Overview

This Module introduces the Final Project in full detail. You will learn what is required to complete the project and place it in the context of the global energy market. The learning objectives of the course include not just exposure to the structure and performance of energy markets, but most importantly, the determination of what the structure and performance of these markets mean for the business in which you might be engaged. To create this “laboratory” where you can test out you hypothesis of viability, we need to create a “project” against which we can test certain assumptions. For this purpose, we will spend a week understanding just what is expected for the project as well as identifying some of the major parameters of the project.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• Discuss elements of the semester project: clients, local, project charters, stakeholder, costs and benefits
• Investigate ideas for the client, locale, and major stakeholders for your project
• Examine the roles of the client, locale, and major stakeholders for the project
• Explain the importance of a project charter
• Explain the importance of a stakeholder register
• Consider the other costs and benefits of the project besides simply the financial

Reading Materials

• Brown, A. S. (2005). The charter: Selling your project. Paper presented at PMI Global Congress 2005
• Murali, L. (2023). What is Stakeholder Analysis?
• Project Management Academy (2021). What is a Stakeholder Register?

Also, please watch the following video interviews with Nicolle Natali. If either of these videos is slow to load here on this page, you can always access it and all course videos in the Media Gallery in Canvas.

Video: Interview with Nicolle Natali (2024) (12:46)

Once the video begins to play, you can access the transcript for this video by choosing the transcript icon, to the right of the magnifying glass icon, in the upper right corner of the video player.

Video: Interview with Nicolle Natali (2025) (20 minutes)

Once the video begins to play, you can access the transcript for this video by choosing the transcript icon, to the right of the magnifying glass icon, in the upper right corner of the video player.

What is due for Lesson 2?

This lesson will take us one week to complete. Please refer to the Course Calendar for specific due dates. Specific directions for the assignment below are in the Lesson modules in Canvas.

• Complete the assigned readings and viewings for Lesson 2
• Participate in the Zoom discussion
• Complete Quiz 2
• Project work: preliminary Project Charter (due at the end of Lesson 3)
• Project work: preliminary Stakeholder Register (due at the end of Lesson 3)

Questions?

If you have any questions, please post them to our Questions? discussion forum (not email). I will not be reviewing these. I encourage you to work as a cohort in that space. If you do require assistance, please reach out to me directly after you have worked with your cohort --- I am always happy to get on a one-on-one call, or even better, with a group of you.

As part of a Master’s Degree in Professional Studies, this course emphasizes real-world application. To support this, we introduce the project within the first few weeks so you can immediately begin applying course concepts to a real-world problem—ideally one relevant to your current or future profession or simply of strong interest. Either way, you’ll learn with an eye toward how market structure and financial principles affect your chosen project.

The project’s purpose is to let you define an important or interesting problem and explore how the dynamic regulatory and market landscape influences outcomes. You won’t be penalized for choosing a project that’s too ambitious or too modest; discovering that is part of the learning process. The course design allows for adjustments if needed. You have significant agency in shaping your learning, but your instructor and cohort are here to help if the lack of strict “guardrails” feels challenging.

The energy transition is highly dynamic at this point, so flexibility mirrors the industry we're studying.

The project will be defined as such:
Investigate an energy project that you, as a developer or corporate decision maker, would like to construct or replace. Your work will include:

• Developing a full financial model to inform investment decisions and test scenarios
• Creating a complete stakeholder register
• Reviewing how governmental policy affects your project

The project is worth 700 points, divided as shown below.

Each of the tasks will require some quantification to ultimately assess the financial value of your project, but there will also be a required write-up of the derivation of your values. Instructions on requirements will be provided in each module.

Here is an EME 801 Project presentation from December 2023 by former RESS student Kelli Volkomer. This is an example of an excellent project. It is just an example. Please use your best method of presentation and definitely deliver your assignments in your own "voice." A huge part of professional learning is finding the ways that the professional communicates best. This course is intended to be a laboratory for that as well teaching you a whole lot about energy finance and energy markets...

Even more exciting than this banger of a presentation is the fact that this project was actually built, and is producing energy as of November 2025. Please listen to my interview with Kelli to understand how this got done as well as how EME801 was helpful to her along the way. 

