Presenters

The need for Renewable Energy Workforce Standards and how to implement them: the development and deployment of skills, competency standards, training guidelines, testing standards, and third-party qualification procedures. Objective quality standards provide a global framework that can be implemented nationally to assure financing organizations, development organizations, and end users that those with whom they are working have the skills and capability to provide the services expected. Assuring that renewable energy training programs and trainers meet high standards helps ensure that practitioners have the skills needed. Detailed information on how Renewable Energy Workforce Standards have been implemented in China, Sri Lanka, Morocco and other countries.

BIOGRAPHY
Mark C. Fitzgerald is the Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Power, Inc. , a non-profit organization established to develop and implement international quality and evaluation standards for renewable energy, energy efficiency, and distributed generation training and workforce development.

Fitzgerald was the founding publisher and editor of PV International magazine and Executive Director of the PV Information and Education Association in the 1980s; he has worked for a number of industry and government organizations, including the U.S. National Center for Appropriate Technology and the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Fitzgerald is currently the United States representative to the International Energy Agency’s Photovoltaic Power Systems Task 9 expert working group on Photovoltaics in Developing Countries, he is a certified lead auditor for ISO/IEC 17024, and he serves on the advisory board of the American Solar Energy Society’s Solar Today magazine. He is also the author of more than 25 technical and popular articles.

Where Information is Power
(http://www.pvpower.com )