ORLANDO, Fla. – The Dr. Phillips Center provided the backdrop Monday for the announcement of an expanded technology partnership between the City of Orlando and Siemens USA that will deliver state-of-the-art building environments to “optimize building performance” and cut down on the city’s carbon footprint.
Siemens CEO Barbara Humpton said Orlando’s commitment to energy efficiency and cutting carbon emissions has been a top priority.
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“We’ve been able to bring the city performance tool to the table so you can actually play with data and determine what technology pathways are available, “ Humpton said.
In an interview with News 6, Humpton said what Orlando and Siemens are working toward is a sort of super internet in terms of creating the optimum standard for building safe environments.
“Using data that control really big infrastructure technologies, we’re able to make adjustments and have them interact with us and help answer questions and help us achieve our goals,” Humpton said.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer told News 6 the long-term plan is to make Orlando the “most sustainable city in the Southeast.”
“We want measurable results, so one of our goals is to reduce 90 percent of our carbon emissions by the year 2040," Dyer said. “Siemens is helping us with that.”
Humpton said Orlando’s talent pool is impressive and that there is a “whole economy that’s building up” around the new technology.
“You’re going to see things shifting from folks specializing in the construction of one thing or another and a whole economy being built around the ability to connect the system of systems thinking," Humpton said.
As to the recently announced elimination of some 6,900 jobs linked to its turbine business worldwide, Humpton said, "It’s not clear how Siemen employees in the Orlando market will be impacted.”
“There is going to be the need to analyze where job reductions will be made and where jobs will be added," she told News 6. “It’s early days yet, we don’t have any answers to that.”
Both Humpton and Dyer believe the current talent pool in Orlando will be able to meet the needs for high-tech infrastructure, manufacturing and cybersecurity.
“Our partnership with Orlando is really special, you know, we’ve been here for decades, it’s our energy hub, we have 4,000 employees in Orlando,” Humpton said.
Siemens hosted the “spotlight on innovation” conference to focus on planned expansions of its smart technology in Orlando.