Scottish Renewables Annual Conference 2019 Speakers

Alan Gooding

Executive Director, Smarter Grid Solutions

Alan Gooding, is one of the co-founders of Smarter Grid Solutions and has worked with a number of high profile energy utilities in the UK, Europe, and North America including SSE, Iberdrola, Western Power Distribution, UK Power Networks, EWE Netz, E.On, Southern California Edison, and Pacific Gas and Electric.

Alan is an Electrical Engineer and has spent the last 20 years in finance and commercial roles. He is responsible for Smarter Grid Solutions’ UK business development and our partnership program. Our partnership program is focused on growing the application of our ground-breaking DER Management System software in international markets through channel partners and strategic alliances.

Ayesha Hazarika MBE

Ayesha Hazarika MBE is a columnist and political commentator who is known for her insightful and witty opinions and observations on current affairs. Having started her career as a stand-up comedian playing clubs across the country, she then took what she thought was a natural diversion into politics as a Special Adviser for the Labour Party, working with them for eight years both in Government and Opposition. During her time in Westminster she worked for Gordon Brown, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband, advising them on Prime Minister’s Questions, speeches, media and policy as well as heading up initiatives on topics such as Women and Equality.

Susie Lind

Head of Legal and Company Secretary, EDF Renewables

Susie is a member of the EDF Renewables UK Executive Management team leading the delivery of renewables (wind, solar and battery storage) in the UK. She was recently appointed as a Director on the Board of Scottish Renewables.

Susie is Head of Legal and Company Secretary and oversees the legal affairs of all renewables operations in the UK which includes 35 operational wind farms (including 2 offshore wind farms at Blyth and Teesside) and one battery storage project. This totals around 1GW with the Neart Na Gaoithe Offshore Wind Farm development on the horizon. The company has a development pipeline of around 2GW of projects.

Now based in EDFR’s office in Edinburgh Susie has particular focus on developing EDF Renewable’s strong people agenda and supporting acquisitive and organic growth, building on the 8 existing wind farms (496 MW) already in Scotland.

Claire Mack

Chief Executive, Scottish Renewables

Claire has been Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables, the representative voice of Scotland’s renewable energy industry, since October 2017. She is responsible for leading the organisation’s work to grow Scotland’s renewables sector and sustain its position at the forefront of the global clean energy industry.

Claire is a member of the First Minister’s Energy Advisory Board and the Renewables Industry Advisory Group, co-chaired by Scotland’s Energy Minister.

Before joining Scottish Renewables, Claire was Director of Policy and Place at the Scottish Council for Development. She has previously worked in various roles at Ofcom in Scotland, focusing on economic regulation of telecoms, radio spectrum and the mail market while also looking at developing digital participation of individuals and businesses.

Prior to this Claire worked in retail and the construction industry as well as on regulation of regional broadcasting in the Borders and North East of England.

Xavier Mamo

Research and Development Director, EDF Energy

Xavier is the Director of the EDF Energy R&D UK Centre, leading EDF Group Research and Development activities in the UK. Set up as a fully international team, EDF Energy R&D UK Centre is engaged in projects in support of EDF Energy and works across the whole energy value chain – including Nuclear, Offshore Wind, Energy management, Energy Efficiency, Smart Meters, Electric Vehicles and Digital Innovation – in close relationship with the major industrial, academic and governmental organisations in the UK.

Prior to his current role, Xavier was directing a department at EDF R&D in France dealing with electricity system economics and technologies, working on renewable and storage integration and impact on the electricity system. He also successfully steered the creation of an institute for photovoltaic technology development and innovation in France (IPVF) bringing together industrial (EDF, Total, Air Liquide), academic and government partners.

Trisha McAuley OBE

Trisha is an experienced Chair and Non-Executive Director, with experience in the public, private and voluntary sectors. She was named as one of 100 Women to Watch in Cranfield University's 2017 FTSE 350 Board Report. Trisha's background is in consumer affairs. For over twenty years she was a senior executive in UK and Scottish consumer organisations. She is widely recognised as a national consumer expert and was awarded an OBE for services to consumer affairs in 2015. She has been an influential public policy leader, working effectively with parliaments, governments, regulators, business and public services at strategic level. In the past four years, Trisha has developed a successful non-executive and board portfolio.
Trisha is currently the Independent Chair of the National Grid RIIO2 Gas and Electricity Transmission User Groups and the Independent Chair of the CUSC and Grid Code Review Panels. She is also a Board Member of Northern Ireland Water, a Member of the Heathrow Consumer Challenge Board and a Member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants Scotland Discipline Board. She is a member of Ofgem’s Gas Network Innovation Competition Expert panel, a Member of the Office of the Rail and Road Regulator Consumer Expert Panel and a Member of the Civil Aviation Authority Consume

Michael Moore

Senior Advisor, PwC

Michael Moore is a Senior Adviser at PwC, working with clients on the strategic implications of Brexit and other political issues.

