Mt. Wachusett Community College Makes Huge Investment in Wind Power 

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SEED Center New Resource    

California Workforce Education and Training Needs Assessment for Energy Efficiency, Demand Response, and Distributed Generation

SEED offers customizable

templates to help you engage educators, students and communities in your green jobs training programs.  Get started today, download them now!

AASHE Conference, Call for Presentations - Deadline Extended  

Share your campus sustainability success stories at the upcoming AASHE conference, October 2011. Submissions due April 15. 

March 22, 2011

The Sustainability, Education & Economic Development (SEED) Initiative has exciting news to share.  The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) was recently awarded a two-year grant from the Kresge Foundation to expand support to colleges for enhancing their clean energy workforce development efforts!  See the new SEED strategic plan for more details. In the next year, SEED will offer a series of toolkits, webinars, and workshops available for college leaders, faculty, and staff.

Join us in New Orleans, April 9-12, at the AACC Annual Convention to celebrate and learn more.  At the convention events listed below you will learn what is ahead for SEED, how to stay involved, and why you won't want to miss out on the FREE resources SEED has to offer.

Finally, as chair of AACC's Sustainability Task Force, I've had the pleasure of working with a group of remarkable presidents who are true leaders and innovators in this area. Nominations are being accepted to include more members in this dynamic group.  If you are interested in joining the task force in 2011, or nominating your president, please let me know.  SEED will remain a top AACC priority for the coming years and offers remarkable opportunity for leadership, vision, and strategic thinking at a national level.  Strong commitment from presidents will help ensure its continued success.

We look forward to seeing you in New Orleans, and sharing SEED's future with you.

Sincerely,

 

Dr. Jerry Weber

Chair, AACC Sustainability Task Force

President, College of Lake County

Roger Ebbage, on Certifications

Northwest Energy Certification Institute

Lane Community College

When I began my career in the energy industry, Jimmy Carter was telling the nation that the only way to deal with the energy crisis was "on a war footing", in effect, to declare an "energy war".   The top guns were to be residential energy efficiency and solar energy.  Huge federal investments were made in residential sector weatherization and solar water heating installations.  It was these financial investments that provided a new element in the energy battle.

Soldiers in the energy war included the carpenters, plumbers, and jacks-of-all-trades who rushed in to do the work funded mostly by incentives. There was much work to be done because previously, homeowners and residential building codes had not required insulation or weatherization strategies in new construction and utility costs were not high enough to warrant retrofitting existing homes.  Unfortunately, the installers of the day did not have the appropriate training in installation methods. Consequently houses were poorly weatherized and solar systems failed. The lack of skilled installers is one of the key reasons that Carter's energy war was lost. 

We are again in an era when energy is one of our nation's gravest concerns and the incentives for weatherization and solar systems are huge.  But this time we have a fighting chance and may actually win the energy war. Why? Because the clean energy industry decided to get certified.  Long time industry players, who were determined not to lose another skirmish, and realizing that installers would again be called upon to help save and produce energy, rose to the challenge. Rather than having only one certification option for installation talent, the energy industry, through the North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners (NABCEP), went to work to develop installer certifications based on industry-driven Job/Task Analyses (JTA).  Today NABCEP certification is available for solar photovoltaics, solar thermal, small wind, and will soon be available for residential weatherization.  

NABCEP certification is voluntary and very popular with installers because it:

• Identifies installers as professionals, instilling consumer confidence in their work
• Validates extra resources spent on training and gaining experience
• Allows for installer mobility as the market moves from state to state
• Allows installers to distinguish(?) their skills and experience in the field

For consumers, using a certified installer:

• Provides a means to identify qualified trade talent, promoting confidence in the work performed
• Preserves consumer choice, maintaining access to both certified and uncertified installers (cite nabcep)
• Gives consumers assurance that the money they spend will be for systems that will last for the duration of the manufacturer's warranty and long after that.

Luckily, this time around, we are armed with certified installers and have a fighting chance to win the energy war - a victory for the clean energy industry as well as all humankind.  

Roger Ebbage 

Director, Energy and Water Education Programs

Northwest Energy Education Institute

Lane Community College

ebbager@lanecc.edu