Efficiency: an engineering gap that needs filling
It’s encouraging to see that McMaster University in Hamilton is going to offer a masters level engineering course focused on energy management in engineering processes. This is apparently a first-of-its-kind course in Ontario, which I found surprising. The press release announcing the program, which is supported by the Ontario Centres of Excellence, states that energy management is a key issue for competitiveness of industry in this province. “The ability to create new efficiencies will not only contribute to a company’s bottom line, but will also reduce pressure on the electricity grid — and that beneits all Ontarians. In many industrial organizations, efficient engineering practices together with effective energy management can generate substantial savings (as much as 40 per cent of current energy costs).”
Rather than consider efficiency in hindsight (when it’s much more costly to pursue), this course will help engineers identify efficiencies early in a design phase. Every university engineering faculty across Canada should offer a course like this, and make it mandatory.
Tyler Hamilton is senior energy reporter and columnist for the Toronto Star, Canada's largest daily newspaper. In addition to this Clean Break blog, Tyler writes a weekly column of the same name that discusses trends, happenings and innovators in the cleantech market. This blog is a personal project started in April 2005. It is not an official blog of the newspaper. Tyler can be reached at tyler@cleanbreak.ca