Energy management is an important issue for businesses, and a strategic and proactive approach is the best way to better control energy costs and improve their financial and environmental performance. Nevertheless, energy management – including energy efficiency (EE) – is not a strategic issue for Québec companies. Although there are many technical resources for analyzing and implementing solutions within organizations, paradoxically, there are effective and cost-effective solutions that are not implemented.
There is a lack of support to “convince” managers of the relevance and strategic importance of energy efficiency and to develop their skills to integrate EE within companies. e3 Hub converts its research into teaching and training activities. We undertook multiple research projects to identify best practices in energy management that would allow us to create several educational resources that are available for student training as well as executive training.
- Courses and Workshops: We developed two courses, “Managing Energy Efficiency: Innovating, Organizing, Deciding, Integrating” (focused on building the skills required to manage energy efficiency, as well as the ability to recognize energy efficiency issues). tools and practices applicable to this problem) and “Forecasting and planning in the energy sector” (focusing on forecasting techniques – applied in particular to estimate energy demands – and different classes of mathematical models.), and a “Demystify Energy Efficiency Management: Add Management Tools to Your Technical Skills” workshop targeted to practitioners.
- Case studies: We used our best practice research to develop case studies on a range of topics, including barriers and organizational facilitators to energy efficiency (with Cascades); the organizational structure for managing energy efficiency (with RioTinto); multi-criteria decision making; and cultural and communications issues related to energy efficiency (with Suncor).
- Mobile learning tools In the spirit of pedagogical innovation, we have developed a “web application” that allows participants and students to keep the most important content of the course to hand, through their phone, tablet or portable. It is an accompanying tool to use after training.