Last week I attended the World Energy Engineering Congress (WEEC), a gathering of engineers focused on energy and energy efficiency.
The stories were pretty inspiring.
- City engineers in New York City are implementing big initiatives to reduce the city’s energy use as part of NYC’s ambitious climate agenda. Their efforts—which were pragmatic in some aspects (e.g., massive retrofits of certain out-dated technologies) and innovative in other ways (demonstration grants, inviting ideas)—illustrated how big entities can address sustainability at scale.
- Across the country, staff from the school district in Wylie, Texas talked about how they’d leveraged massive storm recovery efforts into an opportunity to make the district more resource efficient. Theirs was a story about keeping their eye on the goals even while addressing enormous challenges.
I spent a lot of time around engineers early in my energy efficiency career so it was fun to be back in that environment. These 2017 engineers were savvier about benefits than those I knew decades ago. More than one presenter talked about the need to present results in a way that was relevant for the audience—to talk about money or carbon or reputation, based on what mattered to others. “No matter what the leader’s priorities, energy efficiency can address it,” one engineer noted, “You just have to talk in language they care about.”
Being at WEEC, surrounded by engineers, I remembered the great thing about engineers:
The biggest surprise, though, was that every engineer I talked with acknowledged the importance of engaging people, of paying attention to the ways people interact with technologies. I kept expecting people to dismiss efforts targeting behaviors but the sessions talking about people and engagement were well attended. Several engineers told me that they thought their industry had made great progress on the technology side and that it was time for everyone to focus more effort on the human side.
I left WEEC quite a bit more optimistic about our future. Not only are smart energy engineers working hard to increase the efficiency of buildings and equipment across the globe, but these leading engineers are also increasingly interested in engaging people in that process.
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