Speaker Biographies

Speakers

Moderators

António Fernando Correia de Campos

MEP, Rapporteur for the Energy Infrastructure Regulation

Born December 14th, 1942 in Viseu, Portugal. A university Professor (Universidade Nova de Lisboa) with a law degree from Coimbra University (1966), a "Directeur d'Hopital" diploma from ENSP, France (1969), an MPh from John Hopkins University (1978) and a PhD on Health Economics from Universidade Nova de Lisboa (1982). For three years (1986-89) he was director for Science and Technology at the Luso American Development Foundation (Lisbon). Was a member of the National Parliament (1991-92), Secretary of State (1976 and 1979-80) and Minister of Health (2001-02; 2005-08). Has also worked as a member of the Committee on Health Services Research, WHO/EURO (1984-88), as well as a Senior Health Care Management Specialist for the World Bank (1992-95). He is presently a Member of the European Parliament and Chairman of Science and Technology Options Assessment (STOA). He was the rapporteur for the Regulation on the guidelines for trans-European energy infrastructure.

Mark van Stiphout

Member of Cabinet of European Commissioner Günther Oettinger

Mark van Stiphout is currently member of the Cabinet of the Commissioner for Energy, Günther H. Oettinger, who he advises on nuclear energy and energy research, as well as smart grids and the relations with Russia. Previously he has worked in the Cabinet on other issues such as electricity and gas networks, and as assistant to the Director-General for Energy. Until July 2010, he worked as Policy Officer in DG Energy in the Electricity and Gas Unit, where he began in March 2006 and where he worked among others on the 3rd internal energy market package.

Previous roles include consultancy on renewable energy projects, at Ecofys, and Market Analyst at Cogas Energie.

His academic career contains post graduate studies in Economics of the Environment and Natural Resources in Paris and an MSc in Technology and Society (at Eindhoven University of Technology).

Graham Butler

Vice President, Energy and Utilities Europe, IBM

Graham has been working within the E&U Industry for over 20 years both as an advisor and as a line manager. During this time he has worked with clients in the UK, USA, China and the rest of Europe. Prior to moving to China to take on the role of Senior Client Partner for State Grid Corporation of China, the world's largest utility, he led the IBM Consulting Utilities Practice in North Eastern Europe.

His global experience has been gained from a range of client assignments across the UK, Europe and United States where he has been involved in some of the largest transformation, technology and performance improvement programmes within Utility companies. Much of the thinking behind the advice he provides to clients stems directly from this experience.

Graham's deep market knowledge, industry credibility and exceptionally broad experience and knowledge across the Energy and Utilities supply chain (power, water and gas operations, infrastructure asset management, field work force, customer operations) has helped him build an excellent understanding of the challenges that Utility businesses face, emerging new business models and the opportunities that are now open to them through the deployment of new technology.

Zygimantas Vaiciunas

Adviser to the Minister of Energy, Lithuania

• Education on European studies in the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University.
• From 2005 working on energy security issues in the Center for Strategic Studies; from 2009 – in the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Lithuania.
• Lecturer in the Institute of International Relations and Political Science at Vilnius University on Energy security issues in Central and Eastern Europe and European Union integration.
• 2009 – 2011 – Head of Strategic Planning and European Union Affairs Division at the Ministry of Energy of the Republic of Lithuania.
• 2011 – 2012 – Vice-Minister of Energy.
• From the end of 2012 – Adviser to the Minister of Energy.

Per-Olof Granström

Secretary General, EDSO for Smart Grids

Per-Olof Granström is the Secretary General of the European Distribution System Operators (EDSO) for Smart Grids. Granström is also the Vice Chairman of the Global Smart Grid Federation.

Prior to joining EDSO, Granström has held various positions in the European Energy sector; Director of European Affairs at Vattenfall, Executive Vice President at Swedenergy, Vice President/Director of trade at Nord Pool – the Nordic power exchange and Head of Generation and Trade at Stockholm Energi.

Ralph Sporer

Chairman, CEN-CENELEC-ETSI Smart Grid Coordination Group

Dr. Sporer received his PhD in physics at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen, Germany in 1996. From then he has been working with Siemens AG in several positions. Currently he is responsible for standardization of innovative technologies including especially Energy Efficiency and Smart Grids. Dr. Sporer is active in a number of standardization committees in the fields above. Since June 2010 he is chairman of the Smart Grid Coordination Group of the European Standardization Organizations CEN, CENELEC and ETSI.

