Getting Serious About Net Zero - Speakers

Julian is the Director General, Energy Transformation and Clean Growth at the Department of Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy with responsibilities including leading on work to cut carbon emissions while seizing the economic opportunities of clean growth, to promote energy efficiency and help achieve secure and affordable decarbonisation. It also works to tackle fuel poverty and leads the programme for the energy industry to roll out smart meters to homes and small businesses.

Previously Julian Critchlow was a Director in the London office of Bain & Company. As head of Bain’s Global Utilities & Alternative Energy Practice, he worked with senior executives in leading utilities around the world on their key strategic, operational and organizational issues. He led Bain’s work with the World Economic Forum on the Future of Electricity and is a member of the Global Future Council on the Future of Energy. He is the author of articles on trends in the utilities sector and has been quoted in leading publications such as the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek and the Wall Street Journal.

He has been a seed investor in and advisor to the Boards of a range of start-up technology businesses from ActiveHotels.com (hotel booking system bought in 2004 by PriceLine to form booking.com), AlertMe.com (smart energy management solution bought in 2015 by Centrica plc to form Hive) and i20 Water (intelligent water controls).

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Alex leads the energy and industry practice at Vivid Economics, and is a trusted advisor on the economics and regulatory aspects of energy and industrial markets, internationally.

Alex’s recent work includes assessing the suitability and effectiveness of electricity market designs for renewable technologies in major economies; designing innovation support programmes in the UK; supporting low carbon development in Africa and Asia and advising energy companies on the impact of integrating electricity grids across Europe. Alex also leads Vivid’s Net Zero workstream, advising governments (recently: the UK, New Zealand and Scotland) and businesses on the technical, financial and socio-political dimensions of a transition to a zero emissions economy.

Prior to working at Vivid Economics, Alex was Head of Power Sector at the Government’s Committee on Climate Change, where he worked on the world-leading electricity market reforms, as well as advising on the UK’s low-carbon public financing strategy and the competitiveness impacts of climate policy. He was also Director at the Australian Government’s Climate Change Authority during its first major review of Australia’s emissions reduction targets.

He has worked in consultancy roles covering water policy and urban infrastructure in Australia, and in the delivery of water and sanitation programmes in India.

Alex has a MSc (with Distinction) in Environment and Development from the London School of Economics, where he studied as a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Chevening Scholar, and a first class Honours degree in Engineering and Applied Mathematics from the University of New South Wales’.

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Chris Stark is the Chief Executive of the UK Committee on Climate Change, the public body tasked by the Climate Change Act to be the independent authority on tackling climate change. Chris leads a team of analysts and specialists, offering expert insight into the challenges of reducing emissions and adapting to the changing climate.

Chris has wide experience in government. He has designed economic policy in Whitehall, including in HM Treasury and the former Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. He was previously Director of Energy and Climate Change in the Scottish Government, leading the development of the Scottish energy and climate strategies.

Chris speaks regularly on the transition to a zero carbon economy and the need to confront climate change with urgency.

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Jo has worked in Shell for over 20 years in roles spanning oil and gas field development, national energy planning, economics and business development. She has worked in the Netherlands, Brunei, Oman, UAE and Malaysia.  In 2011 Jo returned to the UK and joined the Energy Technologies Institute, a public-private partnership tasked with accelerating technology development and demonstration in support of the UK’s energy transition.   Jo was subsequently appointed Strategy Director and led the ETI’s team of modellers and sector experts exploring UK energy transition pathways and the opportunities and challenges in delivering them.  Jo returned to Shell in 2018 as UK Energy Transition Manager where she has oversight across all of Shell’s energy transition related activities in the UK.   Jo was awarded an OBE in the 2018 New Year’s Honours list and is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.

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Guy Newey is Director of Strategy and Performance at the Energy Systems Catapult. He was previously Energy Adviser to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Greg Clark, and Special Adviser to former Energy Secretary Amber Rudd.

He has worked as Head of Policy at energy supplier, OVO Energy and Head of Environment and Energy at the think tank, Policy Exchange.

Previous to that, he was a journalist with Agence France-Presse in Hong Kong and the Birmingham Mail. He has an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College, London.

