Ed Carley, Ed’s Clean Energy & Sustainability Jobs List & Buildings Program Manager, NASEO
Tell us about Ed’s Clean Energy & Sustainability Jobs List
When I was looking for my current position, I noticed that there wasn’t one single place to look for jobs in this space. I built my own database of places to find postings and started emailing out a compilation of the new jobs every week to seven of my friends in sustainability. Pretty quickly more and more people started contacting me asking to be added to the list. I said to myself, “If I get 100 people signed up in 6 months, I’ll keep this going.” Well, I had 100 people signed up within 6 weeks, so it was clear I was on to something. There are so many students, both graduate and undergraduate, trying to break into this space, it’s really tough. It’s always interesting to hear different people’s struggles and what they’re interested in – some are interested in water, others volunteering, one person was working for a motivational speaker who presented on employee engagement, and I told them that was an excellent opportunity to focus on sustainability.
I always tell people that it really helps if you know what industry you want to work in. You have to have some core skills and be able to do some basic things, but different organizations and different industries have different challenges, think technology vs apparel, so really try to know the industry you’re targeting.
Be respectfully persistent, send follow up emails thanking people for the interview even if you don’t get the job. I didn’t get the first position I interviewed for at my current organization, but I followed up with my interviewer who let me know they had a second position open up and that was the position I have now.
Try to remember this is a really, really small industry, you’ll likely see most people you interview with again. When I received my first group email for a conference call at my current job, there were five people on that list that I had interviewed with, at three organizations I’d applied to. It’s important to be good to people, even as the interviewer.
My best tip for job searchers is to find a nonprofit that works in the area you’re interested in – energy efficiency, water conservation, anything – and they’ll usually have a partners or affiliates or supporters page, and that’s a great place to look and see who in the private sector is working in that same space. It’s a great way to find the consulting firms or companies you wouldn’t otherwise know about so you can check them out. Nonprofit sites also sometimes have jobs boards for positions in the space, but some are updated more often than others.
Want to sign up for Ed’s Clean Energy & Sustainability Jobs List? Just visit his site and sign up using the form at the bottom of the page:
Tell us about NASEO
The National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO) is a trade association serving the 50 states and 6 US territories. We represent the state energy offices to congress and the administration, we serve a convening function for peer exchange and learning, and we assist with energy projects that our states are interested in. For example, the needs of California or New York, with hundreds of staff on their energy teams, are very different from the needs of a much smaller state with only one or two energy officials. However, even those smaller states are doing great work, and its fun to work with them and see their successes.
My areas of focus are building energy codes, energy service performance contracting, and home energy labeling. In general, my day includes a lot of research, meetings, and conference calls.
One of the big projects I’m working on at the moment is focused on encouraging the adoption of home energy scoring and labeling, think of it as similar to a “miles per gallon” sticker on the window of a new car. The states in this project want to see more homes scored, and they want that information to be made available to home buyers so they can have a sense of how energy efficient a home is before they buy it. There are two major home energy labeling scoring systems, the Home Energy Rating System (HERS) and the Home Energy Score (HES). HERS is administered by a nonprofit called RESNET and is mostly used for new homes and includes a score based on how efficient a home is when compared to a home built to a baseline energy code. The HERS score is on a scale of 0 – 150+ with zero being a net zero energy house (the home produces as much energy as it uses over the course of a year) and 100 is compliant with the 2006 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC). Home Energy Score is more for existing homes and doesn’t require as many data points to generate a score. HES is on a scale of 1 – 10 with 1 being inefficient and 10 being more efficient. It can be quite confusing to home buyers since the two labels use different scales and the two methodologies can each produce annual energy consumption estimates that are very different. My role in this project is to help the lead state with research for how best to reconcile the two methodologies, ensure all the right stakeholders are participating in our meetings, and coordinate consultant teams.
I also work with states to provide technical assistance as needed when and if states are considering adopting new building energy codes. For example, I have a project with the Department of Energy and local partner organizations to train builders and code officials in a particular state on energy efficiency codes. The project began with a baseline study of building practices in the state to identify areas for improvement, progressed into an education phase, and we have now begun the second measurement phase to see what the impact was. We should have results this fall.
