Whitecaps Team Up With Local Refugee Youth In 1st Annual Fair Trade Soccer Match in Surrey

Fair Trade game ball symbolizes youth solidarity and highlights refugee issues

Surrey, BC – Over 700 enthusiastic soccer fans attended the 1^st Annual Fair Trade Soccer Match in Whalley on Saturday to cheer on members of the Vancouver Whitecaps and local refugee youths take on the Surdel and Whalley minor soccer associations in a friendly game. The event, being hosted by KidSport Canada, the Surrey Food Bank and the City of Surrey was a huge success in using sport to address refugee issues and how buying fair trade products can address some of those issues.

Asa Rehman of CKNW Sports was the commentator for the game while the game was officiated by Michelle Pyre, one of the top 5 FIFA female referees in the world. Notable guests in attendance included NDP leader Carole James, Acting City Mayor Barbara Steele, KidSport Canada President Leila Bell-Irving, Surrey Food Bank President Sheida Shakib-Zadeh, Peter Ladner, the brother of the late Wendy Ladner-Beaudry, Olympian Emily Brydon, and Whitecaps Foundation manager Andy Price.

Many of the kids taking part in Saturday’s game escaped from countries where child labour is an accepted part of life. There are roughly 50 kids in the program ranging in age from 10 to 19 years from such far-flung homelands in Pakistan, Ghana, Burma and Thailand. Fairly traded soccer balls means no child labour and money to be reinvested into the community to build schools and provide health care.

“The event was a huge success in bringing together youths from all backgrounds in the spirit of friendship and fair play, “ says event co-organizer Korina Busse of KidSport Canada. “We felt that the match helped bring awareness to refugee issues in a fun and inspiring manner.”

“The use of a Fair Trade certified game ball symbolized solidarity with youth around the world,” says Harish Raisinghani event co-organizer and member of Fair Trade Vancouver. “With the amount of fun the players, the fans and the special guests had, we hope that the Fair Trade Soccer Match will become an annual community event enjoyed by kids of all ages and backgrounds, because no kid should be left on the sidelines.”

For event pictures, please refer to our Facebook event page: http://tiny.cc/FairTradeSoccerMatch

KidSport Canada is a non-for-profit national organization that provides support to children in order to remove the financial barriers that prevent them from playing sport.  We believe that no kid should be left on the sidelines and ALL should be given the opportunity to experience the positive benefits of organized sports. www.kidsportcanada.ca

Fair Trade Vancouver is a non‐profit organization that seeks to increase awareness and sales of Fair Trade products in Metro Vancouver, and is the body responsible for the Fair Trade Towns Application. For more information about Fair Trade and to learn where to purchase Fair Trade products in Vancouver, visit www.fairtradevancouver.ca/

Media Contacts:

Korina Busse

Event Co-organizer, KidSport Canada

778.868.9441

surreychampionscordinator@gmail.com

Harish Raisinghani

Event Co-organizer, Fair Trade Vancouver

778.987.7338

harish@pulseenergy.com

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Real-Time Energy Use Data Arrives at Three BC Hydro Locations, Two More Sites in Progress

Source: Keeping Current. BC Hydro News Stories for the week of August 11, 2010

Lead by Example unveiled three interactive energy use displays at pilot sites in the Lower Mainland last week and will install two more displays at Peace Canyon Generating Station and Lower Mainland South (LMS) later this month.

The displays show information on real-time electricity use and relevant conservation messages for each location. Pilot displays are in the main lobbies at Dunsmuir and Edmonds and the lunchroom at Powertech. The other two will soon be available in the lunchroom at Peace Canyon Generating Station and in the main hallway at LMS.

David Procter, Manager, Lead by Example, tries out the new energy use display in the Edmonds lobby

The pilot is designed to engage, educate, motivate and empower BC Hydro staff and building occupants to take action and reduce energy use in their buildings. The real-time data raises awareness of the electricity consumed within the facilities, while the interactive component shows why this consumption can change over time.  Through Lead by Example, BC Hydro is demonstrating how staff and building occupants can influence consumption and encouraging engagement in other conservation efforts.