Please watch the following video: 
Commercial Carport & Rooftop Photovoltaic Project by Kelli Volkomer. (33 min. 07 sec.)

Once the video begins to play, you can access the transcript for this video by choosing the transcript icon, to the right of the magnifying glass icon, in the upper right corner of the video player.

Below is a recorded interview between Kelli and your instructor. 

Please watch the following video (19 min. 24 sec.)

Again, once the video begins to play, you can access the transcript for this video by choosing the transcript icon, to the right of the magnifying glass icon, in the upper right corner of the video player.

In the case of your project, you will be required to identify exactly who is going to pay for the energy that your project is going to produce. This “who” can be many different people or entities, but determining this upfront will be very important. For example, we could have a client be a residential customer installing a solar rooftop, a large commercial building upgrading its HVAC system, a big box retail customer wanting to “green up” its energy purchases, a large manufacturer who wants to install a combined heat and power system or a government agency who wants to take advantage of latent energy in its wastewater system to provide heat to district energy. The possibilities are really quite broad for defining your client.

Client definition is important though because the client will be the entity paying for the energy that is generated (saved) from your project. This may be different than the actual end-user of the energy and it is important to make sure that the client’s requirements are kept utmost in mind for the greatest success of the project.

The course is designed so that the student can be very creative with respect to client selection. There will not be specific prohibitions on client selection, however, the knowledge base of the evaluator is limited and the further the student strays from conventional technologies as well as political and economic regimes that are familiar, the more difficult will it be for there to be accurate feedback and evaluation. Innovation is encouraged, but please be ready to defend and justify your assumptions and parameters.

The locale is the “where.” But the “where” has many characteristics. For example:

1. The geography
2. The demography
3. The locale economy
4. The local, state and federal policy, government and attitude toward energy projects
5. The general supply chain including labor, transportation availability of energy
6. The local and regional energy market and infrastructure

This is not an extensive list, but gives one a general idea of what will need to be researched to develop your project.

A project charter is a formal, typically short document that describes your project in a general fashion — including what the objectives are, how it will be carried out, and who the stakeholders are. It is a crucial ingredient in planning the project because it is used throughout the project lifecycle and is a living breathing document that may change from start to finish. It provides a very simple guideline to which the project manager and team members can refer for clear guidance when reaching or (not reaching) milestones. It can be modified as the project evolves, but will always provide the direction to ensure that the project does not drift. Typical elements of the project charter will include the following elements:

• Reasons for the project
• Objectives and constraints of the project
• The main stakeholders
• Risks identified
• Benefits of the project
• General overview of the budget

As we will be going into a great deal of detail on many of these elements as that is the point of the course, the only elements that the Project Charter that must be included for now are:

• Reasons for the project
• The potential benefits of the project
• The locale
• The client
• The stakeholders
• The technology

In Canvas, please take a look at the example project charter and stakeholder register submitted by your peers in a previous semester. They provide great examples for how to think about this.

So this is the rest of the “who” after we define the client.

According to the Project Management Institute, project stakeholders are defined as: “Individuals and organizations who are actively involved in the project, or whose interests may be positively or negatively affected as a result of project execution or successful project completion.” An addition to this definition would also include those who believe their interest may be affected by the project. This is a very useful definition as it allows us to cast a very wide net to make sure that all the people and institutions that will be affected by our project are considered.

Stakeholder Identification Process:

While the stakeholder identification process is begun and hopefully very close to completed at the beginning of project development, it is an on-going process with certain stakeholders leaving and potentially appearing as the project evolves. It is therefore very important to be flexible and alert for the disappearance and emergence of stakeholder as the project develops. The specific steps we can take in the Identification Process are:

1. Review the project documents
2. Brainstorm with your project team
3. Communicate
4. Develop and maintain a stakeholder register

Let’s take a look at each of the steps to define what we must do to complete these steps:

