Empowering Tomorrow: Leveraging the Clean Buildings Performance Standard to Drive Clean Energy Workforce Development

The transition towards a clean energy future has led to a rising need for workforce development that is specifically focused on energy. With the Washington State Clean Building Performance Standard rapidly approaching, there is an increasing need for building owners to grow their workforce to include an energy manager focused specifically on energy management and compliance. For the past five years, Puget Sound Energy (PSE) has partnered with Strategic Energy Innovations (SEI) to bring their Climate Corp Fellowship program to PSE’s Commercial Strategic Energy Management (CSEM) program.

Fellows are partnered with an organization and tasked with energy-related work that gives them on the job training. At the same time fellows are attending a practicum in order to prepare and guide them through their work. PSE & SEI have had success with increasing customer workload capacity through this model, at a reasonable cost, and contributing to the workforce development for the clean energy future.