“We want to encourage employees to change their energy use behaviours,” said Ann McDowall, Energy Manager, Transmission & Distribution, Project Manager for the interacive energy use displays. “Conservation happens one decision at a time. By showing employees how their habits impact the consumption in their building, we hope to challenge them to make decisions that will improve their office’s energy conservation efforts.”

The displays will change over time and include everything from basic conservation tips to current campaigns and programs employees can participate in.

“The energy use displays will allow employees to see the impact they can have when they participate in various energy saving efforts,” added Vinson Lee, who develops many of the Green Team campaigns. “The energy use display will show, through charts and graphs, when electricity consumption is at its greatest, when it’s at its lowest, where the opportunities are to use less and what they can do about it. When employees do use less, the display will reflect that.”

Members of the energy use display project team

The public will also be able to use the displays at some sites.

Pulse Energy Inc. is providing the display’s real-time electricity use information. Additional information is available to facility managers to assist them in managing the facilities efficiently and identifying potential energy saving projects. Orca Experience supplied the interactive displays and adapted material for use with the displays.

Pulse Energy comments on Barb Sligl’s ‘Remote Communities’

Team Power Smart members got a special GardenWise early summer 2010 edition, including energy saving tips, member profiles and Barb Sligl’s article profiling an energy-efficient, longhouse-style apartment building. Located in Old Massett, Haida Gwaii, the apartments will be used as a prototype for modern uses of these traditional buildings, where technology meets social, environmental and economic objectives.

For Pulse Energy, remote First Nations communities have a special meaning. One of our first clients was the Village of Hartley Bay in BC’s Gitga’at Nation.  Our work continues there today, and, in a new pilot program funded by BC Hydro, Pulse Energy and the Province of BC’s Innovative Clean Energy (ICE) fund, we’re focusing on reducing electricity in commercial facilities through the installation of Pulse™ energy management information software.

Buildings in both Massett and Old Massett have been participating in the program since the fall of 2009. Immediate savings opportunities were discovered in the Pulse™ system at a school. Staff took steps to rectify the situation and substantial energy savings (50%!) started to pile up. (Read the case study)

Buildings, new and old, can immediately benefit from energy efficient systems. Providing real-time energy data to building owners, operators and tenants, via Pulse™ software, ensures that those savings continue for the long term. Thank you Barb Sligl, for sharing the great work being done in Haida Gwaii around sustainability, and BC Hydro and Team Power Smart for your commitment to conservation.

Bike to Work Week Success

Pulse Energy has always had a strong cycling tradition, fostered in large part by our biking CEO David Helliwell. For many of us who work here, Bike to Work Week is not an excuse to bike to work, but a chance to celebrate what we already do year round, rain or shine, here in Vancouver. This year, during the rainy Bike to Work Week of May 31st, we had 10 cyclists log 80 commutes and ride their bikes for a total of 401 km – putting us in 1st place by number of commutes for companies with 26-100 employees. (Full results here). Next year we plan to do even better.

Bike to Work Week is a program by the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition.

Pulse Energy Winning 'Bike To Work Week' Team

A Discussion on Occupant Engagement, Part III

(This is the third post in a three-part series, see parts I and II below)

Q: Is there a way to identify the origin of the load through the dashboard?

APS: This all depends on the resolution of the monitoring. For the lighting retrofit, we could isolate it to the specific floors only, not individual offices. However, our engineer looked into purchasing wireless monitoring technologies that could measure each office space. This could be moved around and integrated into Pulse. We haven’t implemented anything like that yet. Frankly, it may not be advantageous to scrutinize consumption to that level. Feels too much like “Big Brother” watching your consumption.

Q: Are there provisions for inputting and analyzing facilities which do not have digital meters?

APS: We are starting a new project with schools in First Nation (Aboriginal) communities with electronic monitoring to come up with some indicators around per-student and per-square-meter consumption.  Once we have established some benchmarks, we plan to design a survey that non-monitored schools can use to identify saving opportunities, maybe using their power bill as the key indicator.  All in all, it is better to monitor. Read the rest of this entry »

A Discussion on Occupant Engagement, Part II

(This is the second post in a three-part series, see part I below)

Q: Have you calculated a $ per KWh cost of the efficiency/savings vs the cost of the Pulse software?

