A word from Angelos Vlasopoulos, CEO at RealTerm Energy
Growing up in Canada in the 70’s and 80’s issues around the environment were not at a high level of public consciousness. This was something we were marginally aware of as a distant issue to be dealt with primarily by some future government or international body. We had clean air, clean water, and a bright future.
I was trained as an accountant and worked with technology companies most of my career and it wasn’t until 2004, while working for Autodesk and visiting our Beijing office that the issue of air quality slapped me figuratively and literally in the face. I had never experienced the level of smog and air pollution that had motivated locals to wear masks as part of their daily routine. At the time, I started to become aware of the severity and the global nature of the issue, and more and more started to think about how we could reverse the damage that had already been done.
Aside from some minor financial contributions and some passionate rhetoric to friends and family, I hadn’t taken any real concrete steps in fighting climate change. The problem seemed massive to me requiring a global effort and solution, something well beyond my means and my ability to meaningfully change.
In 2016, I started to think differently about the issue. I came to the realization that any massive change, much like any journey, begins with one small step. I left behind an accounting and M&A practice to join RealTerm Energy which was taking actionable steps to make a positive environmental impact. What really attracted me was not the scope of the positive impact to the environment, but rather that it was being done one community at a time. Since those early days, we’ve grown, we’ve matured, and we’ve expanded the breadth of our services.
I’m proud of what our team has accomplished in the last four years. We’ve helped over 300 municipalities across the U.S. and Canada go green. We’ve replaced over 350,000 wasteful and environmentally harmful HPS lights with the best LED technology, greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We’ve started and launched BrainboxAI, a cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology company that reduces buildings’ energy consumption by up to 25% while reducing the carbon footprint by as much as 40% with little or no CAPEX required, all while developed a full suite of Smart City solutions that connects citizens to their communities — increasing their engagement while reducing municipal operating costs and helping to achieve sustainability objectives.
We realize that environmental sustainability goes hand-in-hand with financial sustainability so we designed all of our solutions to be low-cost/high-impact. We continue to tailor the best technological solutions to real needs, all while furthering our impact on the environment… now we’re just doing it with a bigger team and a wider scope. Our offices now count over 40 experts in a wide variety of fields, each one of them bringing their diligence, their customer focus, and most importantly their passion to make a positive contribution to our environment.
Our mission is to develop and implement the smartest technological solutions to deliver the most value to our customers, saving them time, money, and energy, while positively impacting the environment and connecting the people who live in it.
We started with a simple premise, a simple thought, and one single step. We didn’t set out to change the world, but we are doing it… one community at a time.
Angelos Vlasopoulos, CEO at RealTerm Energy