Title of Event:

Name of Organisation:

Date and time of the session:

The RETScreen International Clean Energy Decision Support Centre - Empowering cleaner energy decisions in 211 countries worldwide

Natural Resources Canada, CANMET Energy Technology Centre

June 22nd, 2006 at 13h30-15h30

Key Highlights

1. Estimated no of participants: 20 people
2. Stakeholder group representation at the event: People who are in a position to asses the viability of potential clean energy projects, including engineers, architects, community planners, NGOs, local authorities. government policy makers, and university students.
3. What were the expected objectives: To raise awareness of the RETScreen Software and to share best practices on clean energy project analysis.
4. What did the networking event achieve: Raising awareness: attendees stated that they will further use the RETScreen Software as part of their work and share the information with their colleagues. RETScreen was considered best practices in clean energy project analysis.

2. What were the core issues identified in your event as they relate to the theme and sub-themes of WUFIII?

Sub-themes "Energy - Local Consumption and Global Impact": Numerous opportunities for implementing commercially viable energy efficient and renewable energy technologies around the world are being missed because various planners and decision-makers still do not routinely consider them a the critically important initial planning stage, even when these technologies have proven to be cost-effective and reliable in similar situations elsewhere. Difficulty in assessing such potential projects and the cost of those analyses represent a major issue that limits clean energy project deployment.

3. What were the main points raised by panellists and participants in relation to these different issues? What new ideas have been generated as a result of the discussion?

RETScreen is making a significant contribution to sustainable development throughout the world by distributing free-of-charge tools that saves money while helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Since RETScreen provides a common evaluation platform for the various stakeholders involved in a project and facilitates dialogue across countries as a multilingual tool, it helps accelerate the development, dissemination and deployment of clean energy projects.

4. What process steps have been identified in your event that could help turn ideas into operational reality?

With over 85,000 people in 213 countries that already use this tool and generally consider RETScreen as an international standard for clean energy project analysis, and because RETScreen is distributed free-of-charge over the Internet ( www.retscreen.net ), participants had indicated that they will further look at both the RETScreen Software and Training Course that are available in 21 languages covering 2/3 of the world population. As a result, additional potential clean energy projects will be assessed around the world .