SSF Resilient Energy Certificate Program › SSF Program Standards
Educational Standards
SSF Program Standards
Practitioner-built professional education, held to a real standard
What you get
Every course is built and taught by a practitioner with recognized standing in their field: former agency leadership, published authors, founders of firms actively doing this work today. You're learning from people who make these decisions for a living, not from a curriculum written once and handed to an instructor.
Several instructors also hold academic affiliations in their own right. Joseph Fiksel co-founded the Center for Resilience at The Ohio State University. Scott Sklar teaches at George Washington University. Edward Saltzberg, SSF's Executive Director, is a visiting scholar at GW's Environmental and Energy Management Institute. These are personal credentials the instructors bring with them, not a claim that SSF is affiliated with either university.
Program direction is also shaped by ongoing conversations with SSF's Program Advisors, senior figures in energy, climate, and security who bring perspective on where the field is heading.
What each course teaches
Every course is built around a defined set of competencies: specific things you'll be able to do, not just concepts you'll have heard. You can see the “after this course” outcomes on each course page. Global energy security, financing and economics, and applied decision-making run through every course as the lens the whole program is built around.
How you earn your credential
Each course ends in a multiple-choice quiz built from that course's content.
passing score
retake attempts if you don't pass the first time
Certificate of Completion earned per course passed
Three ways to build your credential
| Credential | Requirement | What it reflects |
|---|---|---|
| SSF Certificate of Completion | Pass one course | Working, applied competency in that specific domain |
| SSF Resilient Energy Certificate | Pass any four courses | Competency across a set of domains you choose, matched to your role |
| SSF Resilient Energy Comprehensive Certificate | Pass all seven courses | Working command of the full system: markets, distributed energy, enterprise resilience, project finance, buildings, corporate strategy, and fleet electrification |
Requirement: Complete required courses
What it reflects: Foundational knowledge
Requirement: Complete advanced requirements
What it reflects: Deeper expertise
Requirement: Meet all standards
What it reflects: Professional-level competency
Start with one course and decide from there. Nothing locks you into a tier up front.
A note on what this program is
SSF courses are non-degree, non-credit professional education. They're built to make you effective on the job, not to satisfy a degree requirement, and they document completion of SSF's own course standards.
Questions
Reach the SSF Program Office at esaltzberg@ssfworld.org