Cleantech Group

Simone Accornero

Simone Accornero, co-founder & CEO of FlexiDAO, is an expert in energy entrepreneurship and blockchain. His expertise comes from being an energy management consultant at OpenDomo Services, where his knowledge developed in energy management, electricity wholesale markets, and developing blockchain applications for smart distribution systems. He’s also a Research Engineer at CITCEA and graduate student of a double degree in MSc Energy for Smart Cities from KU Leuven (Belgium) and UPC (Spain).

David Aitken

Janne Alasaarela

Experienced Chief Executive Officer with a demonstrated history of working in the consumer goods industry and new business development. Skilled in Research and Development (R&D), Business Planning, Entrepreneurship (10+ years), Product R&D, and Strategic Planning. A strong business development professional who has single-handedly brought several products from idea to market. Currently working as COO in 21TDMC and studying environmental sciences at the University of Helsinki.

Anders Andrae

Dr. Anders S.G. Andrae received the M.Sc. degree in chemical engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1997, and the Ph.D. degree in microsystems packaging from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2005.

He worked for Ericsson on LCA between 1997 and 2001. Between 2006 and 2008 he carried out post–doctoral studies at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan.

His specialty is the application of sustainability assessment methodologies to ICT solutions from cradle–to–grave. Lately he has focused mostly on resource efficiency, circular economy-related topics, and hazardous substance process management.

Between 2009 and 2011 Dr. Andrae was the Editor of European Telecommunications Standards Institute’s (ETSI) first LCA standard for ICT. Between 2012 and 2014 he helped complete its update in collaboration with the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), creating a global common LCA standard for ICT.

In ETSI and ITU, apart from LCA of telecom goods, networks and services, he has also been the Editor of standardization of circular economy metrics for ICT infrastructure goods, server disassembly, product circularity scoring, and servitization of ICT goods. Since 2019 Dr. Andrae is Rapporteur of European Norm standards in ETSI for material efficiency of servers and several other ongoing and completed standards in ITU and ETSI.

In September 2016 Dr. Andrae was appointed Chairman of ETSI TC EE WG on “Environmental matters associated with Mobile ICT Devices” (M-ICT).

He has previously published three books and 37 peer–reviewed journal papers, for example a recent—highly cited—one (>400 in Google Scholar) in the journal Challenges about the emerging trends in electricity consumption of consumer ICT infrastructure.  With >15 publications since 2013, Dr. Andrae is one of the leading contributors to that topic.

He sits on the Editorial Board of Challenges and International Journal of Green Technology and is a frequently used Reviewer for International Journals within Environmental Science.

Since 2008 Dr. Andrae has been with Huawei Technologies in Sweden as Senior Expert of Life Cycle Assessment.

Olivier Auchet

Olivier Auchet held a PhD in Control Systems and Signal Processing from University Of Lorraine in 2005. After a first experience in R&D with Siemens and Saint-Gobain, he joined an American glass manufacturer in Luxemburg to work in engineering and production. He is now since 2012 in charge of Energy Efficiency Services for the B2B segment in the Encevo group, the main energy company of Luxemburg also active in Germany, France and Benelux.

Jules Besnainou

Jules Besnainou is the Executive Director of Cleantech for Europe, the initiative helping the EU lead the race to net zero by bridging the gap between cleantech leaders and policymakers. He was previously a director at Cleantech Group, where he advised the world’s foremost cleantech investors, corporates and governments, helping them assess and invest in new innovations. After starting his career in San Francisco and London, he moved back to France to head the group’s EU presence and clients. Jules graduated summa cum laude from Sciences Po Paris.

Beatrice Boehm

Louis Brasington

Solenne Brouard Gaillot

Jens Busse

Henrik Båge

Markus Böhme

Raphaël Cattan

Mathieu Chabot

Vaitea Cowan

Vaitea Cowan co-founded Enapter with Sebastian and Jan since they worked together on the Phi Suea House project in 2016. Previously, she spoke on panels in the mobile apps technology sphere, and was then quickly hooked into the renewables industry. Multilingual, she connects with leaders in hydrogen and finds special projects to deploy Enapter’s electrolyser technology. Vaitea wins awards for Enapter, she swiftly communicates the electrochemistry technology, and hires more women. Vaitea graduated from Concordia University, John Molson School of Business (Montreal). Based in the Berlin office, Vaitea heads Enapter’s communications.

