Complementary Strategies and Research

EEMI is primarily focused on management standards, tools, strategies and approaches that can be implemented by organizations, enterprises and municipalities. EEMI will engage experts to further develop and promote complementary strategies that had their start in various government agencies and international institutions in the early nineties. During that period, some of these approaches proved to be ahead of their time. We believe that the time is now ripe and that academic institutions like GW can help to promote acceptance through education and training that lends legitimacy to the complementary solutions based on standards and systems (e.g., international consensus standards; Energy Star; LEED, and others). These solutions and strategies are complementary to the traditional regulatory mandates such as those derived from the Clean Air, Clean Water and Toxic Substances Control Acts, and synergistic with technology (hardware and software) approaches from industry that increasingly undergird novel applications. It is gratifying to take note of the recent advances in the prevalence and sophistication of technological approaches being offered by prominent industrial providers and their broad application to standards and systems-based solutions.

Our plans for EEMI contemplate research initiatives that will seek to advance technological approaches and promote and exploit the potential synergies that emerge from their development. EEMI sponsored research is also expected to focus on the measurement of attitudes, acceptance, implementation success, and comparative results of alternative strategies. For example, how effective have such strategies been in improving efficiencies and raising performance? How do they compare with those of traditional approaches? How do implementation costs compare between such strategies and their traditional counterparts? What does it take for organizations to maintain and keep alternative solutions alive and effective over the long term when they are not being driven by regulatory mandates and the fear of penalties?