Mark Lenssen, an engineer with Puget Sound Energy, has been named one of the “New Faces of Engineering 2009” by the National Engineers Week Foundation.

Nominated by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), Lenssen beat out 19 other international candidates for an award that is one of the top honors available to engineers 30-years-old and younger.

Lenssen, 30, joined PSE in August 2005, as an engineer-in-training. After a promotion to energy management engineer, Lenssen now helps commercial and industrial facilities become more environmentally sustainable through energy efficiency.

Lenssen works with PSE commercial and industrial customers–as well as local and national contractors–to analyze energy efficiency projects in order to determine the level of PSE incentives individual business customers are eligible to receive. He also performs energy audits of customer facilities to identify systems and equipment that can be cost-effectively upgraded to be more energy efficient.

Through his work at PSE, Lenssen has improved energy efficiency in more than 100 projects, saving more than 7.5 million kilowatt hours per year, or enough to power more than 600 homes in Western Washington for a year.