IKEA in New York to tackle climate change

Andreas Ahrens, head of climate at Inter IKEA, is attending Climate Week NYC together with INGKA, the largest IKEA franchisee, to share the IKEA climate commitment to become climate positive by 2030. During the week they will share ideas on how to address key issues and opportunities to solve them, together. We asked Andreas how IKEA can tackle climate change in the business and in people’s daily lives.

Why is IKEA invited to Climate Week in New York, Andreas?

“IKEA is a long-term partner of the non-profit organisation The Climate Group, and is also one of the sponsors of Climate Week NYC. At a time when it is not yet clear if we will manage to limit global temperature increase to less than 2°C, it is of outmost importance that we provide leadership, inspiration and solutions to make this massive change happen – within IKEA and globally.”

One of the things you are going to talk about is how IKEA enables many people to take climate actions at home. Can you give us an example?

 “One classic example is the LED light bulb. LED is already more 85 percent more energy efficient than other alternatives, and we are now improving this even further. Another is to promote sustainable consumption by enabling our customers to care, repair, refurbish and recycle all of our products by 2030, thus prolonging the life of the materials and the products we love and reduce the overall climate footprint of IKEA, where raw materials is by far the largest at 40 percent.”

IKEA asked 14,000 people across 14 countries about their climate attitudes and actions. What did you learn from them?

”To little surprise, people are worried about climate change, but people find it is too big, serious, complex and distant. We also know that people want to take action, and the more people know about climate change, the more likely they are to do this. IKEA as a home furnishing brand must therefore develop affordable solutions that help people reduce their climate impact and provide knowledge and simple steps on how to tackle climate change in their daily lives,” says Andreas.

How can IKEA benefit from Climate Week?

“The main challenge with climate is that we can’t do it alone. A lot more action is also needed globally to reach the 2°C target. As many key stakeholders are here, it provides a good platform for leadership, exchange solutions and identify new joint initiatives and work together to solve this massive challenge.”

Next week you are going to attend Bloomberg Future Energy Summit in London?

“Yes, and we are really an odd ball at this summit. All other members are banks, investment firms and energy companies doing renewable energy investments. And then you have us as a retail company.”

What climate actions do you take in your daily life? You did not ride your bike to New York, right?

“No, I did not. I flew. As flying is one of the major impacts as a private person, I try to reduce my flights as much as possible. Travelling here to show leadership, inspire to action and identify new solutions therefore enables me and IKEA to address a climate footprint which is way larger than anything we do in our private life.”