The building equipment and services industries have always been highly fragmented. While leaders such as Honeywell and Johnson Controls have large, multinational presences, most of the market is divvied up among thousands of smaller companies with a relatively narrow regional or technological focus. Even CB Richard Ellis, the real estate firm with (more…)

It was only a matter of time before someone in the smart building space took the best aspects of Facebook and the iPhone app store and weaved them into a solution that would help building owners, managers, and occupants harness big data to (more…)

Johnson Controls is a sustainability veteran. Back in 1885 it invented the first electric room thermostat. These days it operates in 150 countries and employs 142,000 people whose main job is to create products, services and solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies of buildings. (more…)

Building management systems do a good job of managing the complex energy and operational processes of commercial and industrial buildings. However, some in the industry are starting to realize that they also leave a lot of value on the table. A new generation of products and services that combines sensor technologies with (more…)

Students training for their future jobs at Queen’s University (Queen’s) in Kingston and studying in the field at the school’s Biological Station, 50 km north of the city, are one step closer to fueling their educations with solar power. The institution has selected Johnson Controls (Johnson) as the project’s vendor and will soon sign a contract with the company to install more (more…)

For a long time the energy efficiency industry operated largely under the two-guys-and-a-truck-model: local businesses made up of small contractors.

Then the ‘super’ energy efficiency service companies (ESCOs) emerged, big operations taking on big contracts often for government, schools or hospitals, like the (more…)

What first sounds ironic makes sense at second sight: Instead of having to fly thousands of miles to get to a conference, participants save energy and costs by simply staying where they are. The Virtual Energy Forum makes it happen by choosing the internet as its event location. No expensive plane tickets, cab rides and hotel rooms are necessary to attend the event, thereby reducing not only the carbon emissions, but also the expenses typically involved in a global conference like this. Cheaper, more efficient and less impact on the environment? What an example of CleanTech!

CleanTech at work
CleanTech products and services are based on innovate technologies that optimize the use of natural resources by offering cleaner or less wasteful and more economic alternatives to traditional products and services. In that context, The Virtual Energy Forum makes great economic sense – for both participating companies and attendees – as investments are smaller and opportunity costs lower than at a traditional conference. The forum is expected to have 5,000 attendees and save 6,500 tons of CO2 emissions (or 14.5 million pounds) that would be generated by travel and production for a conventional event of that size. The environmental impact and the cost for participating in the online event is tremendously low.

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