Mauro Cozzi

Mauro Cozzi is the CEO and Co-founder of Emitwise – the carbon management platform that empowers companies to understand and reduce their carbon footprint across their operations and supply chain.
Driven by the mission to accelerate the world’s transition to net-zero, Emitwise works with organisations throughout the manufacturing sector to take profitable data-driven climate action.

Anthony DeOrsey

Anthony manages Cleantech Group’s research team, delivering critical insights on new cleantech innovation and opportunities for engagement to Cleantech Group’s clients in the industrial, investment, and policy communities. He is based in the U.S.

Anthony joined Cleantech Group in late 2019 after over 8 years of work in US-China cross-border expansion consulting and start-up venture funding roles, including 5 years living in Shanghai.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from University of Rhode Island, a Masters in Sustainability from the Harvard Extension School, and he an MBA from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

Anne-Sophie Dufresne

Jennifer Dungs

Jennifer has spent 20 years in the automotive industry, including Ford Motor Company (Detroit), BMW (Munich), Fraunhofer IAO (Stuttgart), and Porsche (Stuttgart). Dr. Dungs has both a M.S. Chemical Engineering and Ph.D. Chemistry. She brings to InnoEnergy in-depth knowledge from the automotive industry on topics related to sustainability (CO₂ strategy, air quality), alternative powertrain technologies (energy storage, heat management), new(er) technologies and services (autonomous driving, sharing, mobility as a service, last mile mobility) and business models for digital products and services for mobility and Smart Cities. She also created a joint lab, Ambient Mobility, with MIT to study mobility data.

Miriam Eaves

Miriam is a founding member of Launchpad, a BP company which is a private equity investor and business builder. Launchpad is charged with building new businesses to enable BP to deliver clean, affordable and reliable energy to the world. As Origination Partner, based in London, I am responsible for identifying and investing ($20m to $50m) in new ventures to join Launchpad. Previously, Miriam Venture Partner to BP Ventures, sourcing deals and advising portfolio firms on corporate and business development deals.

Prior to relocation to London to join Launchpad, Miriam was an early participant in the NYC technology and innovation ecosystem, growing start-ups backed by world-class VC/PE firms in cleantech, fintech and information services. As a serial entrepreneur, she helped grow three start-ups’ companies from launch to successful exit (IPO and Acquisition).

Member of Board of Directors, Grid Edge

Franz Fayot

Franz Fayot was born on 28 February 1972 in Luxembourg City.

Education and qualifications

Following secondary school studies at the Athénée de Luxembourg, Franz Fayot pursued a higher education in Luxembourg and Paris, followed by a DEA (post-graduate diploma of advanced studies) in corporate law from the Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne in 1996.

Governmental posts

Following the cabinet reshuffle on 4 February 2020, Franz Fayot joined the coalition government formed by the Demo-cratic Party (DP), the Luxembourg Socialist Workers’ Party (LSAP) and the Green Party (déi gréng). He was appointed Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs and Minister of the Economy.

Other political posts

A member of the LSAP since 1994, Franz Fayot became chairman of the LSAP in 2019.

Franz Fayot was elected to Parliament in 2013 and in 2018, as candidate for the LSAP in the constituency of the Centre. In Parliament, he assumed the role of rapporteur for the draft budget for 2015 and focused on public finances, cultural policy, as well as on social justice and poverty issues.

Professional activities

From 1997 until his appointment to the government, Franz Fayot worked as a barrister in Luxembourg.

Philipp Furler

Dr. Philipp Furler is the Chief Technology Officer of Synhelion. Synhelion is on a mission to unlock a clean future of transportation by turning CO2 and sunlight into fuel. The synthetic fuels produced by Synhelion – such as solar gasoline, diesel, or jet fuel – are carbon-neutral and compatible with conventional combustion engines and turbines.

Philipp holds a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich since 2014. In 2018, he completed his Executive MBA at the University of Strathclyde. Philipp has more than ten years of experience in high-temperature solar chemistry and reactor engineering. He serves as Operating Agent – Solar Chemistry Research for the International Energy Agency’s technology program SolarPACES. Prior to joining Synhelion, Philipp co-founded the ETH spin-off company Sunredox, which was acquired by Synhelion in 2018.

Pippa Gawley

Pippa is the founder and managing director of Zero Carbon Capital, th​e home of the Zero Carbon Fund. This is a new EIS fund to invest in early-stage companies that are on a mission to fix climate change through scientific innovation. We are looking for knowledge-intensive, hard-tech solutions that have the potential to make half gigaton-level reductions of CO2e at scale; and vision-aligned, ambitious teams to go with them. We can accelerate the zero carbon transition if we create technologies that are better and cheaper than fossil incumbents.​

Pippa started angel investing in decarbonisation technologies in California five years ago​, where she was an active member of the impact investing ecosystem​. Prior to that,​she held a variety of roles in general management, business analysis, ​and ​consumer-facing interactive user experience research and design​. She holds a Masters degree in Manufacturing Engineering from the University of Cambridge.

