Vancouver Living Lab - Cisco/Pulse Announcement

Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson announced from Shanghai Thursday morning that the city is partnering with IT giant Cisco Systems Inc. and a Vancouver-based energy management firm to accelerate Vancouver’s goal of becoming the greenest city by 2020.

The city, Cisco and Pulse Energy Inc. will together install new technologies in the city for building-energy management, home-energy management, urban carbon-footprint reduction and data centre efficiency.

The partners aim to create a “living lab” culture in the city that enables and showcases Vancouver and B.C.-based technologies.

The announcement was the first from the city’s green business mission in China in which the mayor, the Vancouver Economic Development Commission and 22 B.C. businesses are touring China to promote B.C. green technology firms.

“Its these types of partnerships between government and business that absolutely must happen if we want to reduce our energy, reduce our waste and our climate emissions around the world,” Robertson said via a teleconference from Shanghai.

The city is also deploying a pilot of the Cisco’s network building mediator tool, combined with Pulse Energy’s software, to monitor and manage energy consumption for several city-owned buildings, including city hall.

The Cisco network-building mediator is an IP-based tool that helps track and manage energy consumption in buildings. Pulse makes similar software.

The city will also conduct pilots of Cisco’s home energy controller tool to enable consumers to monitor and reduce residential electricity consumption.

The partners are also establishing a model energy efficient data centre to foster technology research, development and deployment to speed up the city’s adoption of smart-grid applications.

Robertson noted that 55% of greenhouse gases in Vancouver come from buildings.

“It’s one of the reasons we set the goal of improving the energy efficiency of our buildings by 20% with in 10 years.”