This weblog is a part of our People Behind Purpose at Cisco collection that focuses on workers driving Cisco’s objective to Power an Inclusive Future for All. Each weblog highlights a distinct Cisco worker whose work positively impacts folks, communities, or the planet. The collection was previously often called folks behind Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Cisco.
Cisco’s Global Energy Management and Sustainability (GEMS) group is chargeable for vitality and sustainability initiatives throughout our international actual property portfolio with goals to cut back vitality use and greenhouse gasoline (GHG) emissions. Read extra about our sustainability efforts in our actual property operations on Cisco’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) Reporting Hub.
Ned Bagno is on the GEMS group and manages the EnergyOps program, which focuses on figuring out and implementing vitality effectivity and onsite photo voltaic tasks throughout our buildings worldwide. He shares extra about his background and expertise, and what he seems ahead to sooner or later.
Can you inform me a bit about your path to working at Cisco?
Ned: Following my electronics trainer’s recommendation in highschool, I joined the US Navy as a result of he advised me they’d a superb electronics program. Working on shipboard electrical, digital, and safety methods ready me for my future within the job market, the place I specialised in constructing course of management methods, primarily for manufacturing amenities. That advanced into specializing in troubleshooting and designing giant company bodily safety methods.
Later, I joined Cisco as a contractor in company safety, and, after a short while, I grew to become a full-time worker. I labored on high-visibility tasks, like our Bangalore, India, campus safety, earthquake early warning methods in San Jose, California, and the company safety command heart in one among our San Jose campus buildings, to call a couple of.
I joined Cisco’s GEMS group ten years in the past. At the time, we had been setting our earlier Scope 1 and a pair of GHG emissions discount objectives. Over the following 5 years, I managed two tracks of our EnergyOps program, and, in 2017, I started managing your entire program.
Can you clarify what the EnergyOps program does?
Ned: EnergyOps is our program to cut back the environmental impression of our amenities. Our method to lowering GHG emissions related to our actual property is to extend the vitality effectivity of our buildings, whereas investing in renewable vitality. This mixed method has allowed us to keep away from will increase in total constructing vitality consumption, regardless of will increase in lab masses and gear vitality consumption, whereas lowering carbon emissions related to our actual property.
Through the EnergyOps program and our investments in renewable vitality, we had been capable of obtain (one 12 months early) our earlier aim to cut back Cisco’s complete Scope 1 and a pair of GHG emissions worldwide by 60% absolute by fiscal 12 months (FY) 2022 (in comparison with a FY 2007 base 12 months). These successes additionally supplied a basis on which to set our present broader net-zero aim and near-term targets[1].
What form of tasks do you do?
We’ve accomplished tons of of tasks, from easy retrofits to in depth gear replacements. We usually buy or lease present buildings quite than construct new ones, so, there are sometimes vitality effectivity alternatives in our constructing portfolio. We additionally advise our broader actual property group on energy-efficient choices once we replace our buildings or when gear is changed.
We start the undertaking improvement course of by performing detailed analyses to know how the constructing system is working, and to establish alternatives to enhance effectivity. Through our analyses, we discover areas the place we are able to make adjustments, equivalent to adjusting constructing setpoints for optimum effectivity, or including variable frequency drives that regulate to the present gear load and eat much less vitality. Other forms of tasks we pursue are energy-efficient upgrades to lighting methods and enormous mechanical gear, equivalent to chillers and boilers. We’ve put in economizers that use exterior air to assist cool our buildings when out of doors temperatures allow. Additionally, we now have put in chilly/sizzling air containment methods that assist handle warmth and cut back sizzling spots in our energy-intensive labs and information facilities.
Our tasks additionally assist us pursue inexperienced constructing certifications at our websites, equivalent to U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) and the WELL Building Standard.
Favorite tasks you labored on during the last 12 months?
I’m engaged on an Artificial Intelligence (AI) undertaking at our Allen, Texas, information heart. The goal of the undertaking is to make use of AI to raised perceive how the prevailing constructing automation system operates and to optimize its sequence of operations. This undertaking is estimated to cut back vitality consumption within the chiller plant by greater than 30%. There’s undoubtedly a studying curve for the people utilizing the AI as nicely!
Another fascinating set up was a chiller and ice storage undertaking we accomplished at our campus in Ottawa, Canada. During the undertaking, we changed your entire cooling plant and added quite a few ice-storage tanks. The system makes ice at evening when vitality is each decrease price and fewer carbon intensive. During the day, we use the ice, as an alternative of the chillers, to chill the constructing and our information heart for six+ hours a day. This undertaking helps us lower your expenses, reduces our carbon footprint and reduces pressure on the native electrical grid. We’re now replicating this revolutionary undertaking and design at a couple of of our different areas.
What’s subsequent for the GEMS group and the EnergyOps program?
We’re very centered on making progress in direction of our FY 2025 Scope 1 and a pair of GHG emissions discount aim. We plan to take a position roughly US$39 million from FY 2023 to FY 2025 in three areas: vitality effectivity, renewable vitality, and electrification. Over the following few years, we hope to transform a lot of our pure gasoline heating methods to electrical and set up new onsite photo voltaic photovoltaic (PV) methods at a number of campuses. We additionally plan to broaden our funding in offsite renewable vitality by executing over 500 megawatts (MW) of recent, long-term renewable vitality contracts by the top of FY 2025.
We’re excited to proceed our work, figuring out that our efforts contribute in direction of Cisco’s objective to Power an Inclusive Future for All.
[1] Cisco has set a aim to achieve internet zero throughout its worth chain (Scopes 1, 2, and three) by 2040. Our net-zero aim contains two near-term targets:
- To cut back absolute Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions 90% and neutralizing any remaining emissions by eradicating an equal quantity from the ambiance by FY 2025 in comparison with our 2019 FY;
- To cut back absolute Scope 3 emissions from bought items and companies, upstream transportation and distribution, and use of bought merchandise 30% by FY 2030 in comparison with our 2019 FY.
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