Energy Engineering, an Emerging Discipline

Energy engineering is one of the more recentemerging engineering disciplines. It is a multidisciplinary fieldrequiring an integration of physics, math, and chemistry witheconomic and environmental engineering. Energy engineersdiscover new energy sources to reduce dependency on fossilfuels that their use is detrimental to the environment. They findthe most efficient and sustainable ways to operate buildings andmanufacturing processes. This includes suggesting energyefficient measures to reduce heating, cooling, and lightingenergy consumption of buildings. This paper provides anoverview of the history of energy generation and the currentstate of energy supply and consumption around the world tobring to light the need for energy engineering discipline.Typical duties and work activities of energy engineers arediscussed to identify the body of knowledge required for thediscipline. Curriculum of several engineering schools that offerthe degree in energy engineering are reviewed to show the typeof courses offered.