Richard Charnah

Chairman, European Smart Grid Technology Platform

Richard Charnah is currently Innovation Director of ALSTOM Grid where he is responsible for the strategic direction of medium- and long-term Research & Technology programmes for technologies leading to products, systems and services for the electricity transmission and distribution industry.

He graduated from Imperial College, London in Chemistry and, after receiving his doctorate from the same institution in Materials Science, he worked initially with I.C.I. in the chemical industry. He joined what is now Alstom Grid in 1984 and has since been involved in both technology and business development, principally for the generation, transmission and applications of electric power.

He is Chairman of the T&D Europe Task Force on Smart Grids and the European Technology Platform on Smart Grids.

Andrea Liebe

Head of Department, Energy Markets and Energy Regulation, WIK

Dr. Andrea Liebe is head of the department Energy Markets and Energy Regulation since January 2011. Before she worked as a senior economist at the Monopolies Commission, an independent advisory board of the German Government concerning competition policy and regulation. She had the lead management in the field of energy industry. Before joining the Monopolies Commission Andrea worked at an economic consulting firm. She carried out economic analysis in antitrust law and sector specific regulation. Andrea studied economics at the University of Muenster and received her doctorate with an institutional economic thesis about global business cooperation. Recently her main research and consultancy focus is the transformation of the energy system. That covers the implications on the regulated network infrastructure as well as the convergence of the energy sector with the ICT and the telecommunication sector.

Achim Klabunde

Head of Sector IT policy, European Data Protection Supervisor

Achim Klabunde is the head of the IT Policy Sector at the secretariat of the European Data Protection Supervisor. Before joining the EDPS, he was a policy officer at the European Commission, in the data protection unit of the Directorate General for Justice and before that in DG Information Society and Media where he led the team in charge of privacy and trust policy for electronic communications for the 2009 Telecom Reform process. Before joining the EU administration, he had worked in the private sector for 15 years. Achim Klabunde has a master's degree in Computer Science and Communications Research from Bonn University. He has worked in data management, network planning, data protection and IT security.

Magdalena Andreea Strachinescu Olteanu

Head of Unit, New energy technologies, innovation and clean coal, DG Energy, European Commission

Andreea Strachinescu works with the European Commission in the Directorate General for Energy as Head of Unit for new energy technologies, being responsible for the development of the policy and actions on non-nuclear energy research and innovation.

Ms. Strachinescu studied mechanical engineering and business administration in Bucharest, Romania and she has a Master of Science in International Economics from H.E.C. Montreal, Canada.

Prior to joining the European Commission, Ms. Strachinescu worked for public administration in Romania and Canada, in the field of economic development and international trade policies and actions.

Ari Sorsaniemi

Policy Officer, Smart Cities and Sustainability, DG CONNECT, European Commission

Ari Sorsaniemi received his master's degree in electrical engineering at Tampere University of Technology, Finland, with digital technologies, industrial economics and international marketing as his main areas.

Mr. Sorsaniemi started his professional career as project engineer in process automation, but moved into telecommunications sector in 1990, working in an R&D project environment at the time when the first 2G (GSM) mobile networks were being developed.

He changed into sales and marketing in 1993 and worked in Finland, Australia and Mexico in various marketing management functions in wireless communications sector before moving to Brussels. He continued with system marketing management duties in Benelux area, after which he was responsible for management of the Belgian sales support center for Benelux customers. Later on, he worked in the areas of marketing strategy and efficiency development at global level.

In 2004, Mr. Sorsaniemi joined the European Commission and its spectrum policy unit in DG INFSO, where his responsibilities included spectrum policy aspects in the context of transport sector, scientific services as well the use of spectrum for smart energy grids and smart metering devices. He moved to his current unit in June 2012, where he has been dealing with policy issues and FP7 project coordination related tasks linked to energy efficiency and smart grids within the smart cities context.

