NTT TELECON, an NTT East Group company, has since the 1980s offered automated meter reading and centralized monitoring systems for the automated reading of gas, water and electricity meters through telephone lines and the monitoring and control of meters and other equipment. These systems are currently used in about 3 million households throughout Japan, mainly for LPG supply purposes.

These systems enable gas, water and electricity suppliers to automate meter reading and streamline such tasks as gas cylinder delivery, thus reducing the consumption of fuel required for meter reading and delivery vehicles, and consequently GHG emissions.

NTT TELECON has also used the Ministry of the Environment's Offset Credit (J-VER) scheme^*1 to create a mechanism for rewarding customers who use these systems by enabling them to exchange GHG emission reductions for offset credits that have monetary value. This was the first J-VER project in Japan to use ICT. Launched in 2010 by NTT TELECON together with 14 domestic LPG suppliers, the project was credited with emission reductions of 7 t-CO2 by the Offset Credit (J-VER) Certification and Steering Committee in May 2012.

NTT TELECON will continue its efforts to contribute to the creation of a low carbon society by promoting the further deployment of automated meter reading and centralized monitoring systems and providing new services that employ the same kind of technologies.

FLET'S Miruene service

With the growing need for households as well as businesses to implement longer-term and more effective measures to save electricity, systems for visualizing electricity consumption are generating a lot of interest.

NTT East has since January 2012 been offering its FLET'S Miruene service for household electricity visualization to users of its FLET'S HIKARI service. This was first offered from July 2011 as a trial service named NTT East Electricity Visualization Service. Subscribers to the trial service were so satisfied, with high numbers wanting to continue using it, that NTT East decided to offer it as a full-fledged service.

Costing just 420 yen per month, including rental of necessary devices, FLET'S Miruene visualizes both household electricity consumption and electricity supply data provided by power utilities, and also features a diversity of functions for helping subscribers to save electricity and reduce CO2 emissions, including eco-advice display/readout, setting of energy saving targets and display of rankings.

With the need to save electricity growing constantly, NTT East will continue to strongly support household electricity saving efforts through providing FLET'S Miruene as a very affordable and easily deployable service.

A FLET'S Miruene pack that includes all necessary equipment was also certified for subsidy under a Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry 2011 subsidy program to promote the deployment of home energy management systems.

The container data center at the test site

Increasingly high density servers and the heat generated by rack upon server rack is driving up data center power consumption and creating an urgent need for means of curbing that consumption. Also, with the growth of cloud computing, there is increasing demand for data centers to be distributed in different geographical locations to ensure business continuity in the event of disasters. Container data centers that package power supply and air conditioning units along with servers in general-purpose containers are attracting attention as a means of addressing these needs.

In January 2012, NTT FACILITIES started testing what will be Japan's first wind-powered container data center. Enlisting the cooperation of Aomori Prefecture, NTT FACILITIES built a testing facility in the village of Rokkasho for a trial that will continue up to March 2013.

The first of the trial's main goals is to test technology for linking wind power generation with high voltage DC (HVDC) power supply. Wind power holds out promise as a source of renewable energy, but output fluctuates according to weather conditions, and needs to be stabilized in order to be usable as a data center power source. NTT FACILITIES is accordingly testing a combination of an HVDC power supply system that it started selling in November 2011 with a wind turbine to consider efficient and stable system design and develop operational expertise.

The second goal is to investigate operational technology related to direct fresh air cooling. NTT FACILITIES will evaluate year-round data center operation using direct fresh air cooling that takes advantage of Aomori Prefecture's cool climate.

The company plans to put the technological outcomes and expertise gained from the trial to use in providing eco-friendly data center construction solutions that make maximum use of renewable energy.

The 'LEED® Certification Mark' is a registered trademark owned by the U.S. Green Building Council® and is used with permission.

LEED certification

Model office

NTT FACILITIES has integrated its uniquely systemized component technologies for safety, reliability, energy efficiency, flexibility and the environment to develop long-life, low impact GreenITy Buildings.

Since the Great East Japan Earthquake, thinking on building safety and energy conservation has changed significantly. NTT FACILITIES for its part will endeavor to contribute to the creation of safe, low impact communities through the flexible combination of its GreenITy Buildings with eco-offices based on its Live-Link Design^*1 office concept and smart buildings in which ICT is used to integrate energy-related data and optimize energy usage.

In fiscal 2011, NTT FACILITIES established its Environmental Architecture Award to pay recognition to particularly outstanding environmental initiatives implemented by NTT Group companies nationwide. Fiscal 2012's winner was the NTT East Training Center No.5 Building, a CASBEE S-rated^*2 building equipped with a well-balanced range of environmental technologies, including cost aspects.

NTT FACILITIES has since October 2010 also been working on the conversion of Granpark Tower, the building that houses its head office, into a smart building. In addition to deploying BEMS^*3 and BAS^*4, the company is utilizing energy visualization system measurement data analysis and user work style diagnosis to investigate energy-saving performance and intellectual productivity trends.

It also installed a model eco-office on the 24th floor of Granpark Tower where its head office is located to conduct a year-long trial on eco-office implementation, and achieved considerable reductions in both electricity consumption and costs, including cutting power consumed by lighting by 70% and paper consumption by 43%. These achievements enabled NTT FACILITIES to earn LEED certification^*5 for the office. This was the first initiative involving the improvement of an existing building in Japan to earn LEED certification.

Moving forward, NTT FACILITIES plans to further build up its expertise in the construction of buildings that enable energy management optimization both by investigating the effectiveness of cases implemented up to now, and by actively installing the latest environmental technology, including systems for controlling supply and demand of electricity and heat.