RENESCO

Claudio Rochas (1976, Italy) is the chairman of RenEsco. He has lived in Latvia since 2000, when he arrived as an energy auditor for Ekodoma Ltd., the leading Latvian consulting company in the field of energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. Since 2006 he is the Managing Director of the company.

Claudio has been working in Latvia setting up Energy Partnership Contracts for the development of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy projects, assisting in setting up a new company called KER (Latvian acronym of Climate Energy Solutions) that implements Energy Delivery and Energy Performance Contracting in the industrial sector. The company has successfully concluded two energy delivery contracts and is now extending its services for the implementation of Energy Efficiency improvement measures.

Claudio has focused his efforts to the development of Energy performance contracting for renovation of residential buildings in Latvia in cooperation with the ESCO company RenEsco 

Claudio has a background of oil and gas engineering - he graduated from the Polytechnic Institute of Turin (IT) and he has got a PhD. in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources from Riga Technical University (LV).

In 2004 he started his career at Riga Technical University as Lecturer at the Institute of Energy systems and Environment, ending up as Associate Professor. For the University he has developed a course in “Applied metrology to thermal engineering” and a course on “Transient Energy System Simulation” with particular focus on solar systems and building. In a research project within the University he has designed the first solar thermal system combined with wood pellet installed in a multifamily house in Latvia (2 Barona Street, Sigulda Latvia).

Mr. Rochas lives in Gauja, Latvia with his wife and two children. He speaks Italian, English, Latvian and some basic French.

Eric H. Berman (1964, USA) was raised and educated in The Netherlands and has spent the last 20 years facilitating public decision-making processes. He has worked with nearly a hundred local governments in Western, Central and Eastern Europe in creating development plans for a wide range of public infrastructure issues.

He first became involved with the housing problems of Eastern Europe as founder/director of the Agora Central Europe Foundation (founded Prague 1998) and later as team-leader of the Sustainable Management of Multi-Family Buildings project in Ukraine (2005-2009). In this last position he was responsible for the first ESCO-financed renovations in Ukraine.

Considering the lack of newly constructed housing for low and medium income households since 1990, he strongly believes that the only viable economic solution is to conserve the current housing stock for the next generation(s). Fortunately this can be financed for a large part from energy savings. However, the poorly conceived privatization process left most countries without the institutional capacity to take on the financial, technical and organizational risks necessary to redevelop their housing stock.

In 2008 he decided that time was ripe to fill in this vacuum and establish the first Renovation & Energy Service Company – RenEsco Ltd in Riga. 

Eric currently lives with his Latvian wife and two daughter in Valencia (Spain). He speaks English, Dutch and German.

With 30 years of entrepreneurial experience in installations and renewable energy Gerard has hands on knowledge on all aspects needed for successful projects from development and funding to construction and operational maintenance. With personal experience in several roles and positions he experienced the perspectives and has insight in all levels of the supply chain needed for transformation to a more sustainable world which he uses to develop solid and bankable business concepts for energy efficiency and renewable energy.

Building on this experience Gerard is co-founder and board member of Companies like Renesco (www.renesco.lv), and GreenIPP  (www.greenipp.com) and Funding for Future (www.fcubed.eu). Furthermore he has positions as board member in several companies all linked to create value on energy we currently waste.

He shares his experience as entrepreneur, business leader and energy architect internationally within the teams he works in and through courses, trainings, workshops and presentations. He also has over 20 year experience in the administration of the Dutch union of installing companies Uneto-Vni who rewarded him with a membership of merit.  Gerard graduated at Nyenrode Business University for his Executive MBA in 2011.