ITOCHU Announces Capital/Business Partnership with Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken

March 5, 2013

ITOCHU Corporation (headquartered in Minato-ku, Tokyo; Masahiro Okafuji, President & CEO; hereinafter “ITOCHU”) announced today that it has provided capital to Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken (headquartered in Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; Tetsuyuki Murai, President and Representative director; hereinafter “Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken”), a company that operates an energy management business.

Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken holds customers that operate over 4,400 offices nationwide (as of December 2012). The client base centers mostly on chain retailers, including major nationwide supermarket chains and drugstores as well as amusement-related corporations. The company conducts a total energy management business based on three services: energy savings (a system for visualizing electric power), energy creation (a solar power generation system) and energy storage (a rechargerble battery system ). The company has also concluded a business alliance contract as an aggregator with the four electric power companies (Tokyo Electric Power Company, Incorporated, Kansai Electric Power Co., Inc., Kyushu Electric Power Co., Inc., and Hokkaido Electric Power Co., Inc.) and is also working on controlling demand-side energy(demand response) for peak power suppression.

Under the brand name ecoFORTE (*1) since 2009, ITOCHU has been working on a smart IT infrastructure business that utilizes IT for energy management systems and smart street lights.

Through this capital participation, ITOCHU will first propose its energy management system (ecoFORTE EMS) to the customers of Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken. Through this, the visualization of electric power used for air-conditioning/lighting equipment, etc., will be realized and contribute to energy savings among the customers. By cooperating with Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken and the electric power companies that the company partners with, ITOCHU will also aim to develop a highly practical demand response service and offer an optimization service for electric power use that combines energy creation and storage

Through this partnership, ITOCHU will further strengthen its energy and smart IT infrastructure business, which utilizes IT, that the company had already been working on, as well as accelerate the promotion of a business model that is considerate of the environment.

  • (*1) What is ecoFORTE?
  • It is a brand name for an energy management service that ITOCHU operates. It consists of the following three services. (1) ecoFORTE Reporter: This service automatically gathers/totals information on the amount of energy use and creates legal submission documents in compliance with the revised Act on the Rational Use of Energy. (2) ecoFORTE EMS： This service realizes energy savings by creating a visualization of the amount of electric power usage at customer’s facilities and through automating the operation of equipment at facilities (air condition/lighting). (3) ecoFORTE Streetlight： The service realizes efficient operating management of street lights by controlling light with dimmers and light on and off through power line communication.

Outline of Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken Company

Company name Kankyo Keiei Senryaku Soken
Representative Tetsuyuki Murai, President and Representative Director
Head office

Kojimachi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo
Established

February 2004
Capital 230,750,000 yen
Number of employees around 60
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