chargers across the country, offering charging speeds from 150kW to 350kW – at retail locations in 18 states including in Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia and Washington. The first ultra-fast chargers are expected to open in late 2022 and be completed by the end of 2023.
To charge its electric delivery fleet, Ikea selected Electrify Commercial, Electrify America’s commercial vehicle business unit. The company will add more than 225 individual chargers for electric delivery trucks across the same sites. This is the first time Electrify America and Electrify Commercial are installing both public and fleet chargers at the same time for a project.
Since opening its first charging station in May 2018, Electrify America has set a rapid pace for its network expansion, opening an average of nearly four stations per week. Currently, Electrify America has more than 800 stations and 3,500 individual chargers open with plans to expand to 1,800 charging stations comprised of 10,000 individual chargers in the United States and Canada by 2026.
