CenterPoint Energy’s Energy Safe Skills program readies future workforce for success

CenterPoint Energy is continuing its years-long collaboration with the National Energy Foundation (NEF) to promote the Energy Safe Skills program, an energy safety education program for secondary, vocational and college students.

“The goal of this program is to provide safe digging education to those individuals who are on the cusp of joining the construction, engineering and maintenance industries,” said Shane Alexander, Director of Damage Prevention and Public Awareness at CenterPoint Energy. “Understanding how to safely design, plan and work around buried utilities is critical to these students’ personal safety on the job and their success in their future careers.”

Available at no cost, this training includes an interactive presentation, student quiz and supplementary STEM-based activities that can be completed within one or two classroom sessions. The curriculum covers characteristics of natural gas, natural gas leak recognition and response, the importance of contacting 811 and safe digging best practices.

“The biggest benefit of this program for teachers is the interactive presentation and quiz are self-guided, which makes it easy to incorporate into a lesson plan regardless of the instructor’s previous experience with the topics,” said Kelly Flowers, Senior Program Director at NEF. “We have designed this training so the instructors can simply play the self-guided training for their students, or they can be more active in leading the discussion.”

For more information and to incorporate the Energy Safe Skills program into your educational curriculum, please visit EnergySafeSkills.org.

About CenterPoint Energy

As the only investor-owned electric and gas utility based in Texas, CenterPoint Energy, Inc. (NYSE: CNP) is an energy delivery company with electric transmission and distribution, power generation and natural gas distribution operations that serve more than 7 million metered customers in Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Ohio and Texas. As of September 30, 2023, the company owned approximately $39 billion in assets. With approximately 9,000 employees, CenterPoint Energy and its predecessor companies have been in business for more than 150 years. For more information, visit CenterPointEnergy.com.

About the National Energy Foundation

The National Energy Foundation (NEF) is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing energy literacy through the development, distribution and implementation of educational programs and materials. These resources relate primarily to energy, natural resources, energy efficiency and energy safety. Information about NEF is available at nef1.org.

For further information about the National Energy Foundation, members of the media may contact: Kelly Flowers, National Energy Foundation, 801-327-9500 ext.118.