Across different sectors, he has been advising boards and senior executives on the developments in the Brexit negotiation preparations, the framework of likely outcomes and the high level implications for their businesses.

Michael qualified as a Scottish chartered accountant with the firm before spending 18 years as a Member of Parliament.

He served in the cabinet as Secretary of State for Scotland during the Coalition and also spent time as European Business Adviser to the Deputy Prime Minister.

Nick Sharpe

Director of Communications, Scottish Renewables

Nick Sharpe is Scottish Renewables’ Director of Communications. His work involves overseeing Scottish Renewables’ media and public affairs work and liaising between the organisation’s member companies, the media and other stakeholders to promote positive news about the sector to diverse audiences.

A former journalist, Nick trained on the South Wales Echo then spent seven years at the Sun, latterly as Chief Reporter.

He then spent a year at Weber Shandwick, one of the world’s largest public relations consultancies.

At Scottish Renewables he’s also responsible for aspects of marketing and all the organisation’s social media.

Chris Stark

Chief Executive, Committee on Climate Change

Chris has been Chief Executive of the Committee on Climate Change since April 2018. His previous role was Director of Energy and Climate Change in the Scottish Government, leading the development of Scotland’s approach to emissions-reduction and the accompanying energy system transition. His team provided advice to Scottish Ministers on all aspects of energy and climate policy – and on licensing and consent decisions for new onshore energy infrastructure. Prior to that Chris headed the Strategy Unit, the Scottish Government’s central strategy team, and he has worked in a number of Whitehall departments. He has wide experience of economic policymaking, in the Scottish Government, HM Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Mark Taylor

Deputy Director of Innovation, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

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, Energy Entrepreneurs Fund and the upcoming Clean Growth Venture Capital Fund.

Paul Wheelhouse MSP

Minister for Energy, Connectivity and the Islands, Scottish Government

Born in Belfast, Paul was raised in Edinburgh, attending Stewart's Melville College. He has an honours degree in Economics from the University of Aberdeen and an MBA from University of Edinburgh. He has lived in Berwickshire since 2000.

‪Paul is a professional economist and, since 1992, had specialised in higher and further education markets, policy evaluation and economic appraisal and impact assessment of capital projects.‬

Between May 2011 and September 2012 Paul served on the Scottish Parliament's Finance Committee, and the Standards, Procedures and Public Appointments Committee. And was the Parliamentary Liaison Officer to the Cabinet Secretary for Parliamentary Business and Government Strategy of the Scottish Government. Previously, between May 2011 and Feb 2012, Paul served as Parliamentary Liaison Officer for the Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Environment and the Minister for Climate Change.

Prior to taking his Ministerial position Paul was a member of cross-party groups on Epilepsy, Rural Policy, Armed forces Veterans, Funerals and Bereavement, Boating and Marine Tourism and deputy convener of Sport.

David Bell

Director, JLL

David is a Director with JLL and has 30 years’ experience of planning and development practice. He leads the Planning and Development Team and has particular expertise in relation to energy planning and onshore wind development. He has advised on some of the UK’s largest renewable energy projects including the Viking, Dorenell, Fallago Rig, South Kyle and Millennium Wind Farms in Scotland, and Scout Moor in England. David has advised on feasibility studies and planning applications covering onshore wind energy, biomass, solar and transmission infrastructure. He has also been providing advice in recent years to the UK Government’s Energy Systems Catapult on low carbon decentralised energy systems, building retrofit policy, and urban district heating systems. David is a recognised leading planning consultant on renewable energy development and frequently acts in the capacity of expert planning witness at Public Local Inquiries and in Appeals throughout the UK.

Andrew Bissell

CEOM,Sunamp

Andrew is CEO of Sunamp Ltd a company that designs, produces and sells compact, highly efficient modular Heat Batteries that use non-toxic Phase Change Material (PCM) to store heat energy. As well as exceptionally high energy density, they provide hot water at high flow rates, delivering world-leading high power density. This makes them optimal for a wide range of applications, including energy efficiency, grid balancing and renewable energy.

Sunamp Heat Batteries are packaged stores of heat energy using Phase Change Materials (PCMs). They are scalable and can be tailored to specific applications from large-scale industrial use to household and to compact automotive solutions. Sunamp Ltd is based near Edinburgh and employs 28 staff, aiming to significantly grow staff numbers. Sunamp products are installed in over 1,000 homes across the UK, the majority in Scotland and enquiries are coming in from all over the world.

