The potential, practice and challenges of tertiary renewable energy education on the World Wide Web

The Australian Cooperative Research Center for Renewable Energy (ACRE) through its tertiary training projects seeks to help meet the increasing global need for more tertiary trained scientists, engineers and policy makers with the knowledge and skills to develop and implement renewable and energy efficient systems and policies. As part of this objective it is developing a range of undergraduate and postgraduate university courses in renewable energy technology and systems, energy policy, energy efficiency and greenhouse issues which will be available internationally via the World Wide Web. This paper will present the approach and objectives of ACRE in developing its internationally focused, web-based, renewable energy courses. This includes a description of the course structure and examples of the web-based courses developed so far. A discussion of the potential, the practice and the challenges of offering tertiary renewable energy education on the web is given