Sebastian Gras

Policy Officer, Internal Market I: Networks & Regional Initiatives, DG Energy, European Commission

Sebastian Gras is a policy officer at the European Commission´s Directorate-General for Energy in the unit Internal Market I: Networks and Regional Initiatives. The unit aims at developing a policy and a regulatory framework conducive to leverage the necessary investments in trans-European energy infrastructure. He has been working in the field of energy since 1999. He worked for a major German energy company on establishing retail products when the liberalization of the energy market started as well as consulting. Since 2004 he was employed by the German Federal Network Agency (Bundesnetzagentur) and was responsible for retail market functioning (i.e. supplier switching) and consumer protection in gas and electricity markets. In 2011 he worked for the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection in the fields of consumer protection in energy and transport.

Gunnar Lorenz

Head of DSO Unit, EURELECTRIC

Gunnar Lorenz is Head of Unit – DSO at EURELECTRIC, the European electricity industry association. He manages together with his team the representation of European electricity DSOs’ interests towards European Institutions and stakeholders. Several international working groups support the EURELECTRIC DSO Committee on issues such as Distribution System Design, Regulation and Customers, Smart Grids Projects, Electric Vehicles, Network Codes and Standardisation.

His previous working experience includes strategic and economic consulting companies (Roland Berger and Frontier Economics). In total he has over 15 years’ experience in the field of energy economics in both professional and academic field. Gunnar Lorenz holds a degree in business economics (University of Cologne) and was awarded with the Theodor Wessels Award in 2000.

Jean Verseille

Chairman of the Research and Development Committee, ENTSO-E, European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity

Jean Verseille is currently Director for European Affairs of RTE.

Prior to this he took various positions in R&D activities related to network planning, in power system economics, in system operation as deputy director of the French National Control Center and in asset management and system development as Director for System Development at RTE from 2006 to 2011.

He acted for four years as chairman of the ENTSO-E System Development Committee.

On 1st of July 2013 he was appointed as chairman of ENTSO-E R&D Committee.

Mr Verseille is an engineer graduated from “Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures” in Paris and is graduated in Economics from University Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne.

Paul van Dijk

Benelux Country Leader, GE Digital Energy

Paul van Dijk started his career in 1994 in the T&D-sector in The Netherlands, where he has had several sales and management roles. He has been involved in the implementation of innovative products and solutions, and is now country leader for GE Digital Energy in Benelux and account director for key accounts in this region. In this role, Paul is responsible for leading strategy development and business development of GE’s Smart Grid offerings including software solutions, protection & control and primary equipment.

Paul holds a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering and a BSc degree in Business Economics.

Jakob Stoustrup

Professor, Aalborg University, Denmark

Professor Jakob Stoustrup received the M.Sc. degree in EE in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree in Applied Mathematics in 1991, both from the Technical University of Denmark.

In the period 1991-1996, Jakob Stoustrup held several positions at the Department of Mathematics, Technical University of Denmark. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, U.K., and at the Mittag-Leffler Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. Since 1997 Professor at Automation & Control, Aalborg University, Denmark, and since 2006 Head of Research for the Department of Electronic Systems. He has acted as Associate Editor, Guest Editor, and Editorial Board Member of several international journals.

Prof. Stoustrup is Vice-Chair of IEEE CSS Technical Committee on Smart Grids. He is an IEEE SM, and has been Chair of an IEEE CSS/RAS Joint Chapter. Since 2008, he has been Chair for the IFAC Technical Committee SAFEPROCESS and is member of IFAC Technical Board. He has received the Statoil Prize, the Dannin Award for Scientific Research. He has been a member of the Danish, the Norwegian and the Swedish Research Councils as well as the European Research Council, and is a board member of The Danish Academy of Technical Sciences.

Jakob Stoustrup has published approx. 280 peer-reviewed scientific papers, a large proportion of which deals with energy systems and power control. Theoretically, the main contributions of Stoustrup have been to robust control theory and to the theory of fault tolerant control systems. Apart from the theoretical work, he has carried out industrial applications in cooperation with approx. 100 industrial companies, including acting as a CEO for two technological startup companies.