Nacho Gimenez

Nacho leads the Europe and Middle East team. He has worked in downstream and trading, financing and developing new strategic partnerships for BP.

Nacho holds a MSc in chemical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, an MBA from UNED in Madrid and has studied corporate finance at London Business School. Nacho sits on the boards of Fotech and Voltaware.

Ludwig Goris

Obtained a Master in Chemistry (UGent) and a PhD in Physics (Hasselt University) focusing on organic solar cells research. After his post-doctoral scholarship at Stanford University Ludwig re-joined Hasselt University to develop new thin film diamond applications. In parallel, he was actively involved in technology transfer from lab to start-up company. Ludwig joined Capricorn in 2011.

Marie-Hélène Gramatikoff

Marie-Hélène worked for 12 years as a plastics engineer before focusing on company growth strategies. She met Frédéric Prochazka in 2014 and co-founded Lactips. She leads the company by collaborating with its partners and teams.

Conor Hamill

Dr. Conor Hamill is the COO at MOF Technologies, a company pioneering the development of a new class of materials called metal-organic frameworks. He has been with the company from its early beginnings and is driven by its vision that everyone everywhere will experience an improved quality of life thanks to MOF enabled products. Conor oversees operations at MOF Technologies and has been instrumental in establishing it as the leader in the commercialisation of MOFs by securing strategic partnerships in new and existing markets. He holds both a Master’s and a doctorate in Chemical Engineering and is currently studying for an MBA.

MOF Technologies was named as one of the leading cleantech companies in the UK and is leveraging its patented gas adsorption technology to help enable the transition to cleaner energy sources. To date, the company has secured over $3.5m of funding from the EU to develop the next generation of carbon capture technology.

Per Hansson

Alexander Hartman

Niall Haughian

Niall has over ten years’ experience in the finance industry working for blue-chips such as Credit Suisse, the New York Stock Exchange and the Bank of England. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst and is adept at modelling complex financial structures in the renewable energy sector. His core interest is to finance and support technology development in the solar energy sector, and was previously Chief Operating Officer of a solar company spun out of Imperial College, London.

Marie Hayden

Marie Hayden is based in Dublin, Ireland, and leads Smart Wires’ business throughout Europe.

Prior to joining Smart Wires, Marie gained extensive experience in all aspects of transmission system operation during a 25-year career at EirGrid, the Irish Transmission System Operator. In the last ten years of her time at EirGrid, Marie held a number of senior management positions, including Manager of the Scenario Planning, Connection Policy and Operational Planning teams.

During her time at EirGrid, Marie was also Chair of the Irish National Committee of CIGRE and chaired the Organizing Committee of the 2017 CIGRE Symposium in Ireland. In 2018, she was awarded the honor of becoming a Distinguished Member of CIGRE.

Marie has also worked with a number of European transmission system operators as part of her work with ENTSO-E (European Network of Transmission System Operators), initially as a deputy member of the System Operations Committee and more recently as part of the implementation projects associated with the European Network Codes.

Marie holds a Bachelor of Engineering and a Masters of Engineering from University College Dublin.

Ian Hayton

Ian is a Senior Associate leading Materials & Chemical research at Cleantech Group and is based in the UK. He is an engineering and business professional with a passion for technology, innovation and the environment. Ian is experienced in strategy, marketing, business support, and R&D activities​.

Prior to joining Cleantech Group, Ian held several roles at Exergy, including Business Process Improvement Manager, Chemical Process Engineer, and Chemical Research Engineer.  ​

Ian earned an MSc degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Manchester​ and a BSc in Biomedical Science from The University of Sheffield.

Dr. Peter Hellich

Peter Hellich specialises in national and international M&A, private equity and venture capital transactions and advises clients on all questions of corporate law. The focus of his practice is on technology-based industries. He has wide experience in transaction management.

Brett Henkel

Brett Henkel’s unabashed optimism tempered by his mechanical engineering background and gas separation experience combine to bring a rare perspective to his position on Svante’s executive team.

As co-founder, he was instrumental in creating the process and the hardware used to prove the technology’s effectiveness as well as mobilizing external support throughout the path to becoming a successful innovation.  These experiences strengthened his knowledge of business development and program management priorities.

