For my internship, I worked with Conservation Services Group (CSG) located in Westborough, Massachusetts, which is a non-profit, energy efficiency company that operates throughout the country. It works in collaboration with state agencies and various utility companies (including NSTAR and National Grid) by helping them design and implement energy efficiency programs, and giving suggestions and recommendations for them to meet their energy saving goals. The utility companies then use these energy efficiency programs and have home energy specialists or auditors go into residential households and corporate buildings to give them suggestions on how to make their home/building more energy efficient (known as a home energy assessment or audit). CSG is the top energy efficiency company in the United States of America and I felt very fortunate to have the opportunity to intern for such a prestigious and well know organization.
During my time as an intern at CSG, I worked on various projects and case studies in the marketing department of their organization. I worked on several case studies related to customer engagements and the contact center. The purpose of these case studies was mainly to try and figure out ways to make the customer engagements smoother and as timely as possible, and determine anything that might be inconvenient to the customer. I went to the contact centers and actually witnessed the process of signing a customer up for an audit or home energy assessment and what it looks like from both ends (the employee and the customer). I was also able to go on an actual home energy assessment with the auditor (or energy specialist), who was an employee of Mass Save (a partner of CSG). This gave me a perspective on what actually happens in the home energy assessments that CSG helps the utility companies design and implement. Additionally, I got to go to Boston and see the governor of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, speak about his organization called Massachusetts Clean Energy Center. They are dedicated to “accelerating the success of clean energy technologies, companies and projects in Massachusetts—while creating high-quality jobs and long-term economic growth for the people of Massachusetts.”. This was a very enjoyable experience for me and made me feel good to know that my MA governor cares so much about helping to promote clean energies.
An environmental issue that CSG is attempting to mitigate is the rapidly growing rate of climate change. By promoting energy efficient practices and technologies, CSG is helping to reduce the amount of energy that our country is consuming. Since large amounts of energy in the US are created from fossil fuels, we consume less fossil fuels when we use less energy and emit fewer damaging greenhouse gases (GHG) into our atmosphere. Not only is CSG helping to reduce climate change but they are also saving people money in the process because by using energy efficient technologies and practices in your home you also save money on your electricity bills, potentially saving thousands of dollars each year.
My internship experience was made so much more memorable and enjoyable because of the wonderful and caring employees at CSG who made me feel that they cared about me as a person and wanted to help me succeed. They made me feel comfortable working at CSG on a daily basis which spurred me to work harder and do the best job possible in whatever was asked of me.
By Trevor MacDonald ‘15
Environmental and Natural Resource Economics Major + Business Minor
Rhody Green 