2024 Speakers

Ruth currently leads on innovation projects and new business models for the Electrification Services team at Veolia UK. Previously she spearheaded the innovator export programme at Energy Systems Catapult, and spent time crunching data on the Local Area Energy Planning team. She is has a degree in Sustainable Energy Systems and an EMBA.

Alan is a time-served engineer with over 35 years’ experience within the energy industry, holding lead roles at a variety of multinational companies. Alan joined Clarke Energy in 2019 and is actively involved in Clarke Energy’s diversification to its CHP portfolio, into complementary renewable technologies, such energy efficiency adoption, solar, heat pumps, battery energy storage, hydrogen electrolysers / fuel cells, biomethane plants, carbon capture & utilisation and load shifting hybrid systems. He is a champion of the net-zero journey and an active member of industry trade associations and advisory bodies, advocating the UK’s whole power solution.  

Chris is the CCO at Electron, a leading EnTech company that provides a marketplace platform for flexible electricity grids. With over 10 years of experience in energy, holding various commercial roles across supply, consultancy, and software, Chris has a passion for driving the adoption of disruptive technologies to accelerate the transition to Net Zero. His current focus is to lead the expansion of Electron across the UK, Europe, and the US. 

Laura is a chartered engineer with over 30 years’ experience in Energy Engineering and Innovation and Manufacturing systems. A whole systems engineer, specialising in energy systems flexibility, she works with generators and users of electricity to enable our region to accelerate its delivery of Net Zero. 

Northern Powergrid manages the electricity network that powers everyday life for more than 8 million people across 3.9 million homes and businesses in the North East, Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire. 

As part of her role at Northern Powergrid, Laura is currently co-chair of the Flexibility Products Technical Working Group at the ENA Open Networks Programme; the industry’s collaborative initiative to deliver collaboratively on increasing participation and volume in the local flexibility markets in line with actions from the Government and Ofgem’s Smart Systems and Flexibility plan.  

I joined SWM in April 2022 after fifteen years working in higher education, local government, and as a director for a community energy society.  I bring to SWM my skills in research, knowledge transfer and stakeholder engagement, and my knowledge in sustainable energy and sustainable built environments. My role is to advise and support local authorities, businesses, community groups and other organisations across the West Midlands to improve their sustainability practice.  I manage and deliver projects and research, facilitate stakeholder engagement, and write reports and strategies.  I am also working to ensure that all of our activities contribute to our Roadmap priorities, and that the West Midlands is leading in contributing to the national target of net zero gas emissions by 2050, while reducing health inequality and driving inclusive growth

Simon is the Global Digital Energy Leader and the Global Digital Twin Leader at Arup, Vice President, Trustee, and Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, and Board Member and Chair of the Gemini Call for Digital Twin Hub. 

As both a technology developer and a chartered mechanical engineer, with a background in renewables and offshore oil and gas, Simon is an industry and board advisor for digital transformation and technology and has a passion for the transformational applications of digital technology.  

Simon speaks and publishes extensively on the topics of digital energy and digital twins. He is the author of the digital twin maturity spectrum, co-host of the digital twin fan club podcast, and has received numerous awards for his contributions to the engineering profession. 

Gabriel is a Chartered Engineer with 25 years of experience in technical and commercial delivery and innovation in the decentralised and renewable energy sector. Gabriel has a comprehensive engineering background from an apprenticeship with the MoD, a Mechanical Engineering degree from Cardiff, Researcher at an International Energy organisation in the Netherlands, and a Ph.D. in Heat Transfer and Fluid Dynamics before founding Sustainable Energy Ltd in 1998. Gabriel has acted as a principal consultant for the design and implementation of many of the UK’s leading district heating, cooling, and renewable power projects. Gabriel is a Fellow of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and the Energy Institute and a Chartered Member of CIBSE. 

Charles Hesketh has a background of developing and financing renewable energy projects, he joined the ENWCML team 2 years ago to assist in the expansion of the company into these new markets. Supporting the sales and construction teams in identifying new technologies and markets whilst reporting to the C-suite management team, he looks after Behind the Meter (BtM) projects for the I&C customer base of ENWCML and Front of Meter (FtM) projects working with investment owner/operator partners.  

Mark joined Conrad Energy from Siemens via SSE and Honeywell. An experienced energy specialist, he was part of the team that grew ENER-G into a market leading technology provider which was later acquired by Centrica for £145m. Mark helps customers reduce energy costs and carbon emissions whilst improving energy resilience.

David has been in the energy sector for 12 years. His broad energy experience spans development of renewable energy projects, investing in distributed energy technology, energy auditing and delivering energy efficiencies and onsite generation solutions world-wide for an international manufacturing business. He founded On-Site Energy Ltd in 2018 to address the problems he observed that are facing energy intensive manufacturers relating to carbon reduction, energy cost reduction and the challenges of capex and return on investment. Since then, he has overseen the projects totalling more than £20m. He is a Chartered Accountant by original training and has held CEO, CFO and Partner level roles for over 25 years. 

Over 15 years’ experience in energy Transmission & Distribution grid design and operations, Regulatory reporting, RES grid integration, Network Energy Efficiency projects in Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. My role includes techno-commercial advisory and analytics for full life cycle of Grid (electricity & gas) projects, PPA, Asset Valuation & Management, Auction Support, Multinational Interconnectors, and Digital Transformation of Utilities.  