1. Review the Project Documents – There will be certain project documents that can be reviewed to help identify stakeholders. In particular, the project charter and previous Stakeholder registers will be of particular assistance. Your project charter will have identified technology, locale, and size of the project. This should help you think about who the stakeholders will be. Previous Stakeholder Registers will allow the project manager to avoid “re-inventing the wheel.” Other documents which will be important are the various government regulations governing solar development, utility and ISO tariffs, labor standards, impact assessment studies from non -governmental organizations and solar industry standards.
2. Brainstorm with your project team - The project team in this case will be your cohort in this course, but if you were working for a solar development company, there would be a project team which would provide you with assistance here.
3. Communicate – As stakeholders are identified and brought into the project appropriately, they may also help to identify others who will be affected or need to be consulted.
4. Develop and Maintain a Stakeholder Register - This document will allow for documentation of the Stakeholder Management process. Typical information about the stakeholders which will be included in the Stakeholder Register are:
   • Name
   • Contact information
   • Title
   • Role on Project
   • Interests
   • Expectations
   • Influence
   • Impact
   • Internal/External

A full development of the stakeholder register along with the actual information for your locale, technology and client for your project will be required as a completion requirement for the final Project write-up.

Let us now take a look at who the most likely stakeholders for a solar project might be:

• The Client
• The Developer (you)
• The Lender(s)
• The local authorities (we'll get further into this in the policy section
• The State
• The Federal Government
• Labor
• Local non-governmental groups
• State and national non-governmental groups
• Local Politicians
• Local Businesses
• Elements in the non-labor supply chain

See if you can increase the list. Remember to appropriately de-risk the project, the identification of, and communication with, the important stakeholders is paramount from the very beginning.

Certain Stakeholder Roles May Include:

The Developer (you)

The developer is responsible to devise and manage the whole process from ideation to delivery of the project and in many cases through portions of the active life of the project.

The Lender

The lender provides capital dollars to the project. The lender will require statements of satisfactory financial viability ( a Pro Forma among other documents) as well as proof of other approvals (environmental, utility, zoning…)

Authorities at Various Levels

Each of these may have to weigh in or grant certain approvals.

Labor

There are some different facets to the labor question. Making sure that there is appropriate human resources to complete the specific project is important, but there may also be certain areas of backlash as other workers could be displaced by solar energy. There is a significant push to ensure that re-training of energy workers occurs to ensure a renewable energy workforce that is fit for purpose.

Local Non-governmental Groups

There may be local interest groups who are very strong supporters of sustainable development for instance; there may also be local interest groups opposed to your development for reasons such as clashing with the natural landscape.

State and National Non-Governmental Groups, Local Politicians, and Local Businesses

Similar to the local groups support and opposition can be found for solar development which could impact your project.

Elements in the Non-Labor Supply Chain

Supply chain issues are much more prevalent with the current level of solar penetration than they have ever been. Special care to treat these very important stakeholders well will mitigate significant risks in delivery of the project.

See if you can develop these roles further in your own thinking as well as identify more as we work through the course. Please take a look at the sample stakeholder register that has been submitted by a student in AE 878 that is a great example of how to think about this:

A good way to think about stakeholder management in particular is to look at the following image:

Here we see the intersection of interest and influence. As we work through the course, see if you can think of the stakeholders that will be introduced and how you might manage them. While this is not a course in project management, we are learning about energy markets through the lens of developing a project.

Here we want to be sure that as we talk about energy markets we become aware that there may be benefits of energy development outside of the localized strict financial analysis There may be incremental jobs as a result of the development. There could be reduction in carbon footprint as a result of the project. There could be many others. There may also be costs associated with the project that are not captured in the strict localized financial analysis such as increased carbon, flicker from a wind turbine, or the fouling of the view through a solar development.

This Module introduced the Final Project in full detail. We hope you learned what is required to complete the project and place it in the context of the global energy market. The learning objectives of the course include not just exposure to the structure and performance of energy markets, but most importantly, the determination of what the structure and performance of these markets mean for the business in which you might be engaged. To create this “laboratory” where you can test out you hypothesis of viability, we are creating a “project” against which we can test your assumptions. For this purpose, we spent this week understanding just what is expected for the project as well as identifying some of the major parameters of the project.

Reminder - Complete all of the Lesson 2 tasks!

You have reached the end of Lesson 2! Double-check the What is Due for Lesson 2? list on the first page of this lesson to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Lesson 3.