Prior to launching Svante, Mr. Henkel was the program manager for QuestAir Technologies’ compact hydrogen production system with its partner, ExxonMobil.

Brett received his Bachelor of Science in Physics, with distinction, and a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Victoria.

Magnus Hornef

Gillian-Alexandre Huart

Gillian-Alexandre Huart is the CEO of ENGIE Energy Access, ENGIE’s newly launched Access to Energy business in Africa, born out of the successful integration of solar home system companies, Fenix International and ENGIE Mobisol; and mini-grids provider, ENGIE PowerCorner. He is responsible for driving ENGIE’s ambitious goal of maintaining market leadership and providing long-term impact on the lives of Africans.

He began his career as a consultant with Accenture before joining Electrabel in 2002 in Audit and Internal Consulting. He moved to GDF SUEZ Asia in 2008 as Senior Vice-President Business Development. In 2014, he was appointed Managing Director of SMN Power Group, which produced 20% of the electricity and water in the Sultanate of Oman, and won the largest desalination project in the country. He moved to Tractebel in 2017 as Director of Energy Transition and Innovation and developed the activity of consulting and services in sustainable development solutions. He contributed to the creation and implementation of ENGIE Impact, and led the EMEAI region (Eurorope, Middle East, Africa and India) as Managing Director in 2019.

Gillian graduated from the Université libre de Bruxelles and holds Masters degrees in Business Management and Political Sciences

Jakob Jensen

Jakob Jensen spent 20 years investing in early-stage cleantech. Four years ago, when he met Heliac – the by far most interesting company in his career – he left the investment side to become an entrepreneur himself. Since then Jakob has deep-dived into the opportunities and challenges of decarbonizing industrial process heat. From his role as Chief Commercial Officer Jakob provides insights into market trends, business models, and the available solutions.

Lubomila Jordanova

Lubomila Jordanova is the founder and CEO of PlanA.Earth, a Berlin-based startup developing an algorithm which predicts where and how climate change will hit the hardest and a SaaS platform that helps businesses calculate, monitor and reduce their emissions. She also recently founded the Greentech Alliance, a community of 500+ startups which are connected to over 350+ advisors from VC, media and business, who help them monthly with advice and feedback. Prior to Plan A, she worked in investment banking, venture capital and fintech in Asia and Europe. She was recently announced as Marshall Fund Fellow for 2021 and 30 under 30 Social Entrepreneur for 2020 by Forbes and Entrepreneur to watch in Germany. 

Thomas Kallstenius

Thomas Kallstenius has been CEO of the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology since February 2019. Before signing with LIST, Thomas Kallstenius was research program director at imec, a world-leading RTO in nanoelectronics and digital technologies. In this position, he oversaw a research program on security and privacy, in collaboration with KU Leuven, encompassing a much-acclaimed team of over 140 researchers specializing in cryptography, hardware security, privacy, access control and distributed systems. He was also involved in imec’s strategic activities in distributed artificial intelligence and high-performance computing.
Prior to joining imec, Thomas Kallstenius was vice president for research and innovation at iMinds, the research institute that merged with imec in 2016. His responsibilities in this role included iMinds’ strategic and applied research programs with academic and industrial partners.

Thomas Kallstenius’ previous experience includes positions as director at Bell Labs on video communication related topics, as strategic marketing director at Alcatel-Lucent and as researcher on broadband access within Ericsson Research as well as on reliability of semiconductor components within Ericsson Microelectronics.
Thomas Kallstenius holds a Masters Degree in Engineering Physics from Sweden’s Royal Institute of Technology, a PhD in semiconductor materials science from Uppsala University and an MBA from Vlerick Management School in Leuven, Belgium. He has served as a Member of the Board of Directors of the FTTH Council Europe, and as vice-chair of the Working Group on Wearables in the European Commission’s Alliance of Internet of Things Innovation (AIOTI).

Kilian Kaminski

Kilian is Founder of refurbed, the fastest growing marketplace for refurbished electronic products in the German-speaking region. He is also an expert and club member of CIAP by the European Commission’s economic and social committee. Prior to refurbed Kilian was Head of the Amazon Certified Refurbished program and New Key Account Manager for the largest electronics retailers at Amazon Germany. Before that he studied communication and business administration in Hamburg, Shanghai & London. He originally comes from Hamburg and lived and worked in Munich for several years.

Gerard Kelly

Gerard is the CEO and co-founder of Upya Technologies, where the goal is to provide cost-effective and flexible management software (CRM) for last mile distributors (LMDs) across sub-Saharan Africa.