David Thomas

Professor of Electromagnetics Applications, The George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research, The University of Nottingham UK

Prof David W. P. Thomas MIET SMIEEE CEng. is a Professor of Electromagnetics Applications in The George Green Institute for Electromagnetics Research, The University of Nottingham UK. His research interests are in electromagnetic compatibility, electromagnetic simulation, power system transients and power system protection. He is a member of CIGRE and convenor for Joint Working Group C4.207 “EMC of communication circuits, low voltage systems and metallic structures in the vicinity of power systems” and the newly formed C4.31 “EMC between communication circuits and power systems”. He is also Vice Chair for the IEEE EMC Technical committee T7 on Low Frequency EMC.

Nicolle Raven

Policy Officer, ESMIG

Nicolle Raven graduated in European Law and Politics, with a Master’s degree in European Public Affairs. She worked as a public affairs consultant for over 3 years in the energy and healthcare sector. After working for the European Commission on youth policy in 2010-2011, she returned to the EU energy sector last year, as policy officer for ESMIG and as an Adviser on Energy Policy with the Orgalime Partnership.

Peter Moray

Director, European Utilities Telecom Council

After more than 25 years experience in telecommunications within the UK utility industries Peter moved into a specialised consultancy to promote the use of telecoms & ICT to drive business change and improvement in the utility and enterprise sectors. Through his work with utility companies in UK, Europe, Middle East and Africa he is recognised internationally as an expert in the energy & utility sectors. He is an advisor on smartgrids to the international consulting group Mott MacDonald. He is Director of European Utilities Telecom Council (EUTC) a utility trade association based in Brussels, Belgium and through the association is a member of several expert groups operated by the European Commission on smartgrids and telecoms in the utility sector. He served for many years on the Cigre Study Committee D2 – Infomatics and Telecommunications.

Jay Taylor

Director of Global Standards, Codes & Environment, Schneider Electric

Biography to appear here shortly...

Christian Egenhofer

Senior Fellow, Head of the Energy and Climate programme, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)

Function
Senior Fellow and head of the Energy and climate programme; Senior Research Fellow & Jean-Monnet Lecturer, Centre for Energy, Petroleum, Mineral Law and Policy (CEPMLP) at University of Dundee, Scotland, UK

Area of Expertise
Energy policy and regulation, Climate change policy; EU business policy, Environmental policy, Transport policy, Politics of the EU, Institutions of the EU, Regulatory policy, Sustainable development

Languages
English, French, German

Education
Masters in International Administration, University of Konstanz; Public Law Degree

To view Christian's publications, please go to:
http://www.ceps.eu/member/christian-egenhofer

Andrew Burgess

Associate Partner, Transmission and Distribution Policy, OFGEM

He works across Ofgem’s two network divisions and brings together policy thinking across the different types of energy networks – transmission and distribution in both electricity and gas.

Until October 2011, Andy was Head of Enforcement and Competition Policy at Ofgem, leading on Ofgem’s approach to use of the range of its enforcement powers – under competition law, consumer protection legislation, and sectoral legislation. He joined Ofgem in 2008 from the Office of Rail Regulation (ORR), where he was Head of Network Regulation. Andy had previously held a number of posts at ORR, including leading on European policy and on developing ORR’s strategy and corporate planning and managing regulatory oversight of commercial access contracts for rail infrastructure.

Andrea Renda

Senior Research Fellow, Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)

Dr. Andrea Renda is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), where he started and currently manages the Regulatory Policy Unit and the CEPS Digital Forum. He is Professor of Economic Analysis of Law, Antitrust and EU policymaking at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, as well as Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute. Andrea sits in the Scientific Board of the International Telecommunications Society and of the European Communications Policy research (EuroCPR), as well as in the Editorial Board of "Telecommunications Policy". He is the author of several publications and expert reports in the field of telecommunications and Internet policy.

Fabio Genoese

Research Fellow , Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)

Fabio Genoese joined CEPS in September 2013. He has a doctoral degree in Energy Economics obtained at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in January 2013. Before joining CEPS, Fabio worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovations Research ISI in Germany from 2008 to 2013, where he managed research and consulting projects both for public bodies and private clients in the energy sector. In 2012 he was a visiting researcher at Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei (FEEM) in Italy. Fabio grew up bilingually with Italian and German, is fluent in English and manages some French.

Work focus:

- Energy policy analysis
- Regulation and market design
- Derivation of R&D strategies for energy technologies
- Market intergration of renewable energy technologies