Financing the Energy Transition - Speakers

Charles Hendry MP

Charles Hendry MP has been Conservative Member of Parliament for Wealden since 2001 and was Minister of State for Energy from May 2010 until September 2012.  He was previously the Conservative Party’s spokesman on energy issues, holding the portfolio longer than any previous Minister.

Since leaving Ministerial office, he has been appointed as a Visiting Professor at the University of Edinburgh (in both the Business School and the Academy of Government).   He is advising the Energy Secretary, Ed Davey MP, on ways to drive up UK content in the oil and gas industry and he is President of the fuel poverty charity, National Energy Action. The Prime Minister has appointed him as his Trade Envoy to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.  He is Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Russo-British Chamber of Commerce. Charles is Chairman of the world’s largest offshore wind farm development, the 9 gigawatt Forewind proposal for Dogger Bank, and is advising investors on a transmission cable to bring geothermal electricity from Iceland to the UK.

Volker Beckers

Volker Beckers was Group Chief Executive Officer of RWE npower from January 2010 until December 2012.  Prior to this, he had been Group Chief Financial Officer for RWE npower since 2003.

Before joining RWE npower, he was Vice President Corporate Controlling and Development at RWE Net AG in Dortmund with responsibility for Organisational Development. He previously held several senior positions at RWE Energie AG in different parts of the energy value chain. His last position before the merger with VEW Energie AG was Head of Controlling business unit grid in Essen.Volker Beckers is also Deputy Head of the Executive Commercial Management Committee at BDEW (German Association of Energy and Water Industries), a member of the Advisory Board of EUCERS and was a member of the Finance and Economics Focus Group at Eurelectric until 2010.

Nick White

Nick has over 30 years’ experience in the energy industry.  He works mostly on strategic economic and commercial issues in the oil, natural gas and electricity sectors. This includes market entry strategies, project feasibility studies, M & A work, GSA negotiation support and dispute resolution.

Peter Atherton

Peter Atherton joined Liberum Capital in March 2013 as head of the Utilities team.
Peter has been an equity analyst since 1996 when he joined Kleinwort Benson to cover the UK utility sector. Prior to that he worked in the power industry latterly as a corporate strategist with National Grid. In 2000 Peter joined Citigroup where he was Head of Pan European Utilities Sector research. Whilst at Citigroup he was regularly ranked No.1 in both the Extel and Institutional Investor survey’s.

Dominic Emery

Dr Dominic Emery is VP, Long-Term Planning for BP. Dominic is a geology graduate and has worked for BP since 1986. He has held positions in BP’s Exploration and Production Division, in Asia and the Middle East, and also in the UK North Sea. Dominic has led Gas and Power business development in the UK and Northern Europe, as well as running power and utility assets at BP industrial sites. He joined BP Alternative Energy in 2007, initially as Commercial Director, then Chief of Staff before moving to run Emerging Business & Corporate Ventures for BP in 2012.

Guy Turner

Guy is Chief Economist and Director of Commodity Research in Bloomberg New Energy Finance. In this capacity he is responsible for global analysis and business performance across power, gas and carbon markets as well as economic forecasting for all markets and geographies. Guy is also manages the company’s global consulting business. Guy joined New Energy Finance in 2006 to set up New Carbon Finance – the business dedicated to forecasting the world’s carbon markets and now absorbed into Bloomberg New Energy Finance – and he was part of the management that sold the company to Bloomberg in 2009.

Guy has over 20 years’ experience as a consultant and business manager in the fields of energy economics and climate change. He has worked for several governments to help design policies and advise companies on strategic choices in the environmental and energy sector. Prior to joining New Energy Finance Guy held senior management positions in a number of consulting firms.

Professor Gordon MacKerron

Gordon MacKerron is Director, SPRU (Science and Technology Policy Research) University of Sussex, having previously directed the Sussex Energy Group within SPRU from 2005 until 2008.  He is an economist by original training, and spent four years in consulting (NERA Economic Consulting) and six months in the UK Cabinet Office Strategy Unit.

Gordon has worked mostly in the economic and policy issues of energy, especially nuclear power and contemporary energy policy more broadly, including climate change and security of supply.  He has played a wide range of public policy-related roles, including frequently acting as Specialist Adviser and invited witness to UK Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries; appearing as expert witness at national and international nuclear power court cases/public inquiries; and chairing the Government’s independent Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (2003-2007).  In 2011 the then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change commissioned him to write a report on the financing of the UK’s nuclear liabilities. (‘Evaluation of nuclear decommissioning and waste management’, DECC March 2012).  He was a member of the UK’s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution until its demise in 2011.

Jeremy Tigue

Jeremy Tigue has been the Fund Manager of Foreign & Colonial Investment Trust since 1997. Foreign & Colonial was founded in 1868 and is the oldest investment fund in the UK. It has assets of over £2,500m invested globally in listed shares and private equity and has over 100,000 shareholders. Jeremy has worked for F&C Management since 1981. He was Chairman of the Institutional Shareholder Committee from 2006 to 2008 and Deputy Chairman of the Association of Investment Companies from 2006 to 2011.

Jason Channell

Jason joined Citi in 2011, where he leads the global Cleantech and Alternative Energy team within Citi Investment Research. Prior to joining Citi, he worked at Goldman Sachs for 5 years where he set up and managed the Cleantech group in equity research, taking it at its peak to coverage of 50 stocks in Europe and 100 globally. He started his career as a buy-side analyst with Fidelity Investments, and has also worked for ABN AMRO Hoare Govett where he obtained extensive corporate broking experience, and for CA Cheuvreux. While he has covered a broad range of sectors over his career, his coverage has centred around energy related sectors (utilities, gas, and alternative energy). He has achieved top 3 rankings in the Extel, Institutional Investor and Starmine surveys, and his expertise has led to significant interaction with regulators and policymakers, most notably having presented to members of the US Senate Energy and Finance committees on energy policy. Jason holds a BSc (Hons) in Engineering Science and Management from Durham University.

