Count the Cs

A 70-ft. sign at the corner of Madison Square Garden and Penn Station in NYC ensures that passersby don’t forget about their carbon footprints. The sign’s 13-character, red digital display tracks greenhouse gases, thanks to thousands of scientists. The counter tabulates carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide levels, but doesn’t factor in aerosols or account for natural cycles, such as El Nino, according to a story by Brendan Borrel at www.sciam.com. Deutsche Bank, which sponsors the sign, also backs the Climate Change Advisors, which aims to help various industries profit from a low-carbon economy.

DB Climate Change Advisors, an institutional and alternatives climate change business of Deutsche Asset Management, a business division of Deutsche Bank AG, chose Van Wagner Communications for a complete turnkey solution. Van Wagner Sign Erectors, a division of Van Wagner Communications, fabricated the new steel structural elements required for the display and performed all field-installation aspects, but a third-party manufacturer was required for the LED-display fabrication. Van Wagner chose Daktronics Inc. (Brookings, SD) to design and manufacture the LED display.

Irwin Sheftel, Van Wagner’s VP of Creative Development who oversaw all aspects of the project, said Van Wagner chose Daktronics “because of the company’s experience in communicating real-time information to its LED displays… which not surprisingly was the most important aspect of this project.”

Deutsche Bank’s own software architects created the counting program that employs Daktronics Venus® 7000 display controller to communicate the greenhouse-gas concentration data to the digital display imbedded in the billboard.