It’s one thing to build green, it’s another to understand how to optimize its efficiency once built.
Commercial building operators are about to get the training they need to optimize building efficiency while reducing energy waste and saving money.
"Improving energy efficiency in business and manufacturing is critical for helping American businesses keep costs down and stay competitive in the global economy," says Secretary of Energy Steve Chu. "The first step is ensuring we have well-trained buildings and facilities operators that know how to boost building performance and keep commercial facilities from wasting energy."
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and U.S. Department of Commerce are jointly funding three Centers for Building Operations Excellence for $1.3 million to create and deploy programs that train current and incoming building operators.
The Centers are part of the Obama Administration’s Better Buildings Initiative, which has a goal to increase energy efficiency in commercial buildings 20% by 2020, while lowering energy bills by $40 billion per year. The initiative will support over 100,000 construction jobs over the next two years as it upgrades over 1.6 billion square feet of public and private buildings.
The three Centers will work with universities, local community and technical colleges, trade associations, and DOE’s national labs to create the training programs.
The Centers, chosen through a competitive grants process, are:
- The Corporation for Manufacturing Excellence in California, partnering with Laney College and the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 39.
- Delaware Valley Industrial Resource Center in Pennsylvania, partnering with Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania College of Technology, and Drexel University.
- NY State Department of Economic Development, partnering with City University of New York and Rochester Institute of Technology.
Specifically, the funding will help the three Centers develop curricula and pilot training programs for building operators, managers and energy service providers, focusing on building re-tuning, energy management, and building operations in commercial, industrial, and educational buildings.
The training will outline steps building operators can take to reduce energy consumption, save money and drive continuous improvement in a broad range of commercial buildings.
Better Buildings website:
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There are how many buildings here in the country, all with chimney’s poking out of their roofs. Coming out of these chimney’s is a lot of HOT wasted energy. We are wondering if the Better Buildings Initiative might train these building operators to also recognize waste energy that they cannot see, exhaust gases. If most of these buildings across the country could increase their natural gas energy efficiency by 10 or 15%, the natural gas we do have will then last this country that much longer.
Instead of hot exhaust cool exhaust would be vented into the atmosphere, and the recovered energy could be used back in the building or facility. If water conservation is part of the energy management planning, this Condensing Flue Gas Heat Recovery technology will even create water that can be utilized in the building or around the building.