We embrace our opportunity to help customers, suppliers, and partners decrease their environmental impacts. Our industry has an important role to play. Cisco's digital technologies can be used to reduce emissions, improve resource efficiency, and enable more circular business models.
Our technology can also be used to help the world prepare for the consequences of a changing world and a changing climate—such as to monitor grid reliability, enable grid decarbonization, monitor transportation and water systems, and support the workplace of the future. For example, through WebEx by Cisco, AnyConnect VPN, and TelePresence, Cisco is providing the tools that make it possible for millions of employees to work from home daily. These technologies also reduce GHG emissions associated with commuting and other business travel. For more than 30 years, Cisco has been helping businesses, communities, and countries transition to a digital economy. Now, we are helping them adapt to a low-carbon circular economy as well.
Cisco is empowering our sales and partner communities with training, key tools, and new resources so our extended ecosystem is ready to engage customers on their sustainability priorities. Learn about Cisco's Environmental Sustainability Specialization for partners.
As companies set ambitious GHG emissions reduction targets, including net-zero or other science-based targets, technology will play a role in driving emissions reduction.
Cisco's Smart Building solutions can help our customers reduce their energy use through low-voltage Power over Ethernet (PoE) smart switches that provide network-based monitoring and control of temperature, lighting, air quality, and other building characteristics. Using these solutions, facilities operators can monitor systems and devices, manage energy use, track occupancy levels to protect occupants' health and safety, and troubleshoot issues.
We also support customers' transition to hybrid work practices and reducing emissions from air travel and commuting. Cisco's remote collaboration technologies can also increase employee productivity, promote work-life balance, and help strengthen partnerships across diverse geographies.
When ASHRAE, the world's leading building standards organization, moved to a new corporate headquarters, it partnered with Cisco and NTT to retrofit a 43-year-old building into a secure, innovative, and sustainable workspace. The building's universal PoE foundation, powered by Cisco, allows all systems to be managed over the network through an integrated building management system. ASHRAE's new building uses this technology to securely enable an intelligent reception system, space-specific HVAC optimization program based on occupancy, and an energy management system combined with an onsite solar PV system that enables the building to consume less power than it generates.
The global COVID-19 pandemic forever altered dynamics between companies, workers, and workspaces. Many organizations are trying to determine how to best use their real estate and support their employees moving forward. Cisco is demonstrating what's possible with the newly renovated, completely reimagined Penn 1 Plaza in New York City. The building, a 42,000-square-foot Midtown Manhattan building constructed in the 1970s, now showcases innovation, flexibility, and sustainability. Thanks to a foundational network featuring Cisco Catalyst 9000 switches and access points, PoE technology that provides data connectivity and electrical power for the building's subsystems, and a single interface—Cisco Spaces—for integrating and visualizing the data from those systems, Penn 1 has been converted to a smart building.
WPP, a U.K.-based creative agency, is reducing its office footprint by moving its global agencies and staff to campus sites in major cities. The company is using Cisco Meraki in these new buildings to understand energy usage, reduce emissions—and inspire its clients to do the same.
Cisco Meraki sensors track a range of energy and environmental data. This helps reduce usage and costs and makes for a better working environment. Cisco Meraki sensors in campus data centers enable creative agency WPP to reduce energy consumption across its heating and cooling infrastructure. WPP asserts a 44 percent cut in cooling energy and a 27 percent drop in total energy consumption for its data center in Sea Containers House, London, thanks to closer monitoring. This monitoring, and the resulting savings, will be replicated worldwide. Globally, it is estimated that this will equate to a reduction in carbon emissions of 86 kilotons—the equivalent of planting 1.5 million trees per year.
As Italy's largest electricity provider, Enel needs to make sure that its services are always on. We've partnered with Enel to make sure the lights never go out by creating a smarter, more efficient power grid. Enel is working with Cisco to introduce innovative solutions for agile grid operation, regulation, and supervision. Using Cisco technology, Enel can monitor its energy grid and preemptively address any faults or failures that threaten the network. Cisco is also helping Enel connect its grid to renewable energy sources like solar and wind energy at scale, speeding the transition to a low-carbon electricity grid. Together, Cisco and Enel are making energy more reliable, affordable, and sustainable.
The E-Flex project—a joint initiative between Cisco's Country Digital Acceleration (CDA) program, the Imperial College London, and other partners, proved the potential of vehicle-to-grid (V2G) technologies with fleets of vehicles owned by public and private-sector organizations. Twenty locations around the United Kingdom were outfitted with two-way charging stations from which data was collected. As a lead partner on the project, Cisco's Umbrella cloud-security solution provided secure connectivity at the charging stations, and Cisco Meraki cameras added to physical security. If it proves successful at scale, V2G could become a critical part of a lower-carbon future.
Cisco is partnering with customers, cities, and other organizations to accelerate the transition to a circular economy. One of our partners, Intesa Sanpaolo, a major European bank, set up a dedicated credit facility of US$7.3 billion in 2018 to support companies looking for circular efficiencies and adopting circular business models. Since late 2018, Intesa Sanpaolo has financed around 300 circular economy projects, which include investments in closed loop manufacturing, circular product design, reverse logistics, IoT, and more. In fiscal 2021, Intesa Sanpaolo and Cisco began working in partnership to provide wrap-around support, from financing to technology, for companies going into a circular transition.
Digital technology opens up a new playing field for circular business models. Cisco partner 99Bridges is leveraging Cisco IoT and networking technology to create a reusable bag system designed to eliminate single-use plastic bags. 99Bridges created a technology platform called Mosaic that reminds and rewards customers for reusing their smart-enabled reusable bags. Mosaic also enables retailers to track and manage the end-to-end circular lifecycle and environmental impact of the reusable bags. 99Bridges is piloting the solution with major retail chains across North America, including Walmart, Target, and CVS Health.
