Low-Carbon Heat Conference 2019 Speakers

Jennifer Arran

Principal Analyst, Delta-ee

Since joining Delta-ee in 2010 Jennifer has been instrumental in developing our heat research, especially around customer research, technology forecasting and strategic support. In 2012 she co-authored a ground-breaking report on pathways for domestic heat to 2050 commissioned by the ENA and she continues to be involved in high profile consulting assignments for our major clients. More recently she was involved in the Freedom Project, a large scale hybrid heating system trial in Wales, where she provided customer insight and analysis.

Fiona Boyd

Sustainability Officer, The Highland Council

Fiona has worked with The Highland Council’s Energy & Sustainability team since 2016. She has been previously involved in identifying low carbon projects for the Council using Scotland’s Heat Map. Fiona is now coordinating The Highland Council’s LHESS pilot.

Rufus Ford

Business Development Manager, Vattenfall

Rufus Ford is a Business Development Manager in Vattenfall’s newly established UK heat business, working in partnership with local authorities and real estate developers to identify and develop opportunities to deliver low-carbon heat networks projects at scale. Vattenfall Heat UK is building on extensive experience of heat network development and operation across Europe and is committed to phasing out the use of fossil fuels.
Rufus has extensive experience in the energy sector and in heat networks specifically, having previously worked in the Heat Networks Delivery Unit at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and in various policy, research and business development roles in the utilities sector.

Barbara Garnier

Head of Heat in Buildings, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS)

Barbara is the Head of Heat in Buildings in the Clean Heat Directorate of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).

She leads the team in charge of developing and implementing a programme of coherent policies to support the decarbonisation of heat in both domestic and not domestic buildings, including new build and retrofit, working closely with other government departments and the industry.

Barbara has over 18 years’ experience of informing policies and strategies on energy, weather and climate gained through a variety of roles. These included policy development and delivery on industrial energy efficiency, marine renewables and carbon capture and storage; strategic development of the International Climate Fund; and international negotiations on the G8 and World Meteorological Organisation.

Barbara has a Degree in Applied Physics from the University of Marseille (France) and a Master of Science in Atmospheric Sciences from the University of East Anglia.

Fabrice Leveque

Senior Policy Manager, Scottish Renewables

Fabrice is a senior policy manager at Scottish Renewables, covering large scale energy generation. He works to ensure a supportive policy environment to enable the industry to keep growing and enable a transition to a cleaner, low-carbon economy.

Fabrice was previously a policy lead at WWF and WWF Scotland, campaigning to improve climate change and energy policy with a particular focus on the built environment. Prior to this he worked for a Westminster think-tank looking at the future of the electricity system. He has also worked in the solar industry, designing and selling PV and thermal systems across the South of England.

Graeme Hawker

Research Associate, University of Strathclyde

Graeme is a Research Associate in the Institute for Energy and Environment at the University of Strathclyde, where he received his PhD in electrical engineering, and is previously a graduate of Cambridge and Glasgow universities, with a background in the Scottish renewables industry. His research interests include energy system modelling, the economics of low carbon systems, and multi-vector network analysis, incorporating understanding of the joint role of electricity, gas and heat networks. He is currently a researcher for the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC), conducting energy system modelling evaluating future scenarios for the decarbonisation of domestic heating systems in different UK contexts, including both technical and engineering challenges alongside the economic and social dimensions of the energy transition.

David Linsley-Hood

Consultancy Director, Locogen

David is a Chartered Engineer and Environmentalist with over 10 years’ experience in renewable heating system design, project development, training and consultancy. He is a director of Locogen Consulting and the technical lead on a number of our complex multi-technology projects, including our Fintry and Iona Shared loop heat pump developments. David has considerable experience in undertaking qualitative and quantitative analysis of energy technologies and installations and identifying innovate and deliverable solutions.

Richard Long

Business Development Director, ENGIE Urban Energy

Richard is ENGIE Urban Energy’s Business Development Director, responsible for new business and the ongoing expansion of ENGIE’s existing energy networks in the UK through new connections.

Previously a Chartered Engineer and MBA, with 30 years of technical, commercial and management experience within the energy sector; Richards career has been predominantly focused on district heating, CHP and other low carbon, decentralised energy solutions. Roles have covered the breadth of the project lifecycle, from business, strategy and project development through to project management and operations.

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 and Industry and led on telecoms, spectrum and postal issues. She has previously worked in various roles at Ofcom in Scotland, focusing on economic regulation 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.

