Energy Engineering, an Emerging Discipline

Energy engineering is one of the more recent emerging engineering disciplines. It is a multidisciplinary field requiring an integration of physics, math, and chemistry with economic and environmental engineering. Energy engineers discover new energy sources to reduce dependency on fossil fuels that their use is detrimental to the environment. They find the most efficient and sustainable ways to operate buildings and manufacturing processes. This includes suggesting energy efficient measures to reduce heating, cooling, and lighting energy consumption of buildings. This paper provides an overview of the history of energy generation and the current state of energy supply and consumption around the world to bring to light the need for energy engineering discipline. Typical duties and work activities of energy engineers are discussed to identify the body of knowledge required for the discipline. Curriculum of several engineering schools that offer the degree in energy engineering are reviewed to show the type of courses offered