Derby Biz Gets Ready To Showcase Its AGE

After more than two decades of helping industrial companies be clean and green, Environmental Management Consultants Inc. (EMC) of Derby is getting ready to showcase its energy efficient services for home and business owners.

EMCs energy auditing branch, Alternative Global Energy (AGE), will be the star of the company’s new showroom, set to open this winter. The showroom is located next to EMC headquarters at 412 Roosevelt Drive.

EMC President Susan Giordano, of Seymour, said the company is still finalizing the showroom’s design and scope, but it will focus on what AGE offers to homeowners and industrial and commercial companies along with the promotion of energy saving devices such as energy efficient light bulbs and solar-powered showers and lights.

We go out and do home energy audits and it is pretty exciting when homeowners see the effect,” Giordano said of AGE. The audit shows how they can save on heating their homes and what they can learn about reducing their electric bill. For example, new energy efficient light bulbs can save up to 75 percent of the electricity used for lighting, which is pretty significant.”

AGE is an approved vendor for the Connecticut Light and Power and United Illuminating home energy services programs, which offer energy checkups for residences through the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund.

The checkups consist of a review of lighting and household fixtures and a blower door test” to determine how much air the house is leaking. After going over the results of the study, AGE offers the homeowner energy efficient bulbs, low flow shower heads and faucets and a kilowatt meter to measure how much energy their home appliances use.

AGE staff members also discuss the federal Energy Star program and how homeowners can obtain coupons for energy-efficient appliances.

Our goal for the showroom is to have people learn about our energy auditing and our products,” Giordano said.

A Natural Extension

Giordano started AGE roughly a year and a half ago as a natural extension of EMCs services.

The Ansonia native founded EMC in Shelton more than 25 years ago after working at Raybestos-Manhattan Friction Materials Company for seven years. EMC provides air and water waste management to ensure that manufacturing companies are in compliance with pollution, health and safety laws. EMC has clients across the country, including local clients in Newtown and Bridgeport, and international clients that operate in South America, Asia and Europe.

Seeing a need for trained individuals in the environment and energy fields and the opportunity to help the unemployed and unemployed find work, Giordano started a technical school called The Institute for Environmental Management and Training (IEMT) 10 years ago.

The school is approved by the Department of Higher Education to offer more than 100 courses in safety, environment and energy. Certified teachers and professionals within EMC teach classes at company headquarters on Roosevelt Drive in Derby.

The school boasts the state’s first weatherization lab, which is housed at EMC former home at 10 Long Hill Ave. in Shelton and IEMT also has a portable weatherization lab for training throughout the state and New York.

The school hosts an eight-week job training course through a grant from Environmental Protection Agency’s Brownfields Program that helps the unemployed individuals become licensed in energy auditing and environmental careers.

We’ve heard from the EPA that our school is one of the best in country at recruiting, training and placing students,” Giordano said. We aim to have our students go out and get a job very shortly after leaving school.”

EMC has hired many IEMT students over the years, Giordano said, and currently has seven graduates within its 35-person workforce.

You take the core of what EMC and IEMT do and it was just a real natural fit for us to expand into the growing field of energy auditing,” she said.

For more information about EMC, IEMT and AGE, visit www.emc1.com.

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