Environmental Leader

GE, Whirlpool Corp. and other technology and utility businesses have established a new collaborative effort aimed at demonstrating the role of smart-grid technologies and practices in meeting climate change goals. The new Smart Green Grid Initiative (SGGI) has been approved by the United Nations to be an official smart-grid delegation to the Copenhagen meetings.

SGGI will include educational events at the upcoming climate change meetings in Copenhagen, and will also sponsor educational events in the U.S. in the weeks preceding those meetings. One of the groups that SGGI will work with in Copenhagen is the Pew Center Global Climate Change.

The initiative is targeted at helping government, industry and policy makers understand the real potential for smart-grid technologies beyond their energy efficiency and cost savings. The group touts carbon savings as well as the easier integration of renewable energy including wind and solar with smart-grid solutions.

SGGI will demonstrate that demand response and energy storage solutions can complement renewable resources and eliminate the need to build new fossil-fuel power plants to fill the availability gaps and peak needs.

Supporters of SGGI include National Grid, Southern Company, AEP, Google, LG Electronics, Landis + Gyr, Echelon, Tendril, Ice Energy, Enspiria, eMeter and Itron. The Demand Response and Smart Grid Coalition and the Demand Response Coordinating Committee, leading smart-grid groups in the U.S., also support SGGI.

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