Energy Sustainability Engineer

Career Area: Engineering

Occupation Group: Chemical, Biomedical, and Related Engineering

Salary

Percentile wages tell how much a certain percentage of an overall population in a geographic area or within a given industry or field makes. The percentile wage estimate is the value of a wage below which a certain percent of workers fall.

An example would be the 25th percentile, 25 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 75 percent earn more than the estimated wage value. At the 75th percentile, 75 percent of workers employed in that occupation earn less and 25 percent earn more than the estimated wage value.

A typical Energy Sustainability Engineer earns the following wages (national and state):

State

The average salary in North Carolina for those pursuing this career is $68,558

National

The average salary in the United States for those pursuing this career is $76,563

What Does a Professional in this Career Do?

Develops engineering and design for sustainable, low-energy building projects. Develops engineering plans and systems that include recycling and reuse of materials, increased energy efficiency and reduction of carbon emissions.

Employment Trends

The job demand and job growth statistics shown here were derived from job posts over the past year. Expected job growth projections are extrapolated from year-over-year job post listing history.

Job demand and job growth is expected at the following rates:

Skills

A professional in this position typically utilizes the following skills in the course of everyday work in this exciting and challenging field:

Baseline Skills

The following are baseline skills every Energy Sustainability Engineer is expected to have in order to experience success in this field:

• Communication Skills: The ability to convey information to another effectively and efficiently.
• Teamwork / Collaboration: Experience working in collaborative efforts with a team to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.
• Writing: Experience expressing business messages effectively in written form. This may include planning drafting and revising as necessary.
• Microsoft Office: Microsoft Office is an office suite of applications, servers, and services developed by Microsoft.
• Research: Experience performing creative and systematic work to understand a product, market, or customer, either before building a new solution, or to troubleshoot an existing issue

Specialized Skills

These skills are specific to working in this career:

• Energy Modeling: Energy modeling or energy system modeling is the process of building computer models of energy systems in order to analyze them.
• Sustainable Design: Sustainable design (also called environmentally sustainable design, environmentally conscious design, etc.) is the philosophy of designing physical objects, the built environment, and services to comply with the principles of social, economic, and ecological sustainability.
• Energy Conservation: Energy conservation are efforts made to reduce the consumption of energy by using less of an energy service.
• 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 Efficiency: Efficient energy use, sometimes simply calledenergy efficiency, is the goal to reduce the amount of energy required to provide products and services.

Distinguishing Skills

Any Energy Sustainability Engineer that possesses the following skills will stand out against the competition:

• Energy Analysis: Energy analysis informs EERE decision-making by delivering analytical products in four main areas: Data Resources, Market Intelligence, Energy Systems Analysis, and Portfolio Impacts Analysis.
• Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) Design: Working experience of Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing (MEP) Design, which refers to these aspects of building design and construction. In commercial buildings these aspects are often designed by an engineering firm specializing in MEP. MEP design is important for design decision-making, accurate documentation, performance and cost-estimation, construction planning, managing and operating the resulting facility.
• Renewable Energy: Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.
• Construction Design: Experience of creating the architectural, engineering, interior and technical plans for a construction project.
• Greenhouse Gas: A greenhouse gas is a gas in an atmosphere that absorbs and emits radiant energy within the thermal infrared range.

Salary Boosting Skills

A professional who wishes to excel in this career path may consider developing the following highly valued skills:

• Energy Simulation: Building energy simulation, also called building energy modeling (or energy modeling in context), is the use of software to predict the energy use of a building.
• Building Performance: The building performance of a building or built environment is the efficiency of functioning of buildings and the construction industry, its impact on natural environment, urban environment and its users.
• Natural Gas: Natural gas is a naturally occurring hydrocarbon gas mixture consisting primarily of methane, but commonly including varying amounts of other higher alkanes, and sometimes a small percentage of carbon dioxide, nitrogen, hydrogen sulfide, or helium.
• Renewable Energy: Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources, which are naturally replenished on a human timescale, such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat.
• Energy Project Management: Working experience of Energy Project Management, which is the discipline of initiating, planning, executing, controlling, and closing the work of a team to achieve specific goals and meet specific success criteria with specific regard to the energy sector.

Experience

This position typically requires the following level of experience. The numbers presented in the pie charts below were derived from actual job posts over the past year. Not all job postings list experience requirements.

Common Job Titles

It is possible to find work in this field in positions commonly listed as the following job titles:

• Energy Engineer II
• Energy Engineer I
• Senior Energy Engineer
• Energy Engineer Or Analyst
• Energy Engineer

Similar Occupations

If you are interested in exploring similar occupations, you may want to research the following job titles:

• Energy Engineer
• Renewable Energy Engineer
• Energy Analyst / Auditor
• Wind Energy Engineer