Manufacturers bringing on energy managers as electricity prices soar

TORONTO—Responsible for optimizing a facility’s energy performance, energy managers are becoming an increasingly important part of a plant’s operations staff. The role involves everything from identifying savings at the machine level to pitching ideas to senior management and spearheading plant-wide energy-saving initiatives.

In province’s such as Ontario, which have experienced significant increases to the cost of electricity, energy managers are making their mark on companies’ bottom lines. Though they have been a mainstay a large plants such as General Motors’s Oshawa facility for years, the global trend toward energy and resource conservation has pushed more and more companies toward bringing on an onsite energy czar.

To address the growing need in Ontario, the IESO has instituted an energy manger incentive as part of its Industrial Accelerator Program. For eligible firms – those connected to the IESO’s transmission grid who employ a full-time energy manager – the IESO offers significant opportunities for savings.

The IESO offers customers an upfront payment of $50,000 and further incentives of up to $200,000 based on performance. The IESO calculates the total incentive by multiplying the savings achieved by $40 per megawatt hour up to a maximum of $200,000.

With the added bonus of the incentive, hiring an energy manager is simply a good business decision for many companies. Along with demonstrating strong corporate leadership in addressing growing global emissions, energy managers are often able to pay for themselves many times over by identifying cost cutting measures.