Gerard has a background in the energy sector across engineering, project management and consulting roles. Prior to Upya he worked within the energy practice at BCG, and prior to that with Bell Labs and a tech start-up that was acquired. Gerard holds an MBA from INSEAD and an Engineering PhD. 

Alexandra Knupe

Alexandra firmly believes that sustainability must become a competitive advantage and that digital innovation can make a significant contribution to sustainability. Alexandra has many years of experience in sustainability, communication, marketing and business development of complex IT services. With this experience, Alexandra follows a clear direction: digital technologies can contribute to a sustainable society.

Simon Koopmann

Dr. Simon Koopmann is one of the co-founders and CEO of envelio. envelio is a spin-off from RWTH Aachen University in Germany and provides a smart grids software platform for distribution grid operators based on innovative optimization and machine learning algorithms. Before co-founding envelio, Simon previously has received his diploma and PhD degree from RWTH Aachen University, the leading European energy research institution, where he was also Head of the Distributed Energy Systems research group.

Valery Krivenko

Martin Kröner

Dr. Martin Kröner is Managing Partner at Munich Venture Partners, the cleantech venture capital specialist based in Munich. He was co-founder and CEO of agnion Energy Inc., a supplier of distributed energy plants to convert woody biomass into electrical power and natural gas. Prior to agnion, Martin worked at Linde Engineering, world¹s leading supplier of technical gases and one of the most profitable engineering companies. Prior to Linde, Martin built up Thermotec Engineering Services, a spin off from the Technical University of Munich. He holds a M.Sc. in mechanical engineering and a Ph.D. in combustion engineering from the Technical University in Munich. Martin is or was responsible for the MVP investments in COBI, Kebony, Luxexcel, GreenCom Networks, Sonnen and Electrochaea.

Yann Lagalaye

Yann joined Demeter in January 2020 as Partner. He is in charge of the fundraising and management of the new venture scale-up fund so called Green European Tech (“GET”), focused on building a sustainable future and investing in smart building, smart transportation, smart industry, resources management, smart energy, sustainable communities, and climate risk resilience solutions leveraging Smart City tech enablers (IoT, WPLAN, 5G, …) and sustainability criteria (SDGs, profitability, resilience, ..)

Before joining Demeter, Yann created and managed the Energy Transition Capital fund of BNP Paribas that invested in 10 start-ups and 3 funds in North America and Europe.

He has previously held the position of Managing Director within the Private Equity team E&C Capital at BNP Paribas.

Yann also worked with the structured finance team of BNP Paribas where he has held the position of Deputy Head for EMEA. He started his carrier as reservoir engineer at Total specialized in naturally fractured reservoirs after a research period at Stanford University for Elf.

Yann holds an engineering diploma of School of Mines and an MBA of ESCP.

Henri de Lalande

Henri is the CEO and co-founder of Infrascreen. Prior to that, he founded a tech M&A boutique in France, which he subsequently sold in 2018. He teamed up in 2019 with Benoit de Combaud, a seasoned entrepreneur in the greenhouse tech industry. Together, they founded Infrascreen to bring sustainable fruits and vegetables to everyone.

Arnaud Legrand

Arnaud Legrand, 40 years old, is the CEO of Energiency, a French scale-up founded in 2013 developing a 4.0 energy analytics software dedicated for smart manufacturing. Energiency has received more than 30 international awards related to innovation and entrepreneurship, including the 2019 Solar Impulse Efficient Solution. Energiency raised €10 M with Encevo, ISAI, Go Capital, West Web Valley and Bpifrance. Arnaud also launched ATL-EN-TIC, a joint venture that brings together 5 innovative service and technology companies in Brittany and Pays de la Loire dedicated to industrial energy performance. Arnaud has 14 years of experience as a cleantech and energy savings consultant for big manufacturing companies and utilities, with Ernst & Young Paris and Blu-e (now Engie/GDF Suez). He graduated in life science and cleantech engineering from Paris Institute of Technology, and holds a MBA from Paris Collège des Ingénieurs.

Thomas Leurent

Thomas Leurent is the CEO and Co-Founder of Predictive Digital Twin pioneer, Akselos. He’s based in the company’s global headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. An MIT alumnus, Thomas has spent the past seven years building Akselos into the digital transformation disruptor that it is today. From early beginnings working with MIT Industrial Liaison Program in 2012, Thomas has grown the business into a successful international company with operations in Europe, the US, and Southeast Asia. Akselos’ most recent funding round involved Shell Ventures and Innogy Ventures.