Suzanna Lashford is the Manager of the Business Development team at Vattenfall Networks, one of the UK’s leading Independent Distribution Network Operators (IDNOs). With a 14 year track record in Sales and Business development and significant experience in the solar sector Suzanna has in depth knowledge around distribution network development and a strong technical understanding of Solar PV, Battery Storage, EV technology and HV Networks.

Dr Irene has over 20 years’ experience in the energy sector, with a robust engineering background and an industry-sponsored PhD. She has been leading Amp X since its establishment in September 2019, focusing on the delivery of a digital energy platform that caters for a number of autonomous and interoperable products to future-proof the grid, unlocking flexibility from the edge of the grid at a large scale, whilst improving system resilience and stability at the lowest possible cost. Prior to this, Irene spent most of her career to date at Engie, leading strategic programmes aimed to optimise performance and profitability of the generation portfolio. More recently, Irene led a World Energy Council international programme on energy blockchain. 

Simon is a time-tested power developer with a proven track record of delivering projects in the UK, Middle East and West Africa, delivering over 3,000MW of projects over the past 20 years. 

As founder and Managing Director of the Olympus Power group of companies, Simon is now leading a nationwide group of power development and service businesses. The Olympus Power group, founded in 2013, includes (i) Beco Energy one of the oldest renewable energy business in the UK established in 1979 (ii) Olympus VO, a leading provider of fully funded energy efficiency equipment to the leisure and hospitality industry (iii) Olympus Power, a rooftop solar developer and asset management business, and (iv) Olympus FM, a turn-key EPC provider. 

Richard is a professional executive and Chartered Engineer with over 30 years of experience in combustion, thermal energy and power generation across the power, petrochemical, marine and offshore industries. Enabling sustainability by plant and process efficiency improvements, are a key part of his day-to-day activities with Alfa Laval.

Jaron Reddy is UK & Ireland Manager at ENTRNCE – a technology company helping organisations set a roadmap to 100% carbon-free energy.

Jaron is passionate about giving organisations the transparency they need over their energy sourcing, to drive real carbon reduction. He is leading the development of the Carbon Monitor: a unique data platform that calculates the half-hourly carbon footprint of onsite combined heat and power (CHP) versus conventional methods of heat & grid electricity. The tool is the first of its kind and will show CHP’s continuing role as an energy transition technology.

Jaron is also working with a range of large energy users across the public and private sectors to set a greenwash-proof clean energy strategy.

Ben Richardson having a multi-disciplined engineering background has been responsible for the UK&I region for Stationary Fuel Cells at Bosch since 2021. Tasked with defining the organization setup and go-to-market strategy. 

Before that, he worked in the central German team responsible for global fieldtest coordination, service and technical support within the fuel cell division. Before this he managed the UK&I CHP project and technical teams in Bosch Thermotechnology from 2014 to mid 2019.  

Prior to Bosch, he worked at Centrica Business Solutions (at the time ENER-G Combined Power) as an applications engineer designing multi-megawatt cogeneration and trigeneration systems 

Chris Ridge is the Technical Policy Manager at the Thermal Insulation Contractors Association, the UK trade association for thermal insulation specialists. Chris is a TIPCEHECK expert with fourteen years’ experience in the thermal insulation industry  and over 25 years’ experience within the wider construction and energy sector markets. Chris also chairs the BSI sub-committee “thermal insulation for equipment and industrial applications.

Coming soon…

Rob Saunders is challenge director for UKRI’s ‘Prospering from the Energy Revolution’ programme, funded through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.  Over its four years, this aims to demonstrate the future business models and local approaches that will put energy users and consumers at the heart of a cleaner, cheaper, and more resilient energy system. An engineer by training, Rob ran major innovation programmes in the food and packaging industries before retraining with an energy masters, joining Innovate UK in 2011 as lead for offshore renewables. Prior to his current role, Rob led the energy sector team at Innovate UK, which helped hundreds of UK businesses to grow through clean energy innovation, helped launch the energy catalyst programme and set up two energy-focussed catapult centres; Offshore Renewable Energy in Glasgow & Blyth, and Energy Systems in Birmingham.   

Michael Simpson is the Chief Commercial and Product Officer, of Cheesecake Energy. Mike graduated from the University of Cambridge with a 1st class degree in aerospace engineering and carried out research in high efficiency compression/expansion at Imperial College London. He previously worked for Rolls-Royce Plc., and conducted research into energy storage at the University of Nottingham (UoN). 

Phil is the Future Technologies Evangelist at Octopus Energy, leading the research & development team, and applying cutting edge technology to develop new innovation across the whole of the energy chain.  
 
Some of the tech-led innovation Phil is working on includes the Octopus Agile tariff, making the grid more flexible to cope with the realities of intermittent renewable generation, and Powerloop, a project that could turn millions of electric cars into mini battery packs to supply the grid when renewables energy is in short supply.  
 
Phil joined Octopus Energy following the acquisition of his entech startup nCube, a pioneer in IOT platform development, with award-winning tech that acts as a bridge to connect IOT devices, using Z-Wave, WiFi, Zigbee, Bluetooth and LAN.   
 
Prior to nCube, Phil helped launch a mobile advertising startup in Canada, and delivered numerous innovations at O2 such as messaging, pre-pay & mobile internet. He regularly subjects his wife and three children to trialling out his latest gadgets in energy tech.  

With extensive knowledge of delivering projects for the local authority and private sector, Lisa led the grant application for the ERDF-funded Heat the Streets project. Lisa is managing the delivery of this project and continues to promote GSHPs.