In July 2008 Bank of America made an undisclosed investment in Philadelphia-based Field Diagnostic Services (FDSI) and started to deploy the firm's energy management technology across thousands of US branches to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and cut energy costs in half.
FDSI provides technology that enables rapid and accurate servicing of heating, ventilation and air conditioning units, thereby decreasing energy and operational costs. The firm is also currently developing system that uses data captured from networked heating and cooling units to automatically detect energy waste.
BoA says it will utilise FDSI's products and services in 3,300 branches nationwide, which will result in up to 50% cost savings when compared to standard building control technologies. The FDSI platform is also forecast to reduce annual greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the banking centres by an estimated 14,000 CO2 tons annually.
Finextra verdict: Bank of America has a $20 billion, ten-year environmental commitment to promote sustainability. In not only buying the FDSI technology, but also investing in the company, the bank is demonstrating its confidence that energy-saving technology for large distributed companies like banks is a growth business.