Financial Analysis with RETScreen

The Clean Energy Solutions Center, in partnership with CanmetENERGY (Government of Canada), hosted this webinar-based training on the RETScreen Clean Energy Management Software.

Over the next 30 years the world will need to invest well-over $300 billion in pre-construction transaction costs for renewable energy, cogeneration and energy efficiency projects. Looking at just the category of commercial and institutional buildings in Canada, for example, it is estimated that roughly $5 billion would be required to fund energy audits of the 470,000 existing facilities. The time and cost required to prepare these studies are significant market barriers and can be reduced dramatically with RETScreen.

To accelerate the breaking down of these critical barriers, NRCan is transforming the internationally recognized RETScreen software into a new expert decision intelligence software platform. This advanced analytical tool, called RETScreen Expert, will leverage a global database of project input parameters, an expert knowledge base of best practices and an intelligent decision engine to enable stakeholders to very quickly identify, assess, optimize and track the performance of clean energy investments over the entire project life cycle.

The webinar presentations were followed by an interactive question and answer session with the audience.

This webinar was also offered in French.

Panelists

Dinesh S. Parakh

Dinesh S. Parakh manages strategic partnerships, communications, business development, and training & capacity building for RETScreen International at Natural Resources Canada’s CanmetENERGY research centre in Varennes, Quebec. He is also the lead author of the RETScreen Clean Energy Legal Toolkit and the RETScreen Clean Energy Policy Toolkit. A lawyer in Ontario, Dinesh has worked in international development since 1999 with extensive experience throughout Africa. He was formerly with the United Nations Development Programme and World Food Programme in South Africa, as well as the Canadian International Development Agency in Ottawa, Canada. Dinesh holds a B.A. from Yale University, and an M.A. and J.D. from the University of Toronto.

Gregory J. Leng

Gregory J. Leng is the creator and Director of the RETScreen Clean Energy Management Software at Natural Resources Canada’s CanmetENERGY research centre in Varennes, Quebec. He specializes in the clean energy market, technology and finance interface and has been working in the renewable energy and energy efficiency fields since 1987. Prior to joining NRCan, Greg was based in Hyderabad, India as the India Country Manager for the International Fund for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. Greg obtained a Master of Science degree from the University of Massachusetts Lowell in Energy Engineering (Solar Energy Engineering) and a Bachelor of Commerce degree (Marketing and International Business) from McGill University.