The agency hopes that qualified professionals will bring about greater energy efficiency here, which would reduce global warming and raise cost savings for companies.

Workers, such as engineers, consultants and facilities operations managers, whose job function deal with managing the energy resouces of companies or factories can tap on the grant.

It will offset more than 80 per cent of the cost of the Singapore Certified Energy Manager training programme, introduced in 2006.

It offers a formal training and certification system for energy managers at two levels - associate and professional.

Mr Lee Yuen Hee, NEA's chief executive officer, said: 'With the growing need for energy and cost efficiency, there will be an increasing demand for qualified energy managers especially in large manufacturing and building facilities in the coming years.

"Through the SCEM training grant, we hope to develop local expertise and capability in professional energy management and encourage the certification of up to 1,000 energy managers in the next two to four years. This effort will contribute towards our goal of improving energy efficiency in Singapore.'