The Eco Institution’s Eco Consultant Certification Course is the most comprehensive “green auditing” course ever developed. The 12-unit introductory course provides certification-based training designed to help entrepreneurs, business professionals, and other individuals such as stay at home parents and even recent college graduates to launch, market, and build a thriving Eco Consulting practice in their local communities. Targeted clients for Eco Consultants’ services include homeowners, small and midsize businesses, schools, churches, and other local nonprofit organizations.
The course is written by Kevin Hopkins, a trained economist and former Director of the White House Office of Policy Information and former senior policy counsel to the White House Office of Science and Technology. “We believe that Eco Consultant training and certification will be vital to protecting our planet and safeguarding our children’s future in the years to come,” declared Mr. Hopkins, upon announcing the course’s release. “The London School of Economics recently issued a report that emphasized that global environmental solutions must begin at the local-community level. And there is no more appropriate group of people to implement these solutions then those who live and work in the communities themselves.”
Creating an Army of Eco Consultants
The Eco Institution’s Eco Consultant Certification Course is the latest and most prominent example of the burgeoning field of Eco Consulting. A June 23, 2009, article in the San Francisco Chronicle noted that there were currently about 3,000 mostly part-time Eco Consultants currently operating in the United States, including architects, interior designers, and real estate agents. The Eco Institution hopes to triple this number within the next 18 months, and to extend the profession beyond the borders of the United States into Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
“The need for experienced and well-trained Eco Consultants has never been greater,” says the Eco Institution’s Mr. Hopkins. “The U.S. government’s economic stimulus package contained nearly $80 billion for ‘green initiatives,’ including green energy and green transportation projects. If these efforts are to succeed, they will require an army of Eco Consultants pre-positioned in local communities to help homeowners, business owners, and organizations to put the ideas into practice. And that’s just what our trained and certified Eco Consultants will do.”
Indeed, the Obama Administration has projected that the U.S. government’s green initiatives will create from 500,000 to one million new “green jobs” over the next few years. The broader economic effect of these efforts, however, could be even greater. As University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin has noted in The Nation, “Spending the same amount of money on building a clean energy economy will create three times more jobs... than would spending on our existing fossil fuel infrastructure. The transformation to a clean energy economy can therefore serve as a major long-term engine of job creation.”
Course Certification and Contents
Getting certified through the Eco Institution’s new Eco Consultant Certification Course requires hard work and effort, but is well within the reach of experienced business owners and business professionals as well as business-savvy employees, college students, and homemakers seeking additional income. The Eco Institution sets no fee structures that its trained and certified Eco Consultants are required to charge and makes no guarantees of any specific income stream, but many Eco Consultants currently earn from $100 to $400 per home or business audit, and several hundred dollars or more from follow-on work with the same client. Additionally, Eco Consultants choose their company’s own name and location, set their own hours, and determine which specific services they will offer and how much they will charge. There are no sales territories or sales quotas. Eco Consultants also keep 100 percent of whatever they earn from clients, and do not have to pay a “sales commission” or licensing fee to the Eco Institution for ongoing use of Eco Institution materials.
The Eco Consultant certification process has been designed for maximum flexibility and adaptability to the needs of individual Eco Consultant trainees. Employing the latest in web-based instructional technology, the Eco Consultant Certification Course is available online, and can be studied at the student’s own pace and on his or her own schedule. The 12-unit introductory course covers such substantive topics as energy conservation, water conservation, green transportation, and recycling, as well as such practical subjects as auditing a home or business, operating and marketing an Eco Consulting practice, and becoming a community environmental advocate. More advanced courses will cover environmental, energy-conservation, and engineering topics in even greater depth, and will help to prepare students to secure their globally recognized LEED certification.
Each of the introductory course’s 12 units also includes a detailed, easy-to-read text-based lesson, and is accompanied by a series of thought-provoking exercises as well as phone- and email-based access to a professional Eco Consulting Coach who will guide students through both the substantive and practical aspects of setting up and building their Eco Consulting practice. An optional but highly prized feature of the Eco Institution’s offerings is an information-rich “Start Up Kit,” which includes a 10 page website, dozens of professionally designed client handouts, worksheets, auditing guides, and marketing and promotional tools—all of which can be private-labeled with the Eco Consultant’s name and contact information. The “Start Up Kit” also includes placards and posters that Eco Consultants can display at homes or businesses that they have audited, which document that these structures have been “green-certified.”
Signing Up for the Eco Consultant Certification Course
Signing up for the Eco Consultant Certification Course couldn’t be easier. Interested individuals should visit the Eco Institution web site at www.ecoinstitution.com. Otherwise, students may telephone the Eco Institution directly at (877) 235-3170. For more information regarding this release, please contact Kevin Hopkins at media@ecoinstitution.com.