APS: Not yet, but I would like to do so. It would be important to measure the persistence of savings first. This is something we will do in our second campaign. After that, we could come up with an estimate of the 52 week average energy savings percentage (over and above the pre-Pulse/campaign baseline) and apply that against the total electricity bill. In 2008 (pre-Pulse), our Ministry (about half of the building, plus other buildings) consumed 4828 GJ of electricity. In 2009 (post-Pulse), that figure was 3136 GJ, a saving of nearly 1700 GJ or 472 MWh. However, we need to normalize this figure to remove other buildings, different staffing levels, etc, so I don’t want to attribute all the savings to the retrofit / Pulse / campaign.

Q: How much money was spent on installing light switches, dimmers and occupancy sensors, and implementing Pulse’s monitoring software/hardware? And how does this amount compare with electricity cost savings?

APS: The lighting retrofit was approximately $100,000. We have a declining block rate structure that puts all savings (unfortunately) in Step 2, making it very challenging for any lighting retrofit to be cost-effective.  In addition, the pre-existing lights are T12 with electronic ballasts.  Replacing magnetic ballasts is far more cost-effective. The monitoring hardware and Pulse software was a small fraction of the cost of that overall bill. The reason why we did this was to demonstrate leadership, albeit the only way to transform the market is to fix the rate signal with an inclining block rate structure so that such investments become cost-effective. Read the rest of this entry »

A Discussion on Occupant Engagement, Part I

On April 28th Pulse Energy hosted a webinar on engaging buildings occupants in energy conservation.  Andrew Pape-Salmon, Director, Energy Efficiency Branch, BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, was gracious enough to take a break from his sabbatical and speak about the occupant engagement measures applied in part of his 150,000 sq ft office building that achieved a 12% savings on energy.  The 70+ webinar attendees responded very well to the moderator`s challenge to ask Andrew a lot of tough questions, and at the end of the webinar we were left with dozens of great questions that we simply did not have time to answer.  Therefore, we would like to use the questions as the seeds to a potentially very interesting discussion on occupant engagement here on our blog.  Andrew and his colleague Brooke McMurchy, who led the occupant engagement initiative at the Jack Davis building, have replied with their answers to the questions asked at the webinar; please add your comments by clicking the “comments” link below the title at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

How I convinced my (LEED Accredited) wife that it was a good idea for me to accept an invitation to run for the Canada Green Building Council board

Showdown 2010: The Pulse Energy Earth Hour Throw-Down

Earth Hour is always a big event at Pulse Energy.  We started working with the World Wild Life Fund in 2008 to encourage individuals and organizations to make a commitment to action on climate change.  Over the years, Pulse™ energy management software has been deployed in university buildings, mountain resorts, remote communities, office buildings and Vancouver City Hall to monitor the actions and results of those participating in Earth Hour.  Pulse has typically been installed in these larger commercial, institutional and community buildings because the software has been designed and developed with their unique energy management requirements in mind. Read the rest of this entry »

We help the world’s buildings to save energy

Pulse Energy is an energy management company that makes Pulse™ energy management software. Our software does everything from monitors your building’s energy consumption in real-time, to analyzing and reporting on it so you can find any system problems, compare yourself to other buildings and measure the impact of green retrofits. The Pulse Energy Blog is intended to give you a behind the scenes look at how our company works, and introduce you to some of the people who make it all happen.

So far in 2010, we’ve won the Regional Award for New Technology from the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME) and the National Research Council of Canada (NRC-IRAP) and Sustainable Development Technology Canada announced $2.5 million of funding to support the deployment of Pulse™ energy management software with our consortium partners Brookfield LePage Johnson Controls (BLJC), Cisco, the University of British Columbia, the Village of Hartley Bay and Grouse Mountain Resorts.

We provided Pulse™ energy management software to communicate the minute-by-minute energy savings that resulted from green initiatives at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games and recently launched Pulse™ Check, a free software solution to help buildings benchmark themselves and save energy.

For more information, including a demo request, check out our website at www.PulseEnergy.com.