Christopher Burgess is the Director of Projects for the Islands Energy Program at the Rocky Mountain Institute – Carbon War Room (RMI-CWR). He has over 15 years of experience as an environmental professional and project manager with practice in a variety of multi-disciplinary energy and infrastructure projects. Chris brings a wealth of environmental, renewable energy and project management experience to his current role.

At RMI-CWR, Chris manages the project management staff and a portfolio of 144MW of renewable energy and energy efficiency projects. Chris is a recognized leader in renewable energy development and implementation in the Caribbean region with active projects in Aruba, The Bahamas, Belize, Montserrat, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, San Andres / Providencia and Turks and Caicos.

Before joining the RMI-CWR, Chris was the Chief Operating Officer at Alpha Energy, a renewable energy development company in Annapolis, Maryland. At Alpha Energy, Chris was responsible for the company’s feasibility studies and overall project management for commercial and utility scale wind and solar installations which totaled over 150MW. He regularly managed multi-million dollar projects both domestically and internationally.

Chris also has previous experience as an environmental planner for new and reclaimed commercial site development, as well as a program analyst and team leader with the U.S Environmental Protection Agency. At the EPA, Chris provided operations support and technical assistance for environmental emergencies nationwide. He was instrumental to operations during EPA’s high profile responses, including Sept. 11th, Columbia Shuttle and the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

He earned his master’s degree in Environmental Science and Policy from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland and a bachelor’s degree in Coastal and Environmental Planning from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina.