Leading businesses have yesterday set out their commitment to 100 per cent renewable power at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi.

 

IKEA Group, Nestlé and other major corporations have joined RE100, a global campaign that encourages companies to use power exclusively from renewable energy sources.

 

RE100, an initiative of The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, launched its first report, RE100: The journey to 100%, on the opening day of the World Future Energy Summit, at an event organized in partnership with Masdar and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).

 

At the event, representatives of some of the 15 major companies that have already signed up to RE100 highlighted the business and wider environmental benefits of switching to renewables.

 

The event Renewable power: the journey to 100% is testament to the growing interest for renewable power from corporates. The panel, which also included Dolf Gielen, Director of IRENA’s Innovation and Technology Centre, Anthony Mallows, Director of Masdar, Michael Liebreich, Founder and Chairman of Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Juerg Trueb, Head of Environmental and Commodity Markets, Swiss Re, also discussed the challenges faced by businesses in their journey to 100% renewable power and how to overcome them.

 

RE100 was launched at Climate Week NYC last September. Fifteen companies have now joined the campaign and made a public commitment to going 100% renewable. In addition to IKEA Group and Nestlé, RE100 brings together BT Group, Commerzbank, Formula E, H&M, KPN, Mars, Philips, Reed Elsevier Group, J. Safra Sarasin Bank, SAP, SGS, Swiss Re and YOOX Group.

 

The two latest companies to join are SAP, a Germany-based global market leader in enterprise application software and SGS, a leading global inspection, verification, testing and certification company based in Switzerland.