Steven Fries

Steven Fries is Chief Economist and Director of Analysis at the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change, and member of the Department’s Executive Committee. He leads an inter-disciplinary team of analysts and is responsible for developing the economic evidence base for the Department’s policies and strategies.Prior to joining the Department, he was Chief Economist for Royal Dutch Shell and held a series of senior positions at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, including Deputy Chief Economist and Director of Research.

Dr. Fries began his professional career as an economist at the International Monetary Fund. He earned a D.Phil. in economics from the University of Oxford after receiving an undergraduate degree in economics and finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. Dr Fries has published widely on energy and climate change policy, financial reform and development, and the post-communist transition in Eastern Europe.

Professor Jonathan Stern

Jonathan Stern is Chairman and Senior Research Fellow of the Natural Gas Programme at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies; Honorary Professor at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum & Mineral Law & Policy, University of Dundee; and Visiting Professor at Imperial College’s Centre for Environmental Policy in London and Part Time BP Professor at the Moscow School of Management Energy Centre at Skolkovo.

Over the past two decades Professor Stern has become an internationally known speaker and author on natural gas and security issues in Europe, the former Soviet Union and Asia. He is the author of several books and many shorter works on energy and natural gas issues in: the UK, Europe (western and eastern), the former Soviet Union and Asia. He is co-editor of Natural Gas Markets in the Middle East and North Africa, and editor of: The Pricing of Internationally Traded Gas, both published by Oxford University Press in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

Ruth Cairnie

Ruth has been Executive Vice President for Strategy and Planning at Royal Dutch Shell since September 2011. She is responsible for the development of global Group strategy covering all Shell businesses. This includes understanding the external business environment, both long term (Shell scenarios) and shorter term; development of strategic options addressing developments in technology, environmental challenges and the shifting world economic footprint; and translation into business plans and appraisal.

During her career in Shell, Ruth has worked in a wide range of areas including Research, Oil Markets analysis, various B2B businesses, Strategy, Supply Chain and M&A. From 2005-2010, she was responsible for Shell’s global Commercial Fuels business. This involved sales of fuel to business customers in over 60 countries, representing a third of Shell’s global marketing sales volumes. Currently based in the Netherlands, she has mainly been based in London but has also lived in Stockholm, Hamburg and Singapore.

Hootan Yazhari

Mr Yazhari currently Heads the 7 strong European oil & gas equity research team, of which he has been a member since October 2003. Whilst his particular focus is on European integrated oil companies, in the recent past he headed the Emerging EMEA oils team where he covered the Russian majors and the Central & eastern European oils. Prior to this, Mr Yazhari was responsible for establishing the team’s coverage of the European refining sector.  He currently covers 6 companies, including BP, RD Shell, Eni, BG, Repsol and Sasol; although he has covered all the European integrateds in the past.  Mr Yazhari was involved with the Initial public offerings of Neste Oil, Galp Energia, INA (of Croatia), ORL of Israel and Statoil Fuel & Retail.

Stephen Nash

Stephen Nash is a Manager in the Energy Advisory Services practice at Baringa Partners.  He has been working in across the energy sector for six years, having previously qualified as a Chartered Accountant, and during that time has advised clients across Europe as they respond to the fundamental changes taking place in energy markets.  In particular Stephen has focused on market change and, in the context of the UK’s Electricity Market Reform, the implications of market change for investment in the sector.

Stephen also provides commercial and strategy advice to clients and provides due diligence services to market participants across the value chain.

Kirsty Hamilton

Kirsty Hamilton leads the Renewable Energy Finance Project, as an Associate Fellow at Chatham House: working since 2004 at the intersection between leading mainstream financiers and senior policy counterparts, to bring about more effective ‘investment grade’ policy conditions. More recently, she has been involved in the establishment and policy work of the Low Carbon Finance Group of senior finance practitioners to engage in power sector policy developments.

She has 22 years experience of international climate and energy policy as an Observer at the UN climate change negotiations, and is on the World Economic Forum’s Global Council on Renewable Energy; Steering Committee of ‘REN 21’ the international RE policy network; a former Advisor to UNEP’s Finance Initiative and an expert reviewer and contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Ben Wilson

Ben Wilson is the Director of Strategy & Regulation and Chief Financial Officer at UK Power Networks. UKPN is the public electricity distribution network for London, the south east and the east of England, serving 8 million customers and delivering approximately 30% of the UK’s electricity. UKPN is owned by the Cheung Kong Group and was acquired from EDF Energy in 2010.
Ben joined UKPN shortly after the acquisition from EDFE. Previously Ben was an investment banker covering the power and utility sector, most recently at Deutsche Bank.

Lord  Howell

Rt Hon Lord David Howell was personal adviser to the Foreign Secretary on Energy and Resource Security from September 2012 to April 2013.  He  was Minister of State at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office from May 2010 to September 2012, and MP for Guildford from 1966 until 1997.

He held a number of Ministerial posts in the previous Conservative government including Secretary of State for Energy between 1979 and 1981 and Secretary of State for Transport from 1981 to 1983. He was Deputy Leader of the Opposition from 2005 to 2010 and Opposition Spokesperson for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs from 2000 to 2010.

He is the author of several books and numerous pamphlets, including ‘A New Style of Government’ (1970),’Blind Victory’ (1985) ,’Easternisation’ (1996) ‘The Edge of Now’, ( 2000) and ‘Out of the Energy Labyrinth’ (2006) .