People in the renewable energy industry come from all kinds of backgrounds from town planning (like me), to engineers, foresters, environmental scientists and ecologists.

CREST at Loughborough University http://www.lboro.ac.uk/crest/ has a very good reputation for its renewable energy courses and it is going to run a short wind energy summer school in July 09.

The best way of getting into the industry is however to get some work experience. The British Wind Energy Association is the trade industry for the wind, wave a tidal sectors in the UK (it is currently thinking about changing its name to reflect the wave and tidal elements). BWEA has a jobs page and hosts events throughout the year, the main one being the annual conference and exhibition – http://www.bwea.com/events/index.html. The tickets for the conference are expensive however you can just by a ticket for the exhibition and have a chat with all the people on the different exhibition stands – you may learn more this way than going into the conference and it is a good networking opportunity.

I hope this helps.
Vicky

Their office is just down the road from where I live in Brighton, I think there are just two full-time members of the Koru team now, and they sit within the offices of Searoc a marine renewable energy consultancy, so the guys are surrounded almost entirely by engineers who are specialists in various aspects of renewable energy at industry level.

As somebody with no expertise who’s trying to forge a career in clean-tech/renewables, it surprises me that there aren’t more charities similar to the Koru Foundation.

Do you have any tips for enthusiastic young people like myself looking to acquire skills relevant to the industry>? Good courses, training programmes, or anything similar?

Many thanks in advance,

Charlie.