Andrew is a successful technology entrepreneur, previously the founder and CEO of Voxar Limited, which achieved leading global market share in 3D medical visualisation, with a turnover in excess of €10M and 80+ employees. It is now part of Canon Medical Systems, and employs over 120 people in Edinburgh.

Stuart Black

Director of Development and Infrastructure, Highland Council

Stuart is a graduate of Edinburgh University (MA Geography Hons, 1986), and Glasgow University (PhD Town and Regional Planning 1990).

He started his career with Hillier Parker Chartered Surveyors in London (1989-90), and then was a lecturer in Land Economy at Aberdeen University (1990-96). He was appointed Head of Economics with Highland and Islands Enterprise (1996-2000), and then Director of Strengthening Communities (2000-2002). In 2002 he was appointed Chief Executive of Inverness and Nairn Enterprise, and in 2007 Director of Global Connections with HIE.

He joined the Highland Council as Director of Planning and Development in February 2008, and has been Director of Development and Infrastructure since April 2014.

Professor Martin Cave

Chair, Ofgem

Martin Cave is Chair of the UK Gas & Electricity Markets Authority (GEMA). Martin Cave has worked in government and academia as an economist specialising in the regulation of network industries and in competition law. From 2012 to 2018 he was a panel deputy chair at the Competition and Markets Authority or its predecessor, chairing market investigations, merger inquiries and regulatory appeals. He carried out five independent regulatory reviews for the UK Government and has advised many regulators in the UK and internationally. He has held chairs at various UK universities, including Warwick and the London School of Economics, and is the author of several books and articles on regulation.

Eleri Davies

Head of Consents, innogy

Eleri is a Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute with extensive experience of major infrastructure projects, mainly energy, from both private and public sector perspectives. She is currently Head of Consents for the onshore wind team at Innogy Renewables UK Ltd (innogy) providing strategic direction and advice on planning and consenting matters. After graduating from Cardiff University in 2003, Eleri started her planning career as a Development Management Officer at the Brecon Beacons National Park Authority before making a move to the civil service working as a Case Manager advising on nationally significant infrastructure projects for the Infrastructure Planning Commission and, subsequently, the Planning Inspectorate. After seven years in the public sector, Eleri moved into the private sector joining RWE npower renewables (as it was then) as a Renewables Developer – having come from a planning background, this provided a more rounded understanding of the onshore wind development process but she has since moved back to her planning roots.

Vicky Dawe

Deputy Director, Renewable Electricity Support Schemes, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Vicky Dawe is Deputy Director at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, responsible for the delivery of the Contracts for Difference allocation rounds, the Renewables Obligation and the Feed in Tariff schemes. She joined the civil service in 2003, after moving from Australia where she held various roles in the private and higher education sectors. Vicky’s government career has focussed on environmental policy, working across several departments on home energy saving, the creation of Natural England, water pollution, surface water flooding, improving environmental regulation and reforming arms-length bodies, the Energy Company Obligation, and the Electricity Market Reform programme.

Professor Ian Hunter

Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering, MIT

Ian W. Hunter, Ph.D., is the Hatsopoulos Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. His main areas of research are instrumentation, micro-robotics, medical devices and biomimetic materials. Over the years he and his students have developed many instruments and devices including: confocal laser microscopes, scanning tunneling electron microscopes, miniature mass spectrometers, new forms of Raman spectroscopy, needle free drug delivery technologies, nano and micro-robots, micro-surgical robots, robotic endoscopes, high performance Lorentz force motors, and micro-array technologies for massively parallel chemical and biological assays. Hunter has over 500 publications. He also invents instruments and devices based on this research. This has led to over 150 issued and pending patents. His inventions have been used by numerous companies and in addition he has founded or co-founded over 25 companies. Hunter loves teaching and has been the recipient of several teaching awards at MIT.

Felicity Jones

Partner, Everoze

Felicity (Fliss) specialises in new energy business models and technologies in the flexibility space – think energy storage, blockchain, data, aggregators and more. Her work has ranged from big-picture strategy advice through to in-depth technical due diligence of pioneering utility-scale battery projects. Formal appointments include:

- Chair of the UK Electricity Storage Network ‘Markets and Revenues’ working group (2018-)
- Advisory Group member for University of Exeter’s iGov programme on energy system change (2017-)
Chair of World Energy Council storage knowledge network (2015)

Sue Kearns

Deputy Director – Consumers and Low Carbon Division, Scottish Government

Sue’s career has developed within the Scottish Government (SG) where she has held various policy posts including on enterprise education, regional policy, and information technology. As a previous Head of Telecommunications Policy in SG, she led a major procurement which extended basic broadband coverage to rural and remote areas of Scotland.

