USC Energy Club Mission Statement
The USC Energy Club is a multidisciplinary, fully student run organization dedicated to creating a unified energy network on campus. The Club is open to both graduates and undergraduates across all the different USC schools. The USC Energy Club’s principle mission is educating students in energy while also paving their way toward a professional career in the sector upon completion of their time at USC.
On the macro level, the USC Energy Club seeks to raise the overall profile of energy on campus through various events and outreach to the local community. The USC Energy Club proudly resides on the cutting edge of campus research and entrepreneurial activity. The Club channels its vast resources to help facilitate this groundbreaking activity.
The Club organizes over 20 formal events per year, including but not limited to company site visits, happy hours, power plant site visits, thought leadership panels, lunch & learn events, and entrepreneurial whiteboarding nights.
The Energy Thought Leadership Panel Series is a unique forum for engaging energy leaders within the industry (solar, smart grid, energy finance, storage, policy, real estate, etc.). Executives are brought to campus from industry, regulatory bodies, venture capital/growth equity, and law firms. Representatives from both startups and large established firms are sought out for these events. Thought Leadership Panel events focus on creating a robust dialogue that eventually breaks down into smaller groups where students have intimate face-time with these distinguished energy leaders so their pressing questions are answered.
The Energy Solutions Project Group (ESPG) focuses on energy efficiency, distributed generation, and resource integration challenges from both an engineering and business perspective. The Energy Club helps create multi-disciplinary teams that in turn provide external and internal consulting services to the local LA business community and the USC Facilities team respectively. The objective of the ESPG is to reduce operating costs and emissions for the built environment, whether for an existing structure or a greenfield development. The ESPG’s final deliverable consists of specific recommendations based on research and analysis, as well as estimated cost and energy savings from advanced financial modeling simulations.
The Energy Club Whiteboarding Nights provide an opportunity for the creative cleantech juices to flow as this dynamic monthly event helps marry the technical and business pieces regarding energy. At these events, brainstorming is given top billing. Over the course of the session, the ideas are whittled down to just a small handful. From there, individuals self-select teams to work on implementing these ideas through a rigorous technical/market feasibility analysis. Over time, these teams will benefit from resources both at the Greif Center for Entrepreneurship and Stevens’ Institute for Innovation. Additionally, a specific portion of each session is also dedicated to allow for students to “fast pitch” their idea to the general group and receive feedback from the diverse array of students present. This feedback is valuable for the continued development of the idea. Overall, the Energy Club believes it can help serve as a launching pad for new companies to emerge from USC.
The USC Energy Club is a proud partner and organizer for the DOE’s Clean Energy Business Plan Competition (FLOW).