Power Summit 2019
20-21 May, Florence

Davide Crippa

Undersecretary, Italian Ministry of Economic Development

Born in Novara (1979), graduated in Environmental and Territorial Engineering from the Polytechnic of Turin. Mr. Crippa is married and has two daughters. After graduation, he founded a small energy consulting company and then pursued a political career in 2013.

Elected in 2013 to the Chamber of Deputies of the Italian Parliament, Mr. Crippa was member of the Elections Committee and Committee member of the Commission for Production Activities of which he had been Vice-President until July 2015. His main legislative activities as Member of Parliament included energy production and energy efficiency. He was also Group leader at the Chamber of Deputies and Delegate of the Parliament Hall for the 5 Star Movement Group.

In 2018 Mr. Crippa was elected to the Chamber of Deputies and became, in June, Undersecretary of State at the Ministry of Economic Development. Security of energy supply, natural gas market, electricity market, renewable energies, mineral and energy resources (including prospecting, research, cultivation and storage of subsoil) and industrial crises were his main responsibilities.

Antonio Tajani

President of the European Parliament

Born in Rome on 4 August 1953, Antonio Tajani is the son of an Italian army officer and a Latin and Greek professor. He lived in France for five years, where he and his family accompanied his father to NATO command. He holds a degree in law from La Sapienza University in Rome.

Mr Tajani completed his military service as an officer in the Italian Air Force. After attending a specialised air defence course at Borgo Piave di Latina, he joined the NATO Air Defence Ground Environment (NADGE).

Mr Tajani was a professional journalist for more than twenty years. He started out as a presenter of news programmes on Rai Radio 1, the Italian state broadcaster, and was a special correspondent in Lebanon, the Soviet Union and Somalia. He was then asked by, Indro Montanelli, the most recognised and revered Italian journalist of the twentieth century, to work for the newspaper, Il Giornale.

A co-founder of Forza Italia, in 1994, he was elected to the European Parliament for the first time, the genesis of what have turned into more than two decades of profound engagement with the European Union and its citizens.

He was appointed European Commissioner for Transport in 2008 and strongly backed the extension of passenger rights during his tenure. In 2010, he became European Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, where he championed ambitious reindustrialisation goals, "green growth" and a particular emphasis on helping SMEs, notably through the Late Payments Directive and the Entrepreneurship 2020 Action plan.

He was re-elected to the European Parliament and as one of its vice-presidents in 2014.

Campaigning on a platform that promised to have the presidency focus on actively supporting the work of Members while bringing the institution closer to EU citizens, Mr Tajani was elected President of the European Parliament on 17 January 2017.

Mr Tajani has always been driven by an unwavering belief that the European Union must derive its strength from the results it delivers to its citizens. Nevertheless, he also understands that the EU is going through a sensitive chapter in its history. As a matter of fact, it is only by working twice as hard to respond to the concerns of citizens that the European Parliament will win back the general public's trust. He looks forward to the challenge, working for all Europeans over the next two and a half years.

Mr Tajani is married with two children. Besides Italian, he speaks French, Spanish and English.

Johan Rockström

Director Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research Professor at the Institute of Earth & Environmental Science Potsdam University

Director of Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Professor at the Institute of Earth & Environmental Science - Potsdam University

Johan Rockström is a professor in environmental science with emphasis on water resources and global Sustainability. He is an internationally recognized scientist for his work on global sustainability issues. He helped lead the internationally renowned team of scientists that presented the planetary boundaries framework, first published in 2009, with an update in 2015.

The nine planetary boundaries presented in the framework are argued to be fundamental in maintaining a “safe operating space for humanity.” This framework has been embraced as an approach to sustainable development, and has been used to help guide governments, international organizations, NGOs, and companies considering sustainable development.

Anders Runevad

Group President & CEO of Vestas

Runevad holds his position since 2013. As CEO of Vestas, Runevad completed the wind energy company’s turnaround and led Vestas’ period of profitable growth since 2014. Leveraging the strong financial foundation built since 2013, Runevad is today spearheading Vestas’ journey to become the world’s leading provider of sustainable energy solutions.

Runevad spent more than 20 years with Ericsson, holding leadership roles across the Americas, Asia and Europe. He is also Chairman of the board of MHI Vestas Offshore A/S. Board member of Nilfisk A/S. Board member of Schneider Electric. Serves in the General Council of the Confederation of Danish Industries and the Industrial Policy Committee of the Confederation of Danish Industries.

Runevad holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and has completed MBA studies, both at Lund University, Sweden.

Lisa Davis

CEO Gas and Power, Siemens AG

Lisa Davis is a Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG. Appointed to the Siemens board in August 2014, she serves as CEO of Gas and Power and is responsible for the company Energy business globally. In January 2017, Ms. Davis was additionally named Chair and CEO of Siemens Corporation, USA, overseeing the company’s activities in conjunction with the overall Siemens strategy. Ms. Davis is based in Houston, Texas.

