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International Energy Manager of 2015 goes to New Gold’s Andrew Cooper

The Canadian Institute for Energy Training (CIET) congratulates Certified Energy Manager (CEM) Andrew Cooper (also a Certified Measurement and Verification Professional, CMVP), who was awarded “International Energy Manager of the Year”.

Cooper works with mining company New Gold on its New Afton copper and gold mine near Kamloops, B.C.

“Energy Management is self-sustaining, something that is done by all employees on a day to day basis as part of what we do at New Gold. There’s a high level of energy awareness at New Afton”, Cooper said.

In March 2014, New Afton became the first mine in North America to be ISO 50001 certified, CIET noted. Later that year, New Afton won the Natural Resources of Canada (NR Canada) “Energy Performance Management” CIPEC Leadership Award for “outstanding commitment to responsible energy use and improving industrial energy efficiency”.

According to CIET, Cooper has established baseline energy performance models for the site, for cost account centres and for Significant Energy Uses (SEU’s), with the information displayed in the RtEMIS (an industrial energy management system). In addition, for each SEU, he has established over-consumption event alarms with specific operator-selected reason codes. Actual avoided energy in 2014 was in excess of 17.8 GWh, equivalent to 7.3% of the total 2013 energy consumption, CIET reported.

Cooper is also a speaker at local and international conferences, a member of the Canadian Technical Committee for the implementation of ISO 50001 in Canada, and a member of the Canadian Mining Innovation Council. He also assists Natural Resources Canada with advising industry members on the implementation of energy management systems, CIET said.