What are some of the key skills for success in this role?
The ability to do research is critical, as is the ability to organize and prioritize what projects you should be working on. Relationship building and maintenance are also very important; you need to be comfortable with networking, asking peers for introductions, and reaching out to people you don’t know. You should be able to identify others’ strengths and weaknesses and how to leverage those effectively and respectfully. It is also really important to communicate effectively and be diplomatic.
What is your favorite part of your job?
I really enjoy going out and visiting the various states and seeing what their different priorities are and how they approach problems differently. I especially like learning about smaller programs such as Rhode Island, Oregon, Michigan, Colorado and Alabama because but they’re doing great work that you don’t usually get to hear about. Even places you wouldn’t think of are doing really interesting things. For example, North Dakota has an incredibly effective collaboration process for planning. They bring all their stakeholders from across the energy industry (solar/wind/oil/gas/coal) to participate in planning sessions and it has created some really good policy that meets the needs of their state very well.
What is the hardest part of your job?
I’ve been here for an entire year and I’m only just starting to wrap my arms around it all. There’s a lot of information and very many players and getting up to speed can be challenging. There’s also no manual for how to do the role so you have to be confident in the path you develop and move forward with. However, if you know the sustainability space at all, I’d say these are all very much the norm.
What is your proudest professional achievement?
I was at my first job with ‘sustainability’ in the title and I wrote a paper on how a big telecom client of ours could use information communication technology for social good. The paper examined things like telematics for vehicles to reduce maintenance and improve driver behavior, street light sensors, and other smart city things that are now a reality but were early stage at the time. I recently read that they’ve implemented many of my suggestions. And interestingly the same work is the writing sample I used to get an internship with ACEEE, which is one of the key experiences that helped me get my current position.
What are the game changers in your world?
It would be great if it were easy to measure energy efficiency. Right now we’re trying to measure something that doesn’t happen, so it’s difficult if not impossible to do with precision. There are models out there for quantifying efficiency, but if we could make it more obvious and really help people to understand that not only does saving energy save you money but it also makes your home more comfortable and healthy to live in would really help.
What was your path to this role?
I went to American University for my Masters of Sustainability Management. During my second year of the program I was a sustainability intern for a PR firm that gave me the opportunity to work on many issues including energy efficiency and renewable energy. At first I thought I really wanted to work in the renewables space, but quickly realized during the process of doing informational interviews and reading dozens of job descriptions that in order to be successful in renewables you’re usually either an engineer, in finance, or in business development, and none of those are my core strengths. I had always been a great researcher and was able to use the work I’d done as an intern with the PR firm as part of my application for an internship with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). There I gained experience with using information technology to measure and verify energy efficiency which helped me get a fellowship with the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps program. I was embedded with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and learned how to design an energy efficiency program – things like what rebates to offer, what the rules should be, and how to incentivize commercial customers to do efficiency projects. Eventually those experiences are what made me a great fit for my current role.
What are your favorite resources?
I read both Utility Dive and Greentech Media regularly, but in my opinion the best podcast out there is the Energy Transition Show. It’s the most interesting, nerdiest podcast on the energy transition I’ve found and it’s awesome. Sometimes they can get really into the weeds, but that’s a good thing. They cover everything from carbon budgets to regional transmission of electricity to electric vehicles, and the recently did a 9 part series on climate science. It’s really interesting.
I also have to mention the Environmental Defense Fund’s Climate Corps fellowship. It’s been such a catalyst for my career, I feel so lucky to have gotten that fellowship.
Who (or what) is your sustainability hero?
I discovered that jobs like this existed when I read a book by Auden Schendler called Getting Green Done. He’s the sustainability manager for Aspen Ski Company and he’s on the board of a nonprofit called Protect Our Winters. I’m very passionate about snowboarding and about mountain communities and lifestyles and am concerned about the future of our snowpack. Reading that book helped me to understand that this was a job I could do. I even emailed him once, and he responded!
