Sustainability Energy Manager

Day to day, you're working with utility bills, energy consumption data, and building systems data — analyzing where energy is being used, identifying efficiency opportunities, modeling the ROI on efficiency investments, and managing the projects that execute them. Renewable energy procurement — PPAs, RECs, on-site solar — is often a significant part of the workload.

The rhythm mixes ongoing monitoring and reporting (tracking consumption against targets, preparing energy performance reports) with project work (conducting energy audits, managing retro-commissioning projects, running RFPs for renewable energy contracts). Demand response programs add a real-time operational dimension that other sustainability work often lacks.

The hard part is building the business case for energy investments in organizations that view energy as a cost of doing business rather than a strategic lever. Getting facilities managers to prioritize efficiency retrofits, or getting finance to approve a 7-year PPA, requires translating energy data into financial terms that non-specialists can act on.