The company brings technology to market that is transforming industrial asset management in oil and gas, offshore wind and beyond. The emerging nature of the technology has led Thomas to represent deep tech’s interests and potential as a World Energy Leader within the World Energy Council’s network of global CEOs and Government leaders.

Thomas is an active part of the global technology innovation ecosystem, having invested in a number of successful deep-tech start-ups such as Sophia Genetics. An engineer by background, Thomas studied Mechanical Engineering at The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and later completed an MSc in the MIT laboratory where the research for Akselos’ core technology was carried out. Before co-founding Akselos, he worked as a research scientist for the US Department of Energy, and later pursued a career at the intersection of Energy, Financial Risk Management, and Innovation.

Victoria Loidl

Victoria is the COO at Switchee, responsible for HR, Finance and Operations. Victoria joined the firm in 2018 as Head of Operations. Prior to Switchee she worked in the finance industry, in investment banking and asset management. She holds a BSc Management from the LSE.

Santiago Lopez Erb

Santiago Lopez Erb is Head of Sustainability for the Americas at DIAGEO, one of the world’s largest producers of spirits and beers.

Santiago has over 20 years of experience working in the US, Europe, and Latin America under different international roles like Director of Operational Excellence – Governance and global Sustainability for DIAGEO and Global Head of Food Systems Manufacturing at Tate and Lyle. Also has previous experience in consumer products Project Management, Product and Packaging Development, Supply Chain, TPO’s, sourcing analysis, and Plant Engineering. His new challenge at DIAGEO is to develop a Sustainable future by minimizing operations’ environmental impact by using operational excellence, engineering, and other tools to achieve carbon neutrality, minimize packaging environmental impact, and water use reduction.

Bert Lutje Berenbroek

NET2GRID is one of the leading companies worldwide of real time NILM (non-intrusive load monitoring) services via their Ynni energy insights and utility self-service platform. NET2GRID’s Ynni platform is reducing your cost to serve while increasing customer engagement. Greater energy consumption insights and deeper, more trusting customer relationships translate into upsell activity and reduced churn. It is our solution to engage your customer. The company was founded in 2011 and holds office in The Netherlands and Greece.

Steve Meller

Steve Meller is an internationally recognized innovation strategist whose career has taken him almost everywhere – whether it’s global and local organizations or C-Suite executives of F100 companies, Boards, CEOs of start-ups, Venture Capital, senior country officials and across nearly every vertical there is and covering the breadth of Corporate, Academic, Government and Private Sectors – as an investor, an advisor, strategist and partner.  He understands how to position new, novel and disruption innovations and new business models for success to maximize innovation potential and impact and has been involved in creating new and innovative strategies, businesses, capabilities, platforms and business models.

Having trained as a neuroscientist, he had his first taste of disruptive innovation where he was the first to discover new pathways involved in chronic pain which are now leading to new clinical therapies. Motivated to produce an even greater impact, Steve was recruited to Procter & Gamble (P&G – a F50 company) where he spent almost 2 decades honing his ability to create new strategies, enable disruptive innovation and build key enabling platforms that provided disproportionate business growth and significant profit. As a result, the company added billions each year to the bottom line and enabled P&G to be recognized as one of the world’s most innovative companies.

Finding his own space after an early retirement in late 2012 from P&G as Chief Innovation Catalyst, he moved to sunny Northern California when he met his wife and has been providing consulting on strategy and innovation across the globe in nearly every vertical to C-Suite executives of F100 companies, CEOs of start-ups, Boards, investment companies and senior country officials in multiple governments. In addition to consulting, he has also founded or co-founded a number of companies on multiple continents across diverse sectors that are focused on strategies for disruptive change. He has been an entertaining key-note speaker on every continent across widely divergent topics. He now focuses his time as the CEO of a disruptive technology company addressing climate change.

Steve is originally from Adelaide, South Australia and was awarded a B.Sc., B.Sc. (Hons.), and a Ph.D in Neuroscience from the University of Adelaide. When he’s not traveling the world for business or pleasure, he resides in Atherton, CA with his American-born wife, Colleen Haight, who holds an MBA in Finance and a Ph.D in Economics and is currently Professor of Economics at San Jose State University.

Albert Mihranyan

Albert Mihranyan is CEO and Founder of Nvigorea AB. He is Professor of Nanotechnology at Uppsala University. Prof. Mihranyan is the author of 95 peer-reviewed articles, ten patent families, and the founder of 2 start-up companies. His research interests include nanomaterials for life sciences applications, cellulosic nanomaterials, bioprocessing, and drinking water purification.