Ms. Davis began her career in energy after graduating from the University of California, Berkeley with a degree in Chemical Engineering. Her roles with Exxon Corporation and Texaco expanded across the manufacturing space, ranging from Process Engineering to Operations Management. Ms. Davis later joined Royal Dutch Shell, holding executive positions in Manufacturing Operations & Maintenance, Supply and Trading, Finance, as well as Strategy and Portfolio in both US and UK. In 2008, she served as Vice President of Sales and Marketing Lubricants & Commercial Fuels Americas before being appointed Executive Vice President of Strategy, Portfolio & Alternative Energy at Royal Dutch Shell, UK, in 2012.

Tom Rowland-Rees

Head of EMEA Research, BNEF

Since September 2018 Tom Rowlands-Rees has led Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s analysis on Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The teams in his group provide cutting edge market research on trends in power markets, gas, carbon and energy policy in the region. Before that Tom managed the Decentralized Energy team, providing analysis on the transition towards a more distributed, low-carbon energy system.

Prior to joining Bloomberg NEF Tom completed his PhD in Physics at Oxford University.

Chris Peeters

CEO of Elia Group

Chris Peeters is CEO of Elia Group, active in electricity transmission. In addition to its activities as a transmission system operator in Belgium and Germany, Elia Group provides various consulting services to international customers through its subsidiary Elia Grid International (EGI). Elia is also part of the Nemo Link joint venture that operates the first subsea electrical interconnector between Belgium and the United Kingdom.

Before joining Elia Group, Chris Peeters ran the Business Consulting activities of Schlumberger in Europe, Russia, Africa and the Middle East. Prior to that, he was 14 years with McKinsey & Company (of which seven years as Partner), specialising in the energy sector.

The first 10 years of his career, he created an engineering firm and subsequently started a manufacturer of building materials, before joining Hoogevens Aluminium as Sales and Technical Manager for part of Europe. Chris Peeters holds a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Leuven, Belgium.

Pasquale Romano

President & CEO of ChargePoint

Pasquale Romano is also a member of the company’s board of directors. He currently sits on the board of Agilone, CALSTART, and the YMCA of Silicon Valley. Pasquale joined ChargePoint in February of 2011, bringing more than 25 years of technology industry leadership and executive management experience to the company. He co-founded 2Wire, which was acquired by Pace plc for $475M in 2010.

Previously, Pasquale held multiple positions in marketing and engineering at Polycom. In 1989, he co-founded Fluent, Inc., a digital video networking company, and served as Chief Architect until it was sold to Novell Corporation in 1993. Pasquale holds an undergraduate degree in computer science from Harvard University and received his M.S. from MIT.

Jorge Pikunic

Managing Director Distributed Energy & Power at Centrica

Jorge Pikunic is Managing Director of Centrica’s global Distributed Energy & Power business, Centrica Business Solutions, which was established to deliver distributed energy solutions as part of a more decentralized, flexible, and lower carbon energy system. He joined Centrica in 2010, first heading up the Group’s strategy team, before taking over as Managing Director of British Gas’ Smart Metering business, where he lead the roll-out of smart meters to over one million residential customers.

Born in Venezuela, Jorge holds a MSc and PhD in Chemical Engineering and was a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. Before joining Centrica, he worked for McKinsey & Company, Procter & Gamble, and PDVSA (Venezuelan national oil company). He is a Board Director of the Faraday Institution, the UK’s independent institute for electrochemical energy storage science and technology.

Enno Böttcher

CEO of NODES AS

Enno Böttcher joined NODES as CEO in February 2019. He started his career in 1998 at the Hamburg utility HEW, one of the predecessor companies of Vattenfall. Since then, he has worked in utility & trading units / companies, and for TenneT, one of the largest transmission system operators. Enno Böttcher has held a number of leadership positions in sales, trading, grid development, products, and markets. As Managing Director, he spearheaded and operated Europe’s first market coupling auction office. He is also one of the architects modelling and delivering successfully Europe-wide single, integrated day-ahead and intraday markets.

Enno Böttcher was born in 1969. He studied business administration and electrical engineering and holds a Master of Science (Dipl.-Ing.) in power system engineering.

Christian Feisst

Chief Executive Officer Greencom Networks

Christian is the founder and CEO of GreenCom Networks, a European energy IoT company. GreenCom enables new business models for utilities, ESCOs, and OEMs in a distributed, renewable and customer-centered energy world. Before, Christian was the founding father and Managing Director for Smart Grid at Cisco Systems and spent more than 20 years working in the utility industry for the management consultancies A.T. Kearney and Booz Allen Hamilton. He holds a Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Hohenheim.

