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Expanding the Industrial Assessment Center Program: Building an Industrial Efficiency Workforce
Date
2009-05Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Energy efficiency provides an unequaled opportunity
for manufacturing companies to reduce operating
costs. Energy efficiency improvements not only lead
to reduced energy costs, they can lead to even greater
improved productivity and decreased waste.
However, many cost-effective projects are not being
implemented. Manufacturing companies have
indicated that this is often due not to a lack of funds
but rather to a lack of access to technical information
and trained workforce.
One of the most successful programs for achieving
energy efficiency savings in the manufacturing sector
is the US Department of Energy (DOE)'s Industrial
Assessment Center (IAC) program. In addition to
significant energy savings, the IAC program
produces a steady stream of energy engineers who
are in high demand as plant energy managers, energy
efficiency consultants, and energy efficient design
engineers.
This paper proposes a strategy for expanding the
IAC program in both size and scope to better meet
the workforce and energy assessment needs of US
manufacturers. The expansion would be
accomplished by establishing Centers of Excellence
at current IAC locations, and then partnering with
other universities, community colleges, and trade
schools to create satellite centers to educate students
at all technical levels. This would provide additional
assistance to industrial customers over larger regions
than is currently possible. Further partnerships with
other organizations that already service
manufacturing facilities would take advantage of
existing infrastructure to enable the most efficient
distribution of energy efficiency services.
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Citation
Trombley, D.; Elliott, R. N.; Chittum, A. (2009). Expanding the Industrial Assessment Center Program: Building an Industrial Efficiency Workforce. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu). Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /91089.