Nisa Mirza

Jasper Munier

Business development manager Northwest Europe of Clariter – a global clean-tech company – Jasper is responsible for developing Clariter’s first Full Scale Plants, engaging new research partnerships and creating regional public-private funding strategies.

He has been one of the managing partners at European Regional Affairs Consultants (ERAC), a renowned consultancy boutique based in The Netherlands, where he led the clean-tech finance team. Before becoming partner at ERAC Jasper was founder of a consultancy firm that was specialized Funding & Finance for Innovative Technology (called FFIT).

He studied business economics, finance and law at the University of Applied Sciences (HES) in Rotterdam.

As an international expert Jasper is part of the Solar Impulse foundation that is assess and labels clean and profitable solutions worldwide.

Ben Murphy

Ben is an Investment Manager at IP Group focussed on cleantech. His portfolio boards include Mixergy innovating in domestic demand side response; C-Capture, bringing word leading CO2 separation chemistry to market and Ngenics, which uses evolutionary algorithms to optimise circuit designs.

Ben has spent over ten years working in low carbon technology. Including working for Google screening low carbon investments in Europe; doing scientific research at the European Commission; in the Carbon Trust helping governments and corporations to allocate innovation funding and for the Brazilian National Development Bank advising on the redesign of multi-£bn energy efficiency loan schemes.

Ben has a first class degree in physics and mathematics as well as a masters in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London. As well as working in England he has also worked in Italy, Spain and Germany.

Vijay Natarajan

Vijay Natarajan is the Co-founder & COO of Qbots Energy; Vijay is a Sales & Marketing professional and Qualified Engineer with over 10+ years experience in Marketing & business development, strategy and product delivery management, with experience of UK & European smart city and IoT solutions projects in both public and private sector worth over £15 million in last 4 years utilising agile methodologies.

As COO of Qbots, currently leading the development of key commercial partnerships in the private and public sector, delivering digital energy projects worth £4.5 million within UK and internationally in energy management & energy trading for renewable adoption with demand side response and battery storage projects, solar and smart EV charging; Have experience of working with technology manufacturers, Energy suppliers, Aggregators, DSOs, City council and installation teams; Leads the product strategy by working closely with clients;

Vijay did his BEng in Mechanical Engineering from India, with experience of working in manufacturing, driven by his passion towards to creating sustainable change in the market, did his masters from Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, UK.

Armin Neises

Armin believes that changes in behavior by responsible managers in the direction of more sustainability can only occur if there is transparency. Together with his partner Matthias Brinkert, he founded WAVES with the vision of making sustainability visible and making use of the great possibilities of digitalization. They have set up the first SMP sustainability management platform. Armin has many years of experience as an expert, manager and management consultant in the industry. With this insight, he offers solutions to enable the big, necessary changes towards sustainable management of companies, products and services.

Elizabeth Nyeko

Hisham Omara

Hisham Omara is a strategy development and transformation leader involved in a wide variety of business and strategic planning projects for firms competing in the electric power business. These projects are in response to changing or evolving conditions in the industry, the emergence of new entrants and technologies, or structural or regulatory changes. He has worked in the energy sector (Innovation, System Operation, Transmission and Distribution, Demand Side Response, and Market Policy Development) for the last 10 years in Canada, United Kingdom, Europe and Middle East. He has extensive expertise in strategy development, change management, advanced technology for electricity systems and the design and operation of ancillary service markets.Hisham has a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Manchester and is currently the VP of Strategic Growth at Opus One solutions

Dennon Oosterman

Pierre Orlewski

Pierre Orlewski is a technology & innovation scout at Goodyear Innovation Centre in Luxemburg. Pierre holds PhD in biophysics from French INPL Polytechnic School and Innovation Management grade from IBBL in Luxemburg. He’s technology interests are broad and not exclusive to sustainable and environmental friendly materials, processes and technologies. Pierre is currently involved in the design of two Goodyear sustainability challenges respectively aiming at collection of tire wear rubber particles and at making tires more “circular” by upstream and downstream reuse of  materials and chemistries.

Luis Orsini-Rosenberg

Howard Palmer

Howard Palmer is a partner in the Corporate Technology group and specialises in advising on M&A transactions and venture capital investments, for both companies and investors. He primarily works with companies in the technology, media and life sciences sectors.

