IKEA Goes Green by Building its Own Wind Farm

The IKEA Group looks to be getting more involved in the green technology business with its plan to soon have its own wind farm in Dalarna County, Sweden.

According to CNET, the Swedish furniture retail giant announced it has partnered with Stockholm-based O2 (News - Alert) to oversee the construction and maintenance of a nine-turbine wind farm slated to be completed in 2012. At full capacity the wind farm is expected to generate enough electricity to power the equivalent of 17 IKEA stores in Sweden.

The company said in a statement, “Owning a wind farm in Sweden will enable IKEA to further its ultimate goal of running on 100 percent renewable energy to power, heat, and cool its facilities in Sweden.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed but an IKEA spokeswoman did tell the financial news service Bloomberg that building the wind farm was expected to cost IKEA "several hundred million kronor" (100 million is about $15.6 million).

In other green news, the Stop & Shop Supermarket Company, based in Quincy, Mass., has announced a pilot installation of a new fuel cell in one of its stores in Torrington, Conn. The fuel cell is expected to generate about 95 percent of the store's electricity, according to the Boston Globe.

Stop & Shop operates nearly 400 supermarkets stores in the Northeastern U.S. For its first fuel cell installation, the company chose the 55,000-square-foot Stop & Shop in Torrington, which opened only last spring.

The fuel cell is a Power PureCell System Model 400 from UTC Power, a unit of United Technologies Corp. Since the fuel cell was commissioned in June of last year, it has produced over 1.7 million kilowatt-hours of electricity, accounting for 95 percent of the store's total electric energy requirements.