High School Students Win

The AEM Energy Champion Internship is a real-world educational program for high school students to learn professional and life skills through on-the-job apprenticeship working as a professional energy management consulting team member. The students deliver to and support the implementation of our client’s Advanced Energy Management (AEM) Shutdown with ENERGY STAR solution.  ​ 

Workforce Development is central to the AEM paid internship program. Our project-based learning equips students with a diverse skill set, including teamwork, data analytics, accounting, project and time management, client relations, and effective communication (both written and oral). Energy Champions also gain expertise in making presentations, troubleshooting unexpected issues, working through conflict resolution, creative problem-solving, and energy literacy. This transformative experience empowers students with heightened self-confidence, self-esteem, and self-belief, shaping their future paths.

What are the benefits to High School students?

Student Skills Developed

    • Leadership - How to organize and lead a team.​

    • Teamwork - Energy is a team sport. The better the teamwork, the better the performance​.

    • Planning - How to create and implement an organized project plan.​

    • Time Management - How to allocate and monitor time spent on tasks​.

    • Plan Adjustment - How to adapt the plan, and pivot when circumstances demand changes​.

    • Conflict Resolution - How to convert a potential negative situation into a positive.

    • Data Analytics - How to analyze energy data, weather data, occupancy schedules, different types of equipment, and other governing variables to understand justified and non-justified energy use​.

    • Actionable Reports - How to create Action Reports that quickly convey the issue/opportunity and its cost impact​.

    • Client Engagement - How to effectively engage the client to take action to achieve results.

    • Anatomy of an Email - Recipients, CC, subject, attachments, body.

    • Tone Matters – How to write positive, clear, encouraging-messages .

    • Frequency – The importance of responding within 24 hours.

    • Platforms - Proficient use with Zoom, Webex, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet.

    • Invitation - Introduction, meeting time, meeting links, codes and back-up conference line or platform when technology doesn’t work.

    • Meeting Facilitation - Organized agenda that includes audience participation and meeting notes.

    • Content - How to share the story using text and graphics​.

    • Tools - PowerPoint, Word, Excel, Snag-It, etc. ​

    • Delivery - Presentation of topic and team members​.

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    • Straight into Workforce - This apprenticeship prepares you to be job ready as a professional energy analyst earning over $50,000 per year as a certified Energy Efficiency Practioner (EEP™).​

    • Technical School - This apprenticeship prepares you to receive additional knowledge, experience, skills, education and certifications that position you for opportunities and positions above a certified EEP™.​

    • College / University - This apprenticeship is a springboard into higher education, If energy is your chosen field, the energy knowledge, experience, skills, education and certification put you on an acelerated path to earn a degree in energy and/or sustainability earning a six-figure income.

This internship is aligned with Career and Technical Education high school credits in Washington state. In addition to school credits, the apprenticeship includes an accredited Energy Efficiency Practitioner (EEP™) certification through the Association of Energy Engineers. To learn more about this industry standard certification click here!

If these experiences and skills sound like something you would be interested in exploring, click here and join us and unlock your future potential.

The AEM Shutdown with ENERGY STAR Solution are energy conservation actions that aligns energy use in a facility with the activity taking place in the facility. Of the 8,760 hours in a year, most commercial buildings are unoccupied more than 50% of the time. The objective of the solution is simple, turn off everything that doesn’t need to be on, especially during unoccupied hours when no one is in the building.​ 

Reality Check: For large public and private commercial buildings, turning things off is a far bigger challenge than what we do at home every night. This bigger challenge is due to a variety of different actors such as larger equipment, more sophisticated controls, the impact of weather, the fact that the person opening the building in the morning is not the same person closing it at night, and the occasional after-hours activities.​ 

The most successful organizations implementing and sustaining the AEM Shutdown with ENERGY STAR solution first create and then grow their own high-performance energy conservation culture. This first step, a hyper-focus on conservation creates new procedures and behaviors that become fully integrated into the daily decisions of how people operate, schedule, and maintain their facility. Embedding an energy conservation culture ensures decades of sustainability generating significant cost, use and CO2 emissions reductions.