Melanie Danuser and the Smart Buildings Center team contributed to the ACEEE report “Training the Workforce for High-Performance Buildings: Enhancing Skills for Operations and Maintenance.”
By Mariel Wolfson, Editor/Writer
We know that improving the energy efficiency of the U.S. building stock can reduce building-related carbon emissions by as much as 50%. High performance buildings, which are energy-efficient, durable, resilient, and offer excellent indoor air quality, will be critical for cutting emissions and meeting our climate goals. Yet these buildings also require highly specialized knowledge to optimize performance.
This specialized knowledge is the focus of a new ACEEE report released today. The report — based on an original survey and expert interviews with professionals who work with high performance buildings as owners, managers, and technicians — identifies the precise skills that education and training programs should prioritize to ensure that the workforce can meet current and future demands.
The vast majority of respondents — 92% — said that operations and maintenance (O&M) is the most critical skill area for the buildings workforce of the future…