Effective industrial energy management programs highlight the importance of a pervasive energy culture. If this exists, all decisions, both great and small, will take into account their impact on energy use and its consequences. Some organizations do achieve something approaching a pervasive energy culture and achieve unusually competitive energy productivity along with a reduced environmental footprint. With the growing list of risks, opportunities, and uncertainties around energy for the coming years, the impact of poorly-thought-through decisions when it comes to energy could be commercially devastating for some businesses. With the need for a pervasive energy culture never higher, it seemed a good time to take a look at some of the challenges and solutions.
Let’s begin with the employees’ backgrounds before they enter the company, as we are all a product of our education and experiences that shape our attitudes as adults. Recently, I visited an elementary school that had made many aspects of energy central to school life. Older sections of the school had workman-like efficiency upgrades, and newer sections had been built to near passive standards. A portfolio of on-site supply measures including heat pumps, solar thermal, and solar PV were well integrated into the day-to-day operations. More importantly, all the students had the subject of energy and its impacts included in their curricula. It was impressive to hear a 10-year-old student coherently explain the basic loading order, from efficiency through on-site clean supplies and on to utility supply of electricity and gas. Even more impressive was that she understood the fuel inefficiency associated with grid-supplied electricity and why it was important to be more efficient. This early understanding of the basics of a modern energy system and how the pieces all play together should become our minimum expectation, given its importance to so many aspects of our national, business, and personal lives.
Today’s reality is that this school is a small minority among elementary and high schools that consciously and systematically include basic energy literacy as part of the curriculum. In the wider educational community, the energy conversation is at best fragmented, politicized, often technically inaccurate or incomplete, and communicated in sound bites. Given this background, it is not difficult to see why most high school graduates entering the workforce have minimal interest or understanding of energy and are ill prepared to be part of a company team with an outstanding energy culture. The minority who retain an interest to pursue energy-related topics at the college level are all too often channeled into narrow technical or environmental specialties. This lack of holistic energy education may not be the best background to assist in creating the elusive energy culture.
So how do we square this circle from inside a company? The evidence is strong that companies with an energy culture have a competitive edge as a result. However, few achieve it and those that do may be overly optimistic about its depth and breadth.
