Energy engineering

Energy engineering or energy systems engineering is a broad field of engineering dealing with energy efficiency, energy services, facility management, plant engineering, environmental compliance and alternative energy technologies. Energy engineering is one of the more recent engineering disciplines to emerge. Energy engineering combines knowledge from the fields of physics, math, and chemistry with economic and environmental engineering practices. Energy engineers apply their skills to increase efficiency and further develop renewable sources of energy. The main job of energy engineers is to find the most efficient and sustainable ways to operate buildings and manufacturing processes. Energy engineers audit the use of energy in those processes and suggest ways to improve the systems. This means suggesting advanced lighting, better insulation, more efficient heating and cooling properties of buildings. Although an energy engineer is concerned about obtaining and using energy in the most environmentally friendly ways, their field is not limited to strictly renewable energy like hydro, solar, biomass, or geothermal. Energy engineers are also employed by the fields of oil and natural gas extraction.

Energy minimization is the purpose of this growing discipline. Often applied to building design, heavy consideration is given to HVAC, lighting, refrigeration, to both reduce energy loads and increase efficiency of current systems. Energy engineering is increasingly seen as a major step forward in meeting carbon reduction targets. Since buildings and houses consume over 40% of the United States energy, the services an energy engineer performs are in demand.

Human beings have been transferring energy from one form to another since their use of fire. The efficiency of the transfer of energy is a new field. The oil crisis of 1973 and energy crisis of 1979 brought to light the need to get more work out of less energy. The United States government passed several laws in the seventies to promote increased energy efficiency, such as United States public law 94-413, the Federal Clean Car Incentive Program.

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