Thursday 4 September 2014
A UK energy reduction initiative has been picked as one of the “Projects to Watch” by the United Nations.
The announcement was made as part of the Big Data Climate Challenge, aimed at exploring how big data can be applied to global development and humanitarian issues related to climate change.
Bristol City Council’s SmartSpaces scheme is part of an EU-wide consortium and is part funded by the European Commission’s ICT Policy Support Programme, which is investigating ways to reduce energy in public buildings using ICT.
The project in Bristol is looking into using data from the council’s smart meters, which collect energy usage data every half an hour from more than 500 buildings. It has been piloted across the council for nearly a year and has so far resulted in energy savings of up to 20% in some buildings.
Mayor of Bristol George Ferguson said: “This award is yet another example of the international recognition that Bristol is gaining for sustainability and green innovation as we lead up to our year as European Green Capital in 2015.”
Two overall winners of the competition were a tool for farmers in Colombia that promotes climate-smart agriculture and a monitoring system that provides real-time information on forests.