SHANGHAI and VANCOUVER, B.C. – Sept 9, 2010 – The city of Vancouver, Cisco and Pulse Energy today at the Shanghai World Expo announced a collaborative relationship designed to accelerate the development of Vancouver’s green-energy goals. The effort with Cisco and Pulse Energy is the latest in Vancouver’s ongoing initiatives to showcase the city as an economic hub for the advancement of clean technology, develop a network of specialised partners, and improve energy efficiency and management.
Beginning in 2010, the three parties will work to advance Vancouver’s green-energy vision by implementing technologies for building-energy management, home-energy management, urban carbon-footprint reduction and data center efficiency.
Today’s agreement was signed at the Shanghai Expo by Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, David Helliwell, the CEO of Vancouver-based Pulse Energy, and Cisco. Both the city of Vancouver and Cisco have Expo pavilions, and a team of Vancouver businesses in the green and creative sectors have joined the mayor there for a series of business sessions around the celebration of Vancouver Green Capital Day.
Vancouver is consistently ranked as one of the most livable cities in the world. In February 2009, Robertson launched the Greenest City initiative with a goal of making Vancouver the greenest city in the world by 2020.
Facts and Highlights:
The city of Vancouver, Cisco and Pulse Energy are joining together to explore opportunities that will transform the city’s energy and environmental strategy through the use of innovative technology. Principal areas of collaboration will include:
A showcase for Vancouver technologies: Creating a ‘living lab’ culture that enables and showcases Vancouver and B.C.-based technologies developed in partnership with the city, global leaders like Cisco, and other local partners like Pulse Energy.
Building-energy management: Deploying a comprehensive pilot of the Cisco Network Building Mediator, combined with Pulse Energy software, to monitor and manage energy consumption for several city-owned buildings, including City Hall.
Residential-energy management: Conducting pilot deployments of the Cisco Home Energy Controller, focused on enabling consumers to monitor and reduce residential electricity consumption. IDC found that customers reduce overall energy use by 4 to 15 percent when they receive real-time feedback on power consumption. According to a study by Zogby International, 74 percent of users are likely to change their energy use if they are given the technology solutions to do so.
Energy sustainability: Enabling Vancouver to provide climate-change information and actionable steps for its citizens to take to minimize their environmental impact. Vancouver will utilize Cisco’s Urban EcoMap, an Internet-based tool, to create awareness among its residents of the impact of carbon emissions on their urban environment. The tool provides information on carbon emissions from transportation, neighborhood energy and waste use, and delivers tips on ways to reduce a resident’s carbon footprint.
“Green” data center: Establishing a model energy-efficient data center to foster research, development and deployment to advance the transition to the real-time data acquisition and integration of smart-grid applications.
Supporting quotes:
Gregor Robertson, mayor, city of Vancouver
“By forging collaborative and innovative relationships like this with Cisco and Pulse Energy, Vancouver is advancing its goal to be the greenest city in world and strengthening the green economy in the process. This collaboration will allow us to become a living lab for energy innovation projects, discover and explore best practices, showcase green capabilities, and become a business hub for ‘clean’ technology development and use.”
Wim Elfrink, executive vice president, Cisco Services, and chief globalization officer, Cisco
“All over the world, cities like Vancouver are facing significant population growth and the need to sustainably balance social, economic and environmental resources. This collaboration will help Vancouver lead the way in energy management and efficiency innovation. Using networking technologies as the platform, Vancouver is setting an example for sustainable productivity, growth, and innovation.”
Nitin Kawale, president, Cisco Canada
“This collaboration will help drive a transformational showcase of world-class green initiatives and technologies in the city of Vancouver. These initial pilot projects and subsequent field trials also provide the opportunity to further stimulate green economic development opportunities in the Vancouver and B.C. Lower Mainland, creating a new category of green-collar jobs.”
David Helliwell, co-founder and CEO, Pulse Energy
“This collaboration is a next step in our existing relationships with both the city and Cisco. We look forward to working with the city to improve the energy efficiency of its buildings, and then to report on the financial and environmental return from its energy-efficiency investments. The model that we’re launching today with Cisco and the city of Vancouver is directly applicable to other progressive and innovative cities around the world.”
Supporting Resources
Cisco Connected Grid
Cisco Smart Connected Buildings
City of Vancouver; Greenest City 2020
Pulse Energy
Urban EcoMap
About the City of Vancouver
The City of Vancouver is recognized as a leading municipality in Canada for its work on green buildings and neighbourhoods, green mobility and the promotion of a green capital attracting new environmentally focused businesses and jobs to the city. Find out more about the City at: vancouver.ca and more about doing business in Vancouver at vancouvereconomic.com.
About Cisco
Cisco, (NASDAQ: CSCO), is the worldwide leader in networking that transforms how people connect, communicate and collaborate. Information about Cisco can be found at http://www.cisco.com. For ongoing news, please go to News@Cisco and News@Cisco Canada.
About Pulse Energy
Pulse Energy is a leading Energy Management Software company, dedicated to helping the world’s buildings and communities to improve their energy efficiency and keep track of the results. For more information, news or to see an on-line demo, visit: www.PulseEnergy.com
