Fred H. Schwartz, B.ED, MES.

Bachelor of Education, McGill U. (1970), Master of Environmental Studies, York U. (1973)

In 2016, Fred was appointed Adjunct Professor at the York University Faculty of Environmental Studies (Toronto), where he will focus on teaching renewable energy. Fred is a senior executive with over 30 years in the fields of energy and environment. He graduated in 1970 from McGill University with a Bachelor of Education, and then York University (1973) with a Masters in Environmental Studies. He has lived in the Arctic and in Labrador where he worked on Inuit Land Claims. He is Fieldworker and Associate Editor of the Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project Report and he contributed to Our Footprints are Everywhere, Inuit Use and Occupancy in Labrador. In 1980 he helped National Geographic Magazine put together their “Peoples of the Arctic” centerfold map. In 1981 he started the Remote Power Unit for the Ministry of Energy in Ontario, and since then he has worked for Municipal, Provincial, State, and Federal governments, and the private sector on renewable energy development and implementation. In 1991 he won both the PG&E Chairman’s Award and the U.S. President’s Conservation and Environment Challenge Award. In the late 1990s he helped commercialize high-speed flywheels for energy storage and power quality, delivering one to the California Energy Commission to store solar energy for homes and several to the US Military. In 2001, Fred was hired by the City of San Francisco as Manager of Renewables and Advanced Generation where he started and grew the largest Municipal solar program in the US. In 2004 the City won a Green Power Award from the US EPA for the Moscone Convention Center solar and energy efficiency project. In 2005, he wrote the submission for the Sechelt First Nation and Regional Power to the United Nations Blue Planet Award, and he was featured in a film The Power of the Sun, along with John Perlin and two Nobel Laureates. Since then he has focused on renewable energy development and more recently on microgrids. He has just finished writing an exhibition on solar power. He sits on several American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE) committees. He currently lives with his wife in Southern California and has two children.