Financing and Deploying Clean Energy Certificate Program

We have outlined the recommended technical requirements for the best course experience. Please adhere to them for optimal interactivity with the program.

Platforms

This program will use Yale's special instance of the Canvas platform to deliver all course materials. Note that we do not recommend the use of the Canvas app. The Canvas site is best experienced using a laptop or desktop computer. Access to the Canvas platform will be granted immediately prior to the start of the program. There is nothing you need to do in advance! 

We use Zoom to conduct live sessions and office hours. Please be prepared to download the Zoom application to your desktop to make use of the best features of the application during our highly-interactive live sessions. 

Devices

You should plan on accessing the material and doing your homework on a laptop or desktop computer. Previous participants have been unable to complete the program on a Chromebook, due to the need to use Microsoft Excel during the Renewable Energy Project Finance course. 

Please ensure that your desktop or laptop is equipped with the following:

• Internal or external camera
• Internal or external speakers 
• Internal or external microphone

Your device must be running one of the following operating systems:

• Microsoft (Windows 7 and newer)
• Mac/Apple (Mac OS X 10.6 and newer)

Note that while Linux-based operating systems are adequate for most activities during the Certificate, they do not support the full functionalities of Microsoft Excel such as What-If Analysis. The Renewable Energy Project Finance course will require you have access to a fully functioning version of Excel. We do not recommend you use a Linux-based system during this program. 

Computer Speed and Processor

It is recommended that you use a computer 5 years old or newer when possible with at least:

• 4GB of RAM
• 2GHz processor

Applications or Software

This program requires extensive use of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel, and while tablets or mobile devices are adequate to view the content on Canvas or participate in live sessions, tablets or mobile devices are not sufficient to write policy memos or develop financial models.

Internet

Optimal connection speed is a minimum speed of 600kbps. Please use this link to check the Internet speed from your location.

The learning management system is best experienced on current and first previous major releases of the following browsers:

• Chrome 119 and 120
• Firefox 120 and 121 (Extended Releases are not supported)
• Safari 16 or 17

Screen Readers

Each Canvas feature and release is manually tested with the following screen reader and browser combinations:

• JAWS (latest version for Chrome/Firefox on Windows)
• NVDA (latest version for Chrome/Firefox on Windows)
• VoiceOver (latest version for Safari/Chrome on Macintosh and iOS mobile)
• Talkback (latest version for Android mobile)

Please click on the following links to access the course materials using a mobile device like iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch) or Android (Tablet, Smartphone).