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Adrian joined the secretariat of the Committee on Climate Change in May 2009. Until recently, he was responsible, as Chief Economist, for analytical work looking at UK greenhouse gas emission reduction potential and costs. He was Acting Chief Executive from July 2017-April 2018. His role now is concerned with provision of assurance to the Chief Executive and Committees that processes are in place to ensure a high quality of analysis. The Government recently accepted and legislated in line with the Committee’s Net Zero report (May 2019) recommendation that the UK should target net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases in the UK by 2050. Prior to joining the CCC secretariat, Adrian has substantial experience of energy and environment issues – as an economist in Department for Transport, the Energy Group of the Department of Trade and Industry and in the Treasury tax team. He was 2018 Chairman of the British Institute of Energy Economics

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Tim Lord is the Director for Clean Growth at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

He leads BEIS’s work on delivering emission reduction while seizing the economic benefits of the low carbon transition.  He has extensive experience on energy and climate change, as well as wider growth policy.

His previous roles have included delivering the Industrial Strategy Green Paper, Building Our Industrial Strategy, and leading key elements of the electricity market reform programme.

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Michael Grubb is Research Director and Professor of Energy and Climate Change at University College London Institute of Sustainable Resources, working closely also with the UCL Energy Institute.  From 2011-2016, alongside academic roles, he worked half-time at the UK Office of Gas and Electricity Markets (the energy regulator, Ofgem) as Senior Advisor, and now Chairs the UK government’s Panel of Technical Experts on Electricity Market Reform.

His former positions include Senior Research Associate in Economics at Cambridge University; Chair of the international research organization Climate Strategies; Chief Economist at the UK Carbon Trust; Professor at Imperial College London; and head of Energy and Environment at Chatham House.

Professor Grubb founded the journal Climate Policy, and served on the UK Climate Change Committee, established under the UK Climate Change Act to advise the government on future carbon budgets and to report to Parliament on their implementation. Internationally, he is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Economics Research Institute DIW Berlin and was formerly a member of the International Advisory Council of the International Association for Energy Economics.

Michael Grubb is author of eight books, sixty journal research articles, and numerous other publications. His book Planetary Economics brings together the lessons from 25 years of research and implementation of energy and climate policies, with a full Chinese translation published in 2017. It has received widespread accolade as a ‘seminal’ contribution, ‘comprehensive and profoundly important’ for its development of a wider theoretical framework of economics appropriate to the practical policies for tackling energy and climate change challenges.

In 2018 Michael was appointed as Convening Lead Author for the first chapter of the IPCC Sixth Assessment report on Mitigation, and leader on Sustainability for the UK Research Council programme on Rebuilding Macroeconomics.

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Sara Vaughan is Political & Regulatory Affairs Director at E.ON in the UK. She started her career as a lawyer at Slaughter and May before moving to Powergen (as it then was) as a competition lawyer. She has subsequently broadened her role through taking on a number of additional responsibilities such as regulation, compliance energy policy and external affairs including CSR, legal and company secretariat, HSSE and engineering governance. She was appointed to the E.ON UK Board as Strategy & Regulation Director in 2012. Sara was on the Board of the UK Business Council for Sustainable Energy which merged into the newly formed Energy UK in 2012, where she is an alternate Board Director. She is a non-executive Director of Elexon, is on the CBI West Midlands Regional Council and is a member of the cross-industry Thriving at Work Leadership Council, arising out of the Thriving at Work review into workplace mental health.

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Sam Hollister  was appointed Director of Economics and Corporate Services in July 2018, having joined Energy UK four years earlier.

Sam has policy responsibility for Energy UK’s Strategic Policy Committee and New Energy Services and Heat Committee, in addition to overseeing the internal functions of the trade association. Sam previously worked in UK Government, specialising on better regulation and economic growth, and spent time on secondment at the European Commission at DG Enterprise.

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Mr Neil Morris is the CEO of the Faraday Institution. He has over 33 years of international operations, business and commercial experience in the energy sector.

While at BP, he developed strategy for their Gas, Renewables, Supply and Trading business, leading multi-million-dollar M&A transactions, establishing a downstream research program including successfully negotiating partnerships with universities and other companies to commercialise new technologies.

Neil holds a degree in Chemical Engineering from Loughborough University and an MBA from Edinburgh University. He is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers.

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Mark undertook his doctorate, laminar-turbulent transition prediction techniques for supersonic transport swept wings in Cambridge and then joined Rolls-Royce Aerospace to design jet engine compressors. Since then, he has worked on turbo-chargers, combustion, oil tankers, HVAC and acoustics and spent 12 years as Principal Aerodynamicist at the McLaren Racing Formula 1 team followed by a brief stint as Chief CAE Engineer at Gordon Murray Design. Mark currently works as a Deputy Director at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) responsible for Programme Delivery of Science and Innovation for Climate and Energy. Mark oversees major energy innovation programmes in a £505m Portfolio including Hy4Heat, CCUS, Industrial Fuel Switching and the Energy Entrepreneurs Fund.