Marc Overson

Senior Product & Marketing Manager, Mitsubishi Electric

Marc Overson is Senior Product & Marketing Manager for Mitsubishi Electric’s Residential Heating and Ventilation business unit.
Built upon the foundations of a Mechanical Design degree and with over 12 years of international experience working for market leading HVACR manufacturers; Marc also has a background in business leadership, sales and operations management, account management and business development.
Since joining Mitsubishi Electric in 2018, his responsibilities have mainly included the strategic leadership of a team that undertakes the complete product lifecycle marketing and management of their Heating and Ventilation range of products in the UK, working to ensure their continued sustainability within a rapidly evolving market.

Dave Pearson

Director, Star Renewable Energy

Dave has been involved in renewable heat since 2009 when Star deployed a combined heating and cooling solution for a UK chocolate factory, where waste heat was recycled. Later the same technique was used in Drammen and several other sites harvesting heat from local resources. Dave led the successful LCITP application for the proposed Gorbal River Heat Pump project. Whilst this project didn’t go ahead the team learned a lot about project pitfalls. Gorbals in Glasgow would have seen less than half the CO2 and no local NOx emissions but also proved that inner city “retrofit” is possible especially when a heat source 8x that needed for entire city centre is available.

The Queens Quay project led by West Dunbartonshire Council sees Star heat pumps being supplied through Vital Energi. At 5.2MW these are largest high temperature (80C) river heat pumps in Britain.

Dave is a graduate of Strathclyde with an B.Eng in Mechanical Engineering with European Studies and Business Mgt and a Masters in Business Administration. He leads Star Renewable Energy in pursuit of UK repeat “Drammens”.

He is also Chairman of CeeD-Scotland a peer to peer knowledge sharing group with 200 members across Scotland with clinic areas including lean manufacturing, marketing, energy, HR and much more.

Jody Pittaway

Director of Heat Networks, SSE Enterprise Utilities

Jody Pittaway has 16 years of experience in the utility sector in a number of regulatory and commercial roles at managerial level. He has represented Thames Water and SSE at various regulatory and commercial industry working groups driving policy change predominantly in emerging areas of competition within the utilities sector.

In his previous role, Jody held day to day for responsibility for operation and management of the Heat Networks business and as such has considerable experience on the full project lifecycle and lessons learned along the way. He personally led the development of a number of large heat networks projects including the Wyndford Estate (Glasgow) heat networks retrofit scheme – the largest CESP funded refurbishment project in the UK at that time.

Jody is currently Director of Heat Networks within SSE Enterprise, working with public and private sector clients to deliver successful new long term partnerships for heat networks delivery and operation.

Councillor Anna Richardson

Glasgow City Council

Anna graduated with an MA (Hons) in Geography in 2001 from the University of Glasgow and an MSc in Human Resource Management in 2005 from the University of Strathclyde.

She worked in various public sector administrative roles before spending 9 years at home raising her three children. During that time she gained an HND in Antenatal Education and continues to work part time for the parenting charity NCT.

Anna was elected as Councillor for Langside ward in Glasgow in 2015, and again in 2017. She is currently Convener for Sustainability and Carbon Reduction, with a particular interest in transport, equalities and the mainstreaming of sustainability across all Council functions.

Roz Smith

Strategic Energy Coordinator, Stirling Council

Following completion of a PgDip in Environmental Science, I worked within Local Authority Waste Services for ~8 years, before moving to work in Sustainable Development 4 years ago to concentrate on renewable energy projects and energy masterplanning. Large-scale projects include: the installation of Stirling Council’s first district heating network following successful funding bid through Scottish Government and EU Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme (LCITP) capital funding programme; and (in development) the installation of solar canopies with integrated EV chargers and battery storage at Castleview Park & Ride to enable the modal shift to EVs.

Kate Turner

Legal Director, Pinsent Masons

Kate is a Director of the Pinsent Masons Energy and Finance practice and co-leads the Energy Markets and Regulation team. Kate has been advising clients in the energy sector throughout her career both in the UK and internationally and specialises in advising on energy sector projects in the downstream, renewables and low carbon sectors of the energy market (both private and public sector clients). Kate has particular experience of renewable/low carbon energy projects (onshore and offshore wind, biomass, solar and new cleantech disruptive technologies), PPAs, ESCOs, fuel supply, grid connection and low carbon/energy efficiency and district heating schemes, power station (CCGT and CHP) developments/acquisitions/disposals and joint ventures, tolling arrangements and trading arrangements, gas supply and storage as well as regulatory matters affecting the energy market/projects. Kate is appointed to the board of the Scottish Government's Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme and the District Heating Loan Funds Panel and engaged in other industry working groups.

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.