Page 5 - Careers in Renewable Energy

waste energy, water, and other precious resources. Moreover, stud-
ies have shown that structures erected in the traditional way tend to
waste huge amounts of those resources. According to science writer
Gregory McNamee in his book Careers in Renewable Energy, “If
there’s a dripping faucet, it’s dripping at a rate of as much as 20 gal-
lons a day, a drop at a time. If the house is drafty, then it can lose the
same amount of heat or cooled air through leakage as it would if a
window-sized hole was simply punched through a wall and left open
to the elements. The loss from little leaks can amount to more than a
third of your utility bill, or even more.”
The green construction industry, with green construction man-
agers at its forefront, strives to reverse such wasteful practices and
build structures that are resource and energy friendly. This approach
is not simply less wasteful and better for people’s pocketbooks and
the nation’s economy, it has also in recent years become the wave of
the future for new construction in the United States and a number
of other countries. In Careers in Renewable Energy, Gregory Esau, a
green builder in Vancouver, Canada, explains:

If you’re going to be part of the construction business
for the next thirty or forty years, then you’re going to
have to make sustainability and green building a big
part of your repertoire. A lot of [cities and towns], for
instance, are going carbon-neutral [minimizing the
use of fossil fuels], and we’re going to have challenges
[in] building the buildings, what with all the big ma-
chines we have to use! We’ll need good people to help
us figure out solutions to problems like that, workers
who are on what I call a green track.

Leading those “green track workers” are the construction man-
agers who oversee the crews of carpenters, plumbers, electricians,
painters, and other tradespersons who create new houses and other
structures. Indeed, a green construction manager, or superintendent,
is in charge of an entire green construction site. He or she coordinates
all design and building procedures. These include selecting, hiring,
and supervising the work of the carpenters, plumbers, and others
involved. What is more, the construction manager is tasked with

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