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Fiona runs Octopus Electric Vehicles – an electric vehicle leasing business helping individuals and businesses transition to clean transport. With a passion for renewable energy, fantastic cars and using tech to create great customer experiences, this is absolutely Fiona’s dream job!

Since launching Octopus EV, part of Octopus Energy Group – Fiona has led the team in bringing together everything an EV driver needs – from great rates on the cars, smart charging tech and green energy tariffs designed for EV drivers – supported by a team of passionate EV experts that run EV experience events across the UK for communities and businesses.

Fiona holds an MEng from Oxford University and spent her early career at Dyson and BMW – including working on hydrogen powered cars. She has since worked in energy and connected homes tech with Bain & Company, DECC (now BEIS), before joining British Connected Homes start up AlertMe. A move to British Gas, saw her take Hive, by British Gas, from a tech pilot to a household name that today has more than one million customers.

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Mallika works within Group Strategy at Shell, focusing on policy and regulatory developments affecting the energy system. She has over 17 years’ experience working as an economist and policymaker in the public and private sectors, as well as academia. Prior to joining Shell in 2013, Mallika was a senior civil servant in the UK government. She has also worked for several years in the United States, as a macroeconomic consultant in New York and as a regulatory economist for the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Her role at Shell involves advising the Scenarios team on energy and climate change policies that inform Shell’s long-term scenario outlooks. Her work has a significant impact on Shell’s strategic engagements with national governments, as well as Shell’s internal policy and advocacy positions. Mallika also regularly represents Shell on these issues at external events.

Mallika holds a PhD in economics from Carnegie Mellon University and an undergraduate degree in economics from St. Stephen’s College, India

Andrea Griffin joined HSBC’s Sustainable Finance team in late 2018.  In her role, she leads strategic business development across the organization on sustainable finance and sustainable investments.  She also contributes thought leadership through HSBC’s Centre of Sustainable Finance.  Previously, she spent several years working in emerging market solar energy, initially with Orb Energy in India as Head of International Business Development leading international expansion into Africa and then with SunFunder leading solar debt transactions in developing markets.  Previous to that, Andrea was an Acumen Fund Global fellow in 2011 and spent 4 years at JP Morgan Private Bank.  Andrea is a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  She holds an MIA from Columbia University.

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Rain is CBI Chief Economist. She leads the team which provides economic analysis and our prestigious surveys.

Rain was most recently head of Emerging Markets at Oxford Economics where she managed a large team of economists and was the lead expert on China. She provided macroeconomic forecasts and analysis on China’s role in the global economy and the development of Asia, helping a range of companies and international financial institutions to expand into new markets and grow their business.

Prior to that, Rain worked in monetary policy and international forecast to the MPC at the Bank of England where she led a team with responsibility for developing a risk assessment framework for the UK financial system.

While at the Bank, she also went on secondment to the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. where she was adviser to the UK executive director. In 2010, Rain was selected as one of Management Today’s 35 Women Under 35.

Rain was honoured by the World Economic Forum in 2012 as a Young Global Leader.

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Sonia Van Ballaert has 25 years of international experience driving technology-led business transformation. She currently works as Client Director for one of IBMs global energy accounts. In 2018, Sonia was admitted to the IBM Industry Academy, a select group of only 150 IBM industry experts worldwide. Her current focus is on the systemic impact of the energy transition on automotive, energy and utilities, and oil and gas industries. In her daily work, she focuses on the application of data and AI to drive business transformation. Sonia joined IBM as PwC Partner in 2002 and earned her Ph.D. in the humanities from the University of California, Berkeley

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Charlie Wilson is a researcher in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (UK) for which he co-leads the Accelerating Social Transitions research theme, and a Reader in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK). He is also a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna, Austria). Charlie’s research lies at the intersection between innovation, behaviour and policy in the field of energy and climate change mitigation, working at both a systems level and a micro level.

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Will is Energy Policy Manager at OGUK and coordinates all policy work around gas markets, regulatory strategy and energy transition. He is an economist with over 20 years’ experience in regulated industries including water, aviation and the energy sectors. His areas of specialisation are market design, economic regulation and competition issues.

Before joining Oil and Gas UK, Will spent 4 years at Ofwat in the 1900s before working as an Official for the European Commission at DG Energy and DG Competition between 2000-07 mainly covering the liberalisation of the EU electricity and gas markets and the 2005 Sector Enquiry. After returning to the UK, he moved to a commercial role at RWE npower reworking its power generation strategy before taking over all RWE’s European power market regulatory activities between 2010-2014. Until 2017 he ran the Competition team at the Civil Aviation Authority, successfully running the CAA’s first case under the 1998 Competition Act.

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