After 30 years of shepherding environmental and energy efficiency projects around the Northwest, Jennifer Eskil ’81 retired last spring with accolades.
Her employer, the Bonneville Power Administration, certainly recognized her achievements. BPA Administrator Elliot Mainzer presented the Walla Walla resident with the agency’s highest honor, the BPA Meritorious Service Award.
Eskil received the distinction during the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2017 awards program in March. The award recognizes individuals who have made extraordinary contributions to BPA’s mission through excellence in their chosen field for 10 years or more. Eskil was the industrial and agriculture sector lead in energy efficiency.
“Eskil is regarded as an exceptional leader whose honest, straightforward approach to project and team management over the past 30 years has helped shape BPA’s role as an economic engine of the Northwest and as an environmental steward,” said Mainzer.
It’s not the first recognition for Eskil. In 2013, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy gave a Champion of Energy Efficiency Award to Eskil for her role as industrial sector lead on BPA’s Energy Smart Industrial Program. The program helps companies better manage their energy use and reduce costs, and in 2015 BPA and Northwest publicly owned electric utilities reported a collective savings of more than 647 million kilowatt-hours of electricity—enough energy to power nearly 60,000 homes for a year—in partnership with 473 industrial companies over six years.
Her leadership as program manager for Waterwise, a BPA irrigation conservation agreement, also resulted in Eskil and three coworkers receiving a U.S. Department of Energy conservation award.
Originally from Sunnyside, she graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communication from WSU.
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