Michael Liebreich

Chairman & CEO of Liebreich Associates - Founder & Senior Contributor to Bloomberg New Energy Finance

Michael is Chairman and CEO of Liebreich Associates, through which he provides advisory services and speaks on clean energy and transportation, smart infrastructure, technology, climate finance and sustainable development. He is also the Founder and Senior Contributor to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. He is a member of the UK Department for International Trade’s Capital Investment Advisory Board and a Visiting Professor at Imperial College's Energy Futures Lab and most recently joined Sustainable Development Capital LLP (SDCL) as a Senior Adviser.

Michael serves on a number of advisory boards, including WWF Switzerland, The Hawthorn Club, an international network for professional women in the energy industry, Women in Sustainability (WiSER), Environment and Renewable Energy, Shell New Energies, the OECD Centre on Green Finance, Imperial College’s Masters programme in Climate Change, Management and Finance, Carbon Limiting Technologies Sustainable Technologies Fund, and Ignite Power, a fast-growing provider of distributed solar power in Africa. Michael is a member of the Strategic Committee for the World Alliance for Efficient Solutions (Solar Impulse Foundation) and a member of the selection committee for the Bloomberg New Energy Pioneers, a programme he created in 2008 and chaired until 2014.

Michael is Founding Chairman of the Liebreich Foundation (Philanthropic) and Association EcoVillages, a Swiss charity focusing on sustainability of mountain regions. He has recently completed a charitable project building a solar power system to support a Neo-natal unit in Sierra Leone (www.projectbo.org).

Between 2012 and 2018 Michael was a Board Member of Transport for London, where he sat on the Finance Committee and chaired the Safety, Sustainability and HR Panel. He is a former member of the high-level advisory group for the UN Secretary General's Sustainable Energy for All initiative, has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Councils on Sustainable Energy and the New Energy Architecture, and the advisory board of the Clinton Global Initiative Energy and Climate Change Working Group. Prior to founding New Energy Finance, Michael helped build over 25 companies as a venture capitalist, entrepreneur and executive, and before that he worked for McKinsey and Company.

Michael has an MA in Engineering from the University of Cambridge, where he won the Wyatt Prize for Engineering and the Ricardo Prize for Thermodynamics. Michael has an MBA from Harvard, where he was a Harkness Fellow and Baker Scholar. Michael has won lifetime achievement awards from BusinessGreen and the UK Renewable Energy Association, and has been a two-time finalist in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards.

Michael skied for Great Britain at the 1992 Albertville Olympics.

John E. Kelly III

Executive Vice President, IBM

As IBM senior vice president, Cognitive Solutions and IBM Research, Dr. John E. Kelly III is focused on the company’s investments in several of the fastest-growing and most strategic parts of the information technology market. His portfolio includes IBM Analytics, IBM Security and IBM Watson, as well as IBM Research and the company’s Intellectual Property team. He also oversees the specialization of IBM Watson into various industries and domains including IBM Watson Health, IBM Watson Internet of Things, IBM Watson Education, IBM Watson Financial Services and IBM Watson Customer Engagement.

Prior to joining IBM Research in July of 2007, Dr. Kelly was senior vice president of Technology and Intellectual Property, responsible for IBM’s technical and innovation strategies.

Dr. Kelly received a Bachelor of Science degree in physics from Union College in 1976. He received a Master of Science degree in physics from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1978 and his Doctorate in materials engineering from RPI in 1980. He has also received three honorary Doctoral degrees.

Stephen Woodhouse

Chief Digital Officer, Pöyry Management Consulting Ltd

Stephen Woodhouse is Pöyry’s Chief Digital Officer, responsible for digital transformation across the engineering and consulting group.

Stephen has twenty years’ experience in the energy business, specialising in the changing energy markets and the strategic response of commercial players. He led Pöyry's global work on energy market design for many years, and is internationally recognised as an expert in energy market reform.

He contributes to the global and EU debates on appropriate market designs for decarbonisation, flexibility, capacity, and network access. Stephen has led national programmes for market reform on several occasions, and has worked on electricity markets in around 30 countries.

Before joining Pöyry in 1999, he worked as an economic modeller for the UK electricity regulator Ofgem, working on market design, and previously as a transport consultant working on global aviation emissions modelling and high-speed rail projects. Stephen has an MA in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

He is an inspirational conference speaker and has published numerous papers on electricity market design.

Chetan Kotur

Chief Executive Assistant Polestar

Wytse Kaastra

Managing Director Energy Consumer Services for Europe, Accenture

After finishing his Masters in Economics, Wytse joined Exxon Mobil as economist. In 1997 Wytse joined the Accenture’s Utilities Consulting practice. He has extensive consulting and technology experience in the European and global utilities & energy arena.

Wytse is the Managing Director responsible for the Accenture Utility Retail practice in Europe and leading Accenture’s Global Connected Energy Services (EV, DER, Flex, Energy efficiency).