Sue has worked in several Energy Policy roles since 2006, most notably driving development of policy and support on community and local energy where Scotland is now recognised as leading within the UK. Her current role is Head of Consumers and Low Carbon Division.
This covers key areas of policy and support under Scotland’s new Energy Strategy and is developing a new focus on consumer policy for the Scottish Government.

Chris Milne

Chief Financial Officer, Orbital Marine Power

Chris Milne – CFO of Orbital Marine Power Limited and Director of Orbital Marine Power (Orkney) plc Chris joined Orbital as CFO in October 2016 where he leads on finance, reporting and funding as well as supporting CEO, Andrew Scott, on corporate strategy and business planning. Chris has led or managed financial transactions ranging from seed capital investments to multi-billion infrastructure deals across the energy space. Chris was previously Vice President of an oil and gas services focused private equity fund managed by Simmons and Company International after holding a number of senior finance leadership positions at SSE plc (previously Scottish and Southern Energy plc). This included sitting on the board of its generation business as Head of Finance for all generation, gas storage and exploration and production activities, as well as various other non-executive director roles. Prior to joining SSE, Chris was a manager in KPMG’s Private Equity M&A team in London. Chris graduated from the University of Dundee in 2001 with a first-class honours degree in Business Economics and Marketing with Psychology, is a chartered accountant (ICAEW) and holds the CFA UK Level 4 Certificate in Investment Management.

Neal Rafferty

Head of Utilities, Markets and Network Policy Unit, Scottish Government

Neal heads the Scottish Government team responsible for electricity policy and regulation, including large renewable developments. Other than a short period of time off for good behaviour, he has been working in energy policy across a range of issues since 1999. The majority of that time has been focused on renewables, and delivering the ambitions and policies of successive Scottish Governments. More recently, Neal was involved along with many other colleagues in drafting the Scottish Government’s Energy Strategy, which was published in December 2017.

Professor Graeme Roy

Head of Economics and Director, Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) at the University of Strathclyde

Professor Graeme Roy is Head of Economics and Director of the Fraser of Allander Institute (FAI) at the University of Strathclyde. For over 40 years, the FAI has been a leading independent research institute focused on the Scottish economy. Alongside its academic work, the FAI undertakes a wide variety of commissioned analysis for companies, organisations and governments ranging from strategy or forecasting work through to detailed economic impact assessments.

Graeme is a former Senior Civil Servant in the Scottish Government where he was both a Senior Economic Adviser and Head of the First Minister’s Policy Unit. He is a graduate of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh. He is a member of the UK Government's Scottish Business Taskforce, the Scottish Government's Labour Market Strategy Group and the Glasgow Growth Commission. He was expert adviser to the Scottish Parliament's Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee for its inquiries into economic statistics in Scotland and Scotland's long-term economic performance.

For more information on the FAI please see www.strath.ac.uk/fraser

Hannah Smith

Senior Policy Manager, Scottish Renewables

Hannah Smith is a Senior Policy Manager at Scottish Renewables, leading the organisation’s policy work on local and decentralised energy. Hannah is responsible for a variety of policy and commercial projects relating to the economics of the energy market, the optimisation of energy networks, and innovation across technologies and business models – all across renewable electricity, heat and transport.

Hannah has spent four years at Scottish Renewables, covering various aspects of policy work. Prior to joining the policy team, she worked with the UN on an energy project in Kyrgyzstan. She holds a Masters Degree in International Relations.

Marcus Stewart

Energy Analysis Senior Manager, National Grid SO

Marcus Stewart
Energy Analysis Senior Manager

National Grid SO

Marcus is a respected expert on the future of energy with over two decades experience in electricity and gas networks with National Grid. He leads National Grid’s work on the Future Energy Scenarios and seasonal outlooks. He is responsible for developing the long term supply and demand scenarios that underpin National Grid’s and the energy industry’s medium and long term planning. Working closely with industry stakeholders and government, he plays a key role in predicting and shaping the GB energy landscape. He has appeared on tv, radio and in print sharing National Grid’s analysis of the future of energy.

Andy Yuill

Senior Renewable Heat Manager, Natural Power

Andy leads the renewable heat sector team at Natural Power where he manages projects involving a range of low carbon technologies generating and distributing heat and power. He has been directly responsible for consulting on and delivering the design, installation and commissioning of a range of renewable heating systems and is a CIBSE registered Heat Networks Consultant with a background in process engineering, project design and delivery.