Courses

The Environmental and Energy Systems Management certificate (administered entirely by the EMSE Department) consists of the following six courses.

• EMSE 6220: Environmental Management. This course is designed to provide an overview of the environmental challenges currently facing mankind, as well as the technical, political, administrative and social forces influencing the quality of the environment and the use of resources.  It includes coverage of government and industrial programs to combat pollution of the air, soil and water, and the legislative and regulatory regimes affecting environmental and related energy matters.
   
• EMSE 6260: Energy Management.This course is designed to answer questions such as:
       1. Can we use energy and its concepts to understand what is happening to our economy?
       2. Can we achieve sustainability at our present rate of consumption of natural resources?
       3. Can carbon taxes or tradable permits reduce our production levels of carbon dioxide?
       4. How serious are the health effects and risk of energy related effects like global climate change and urban air pollution?
       5. How can we design our buildings to consume less energy?
       6. Can we continue to use cars for transportation?
   
• EMSE 6245: Analytical Tools in Environmental Management. This is a survey course in environmental management focusing on tools for environmental assessment. It focuses on widely used environmental management tools, including quantitative risk assessment and management, wetlands delineation and permitting, biological assessment, analytical tools in determining environmental valuations for benefit-coast analyses, multi-objective decision making, and land use and comprehensive planning. Additionally, the course covers statutory and regulatory processes that relate to the environmental management area.
   
• EMSE 6285: Analytical Tools in Energy Management. This course provides a practical overview of techniques and thought processes useful for people who have decision-making responsibilities for energy systems. The course experience will help students to improve their abilities to:
       1. Identify, define and solve energy management problems related to energy efficiency, energy generation, and control of energy loads and resources,
       2. Use processes and tools to understand and manage energy systems and objectively address the economic aspects of energy management,
       3. Apply rules-of-thumb in order to efficiently assess energy management issues.
   
• EMSE 6296: Beyond Compliance -- Next Generation Environmental Self-governance. At the end of this course, students will have sufficient knowledge to implement and obtain certification of E&E management systems. In addition to the fundamental concepts that underlie the elements of international standards, students will learn how to organize and lead organizational efforts to create and implement such systems. They will also have a broad appreciation of next generation self-governance concepts and options currently being implemented or considered by private and public institutions. This course focuses primarily on the implementation of an environmental management system (EMS) and draws relevant parallels that are applicable to an energy management system (EnMS). 
   
• EMSE 6200: Policy Factors in Environmental and Energy Management. This course introduces students to the issues, solutions, approaches, and responses that affect the regulated environmental and energy community in the U.S. (It does not cover such specific policy factors in other countries, however, the principles and examples used are relevant, applicable, and useful in virtually all countries.) The course presents relevant factors largely from the users’ perspective rather than from the policy maker or enforcers’ side. Topics of interest include how environmental and energy laws are made; EPA’s compliance enforcement role and practices; environmental policy goals; how the policy system works and how it might be improved; private governance and private-sector consensus management standards; and trends on the horizon for next generation environmental private governance.

In this program, students will acquire knowledge and practical, implementation skills:

1. Applicable to environmental and energy management challenges facing mankind, as well as the technical, policy, administrative, and social forces influencing the use of resources and fossil fuels.
2. Regarding the legislative and regulatory regimes affecting environmental and related energy matters
3. Regarding the effects of energy use on the economy, its relationship to sustainability, how carbon taxes or tradable permits can work to reduce the production of carbon dioxide, and the ramifications of energy consumption to health, climate change, urban air quality, building design and operation, and to transportation.
4. To organize and lead organizational efforts to create and implement environmental and energy management systems.
5. To apply next generation self-governance approaches and tools developed by non-governmental organizations, regulatory agencies, and international standards organizations.
6. To establish the organizational need for an environmental or energy management system, to structure the system implementation team, to evaluate organizational requirements, risks, and operations that need to be managed, to scope the breadth and depth of the system, to set objectives, metrics, and operational controls, to create action plans, to do system maintenance through corrective actions, updates, audits, and management reviews, and to apply a variety of tools and aids for management system development and implementation.
7. Become familiar with the responses of the regulated community to both “1st GEN” and “Private Governance” mandates and opportunities.
8. Understand the elements and goals of formal management systems for environmental and energy management based on international standards.
9. Gain knowledge of US EPA challenge programs that over a number of years injected “next-generation” thinking into strategies to improve environmental performance.
10. Understand the challenges faced in shifting environmental policy to any degree from a “command-and-control” paradigm to a “private governance” paradigm.