Finian Parrick

Bertrand Piccard

Born into a family of scientific explorers, Bertrand Piccard has made history by completing two round-the-world flights: non-stop in a balloon and more recently without any fuel in the Solar Impulse airplane.

With this last achievement, Bertrand’s goal was to demonstrate how clean technologies and renewable energy can achieve the impossible. As a second phase of his vision, and with the Solar Impulse Foundation, he launched the challenge of selecting 1’000 profitable solutions that protect the environment in order to encourage decision-makers to adopt more ambitious environmental targets and energy policies.

One of the first to envision ecology through the lens of profitability, he urges for the uptake of clean and efficient technologies because they are logical rather than just ecological. Even if climate change didn’t exist, they would make sense, as they represent the biggest industrial market of the century. According to him, innovation and pioneering spirit are key to solve the most pressing challenge of our times: ensuring the quality of life on Earth.

Will Pelton

Jerome Petry

Sophie Pignon

Sophie Pignon is the partner leading the Public Law – Projects department of Taylor Wessing France.

She moderates several training sessions (Paris-Dauphine-Tunis Campus, Paris-Assas-Ile Maurice Campus) and is the co-author of a book on financing Public-Private Partnerships (Moniteur). Sophie Pignon is a member of the Paris Bar. Sophie has over 20 years of recognized expertise in public sector contracts (concessions/PPP) and issues related to public domain. She advises sponsors and public authorities on complex contractual arrangements, primarily in the energy, infrastructure (including transportation and telecommunications) and public real estate sectors, both in France and internationally (including in Africa). She also advises on public procurement, whether in the context of their conclusion or performance on behalf of private companies or public authorities. Sophie has developed a solid expertise dedicated to regulatory and regulation aspects, in particular in the energy, transportation and telecommunications sectors. With regards to project finance, she works closely with the Banking and Finance team.

Aruna Ramsamy

Aruna Ramsamy is a senior investment professional with OGCI Climate Investments. At Climate Investments, Aruna provides early stage financing to innovative companies focused on lowering the carbon footprints of the oil and gas, energy and industrial sectors. She has over fifteen years of experience in impact investing, venture capital and corporate finance.

Prior to Climate Investments, she was with the Soros Economic Development Fund leading investments in Sub Saharan Africa to promote economic growth and the creation of sustainable low-income jobs. She started her career at Credit Suisse in the Energy Group of the investment banking division and managed the financing of several renewable energy projects.

She holds a bachelor’s degree with Honours in Economics and Finance from McGill University and an MBA from INSEAD.

Robert Rehammar

Guðbjörg Rist

Guðbjörg joined the Atmonia team in 2018, then focusing on business development and appointed CEO of the company in 2019. Atmonia is an early stage company from Iceland, developing a sustainable, ammonia production modules, that use only air, water and electricity as feedstock.

She has a passion for sustainable development and finding solutions for our future. She has previously worked in multiple sectors ranging from manufacturing  to banking, concentrating on business- and product development.

Guðbjörg has a MSc in Production Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden.

Michelle Robson

• Michelle Robson is an Associate with AP Ventures focused on investment, portfolio management and management of the Fund’s Investment Pipeline. Michelle sits as an observer on the board of HPNow, HyET and Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies.
• Michelle has extensive experience in portfolio and business development, commercial strategy creation and implementation and new and innovative deep tech and digital technologies. Her international experience spans Europe and Australia.
• Prior to AP Ventures, Michelle held a number of group and commercial strategy roles within Anglo American including establishing and leading Anglo American’s first digital and innovation function. Before this, Michelle was a Manager with boutique management consulting firm L.E.K. Consulting.
• Michelle received her first-class honours degree in Industrial Chemistry (Engineering) from the University of New South Wales (Australia).
• AP Ventures is a venture capital fund headquartered in London. The Fund operates a global mandate to invest in pioneering new technologies and businesses which aim to solve global challenges such as renewable energy integration, resource scarcity and a growing population. The Fund is the largest independent venture capital fund focused on the hydrogen industry with investments in hydrogen production, storage and transportation, compression and fuel-cell electric mobility

Yvonne Ruf

Patrick Sagisi

Patrick Sagisi is the Director of Corporate Venture Capital at Acario Innovation and a Kauffman Fellow. Acario is the Silicon-Valley based Corporate VC and Open Innovation arm of Tokyo Gas. Acario invests in early-stage startup companies in the Decarbonization/Hydrogen, Grid 2.0, Mobility and Transport Electrification, and Industry 4.0 sectors. Acario’s investments include Electriphi, Heila, and Geli.

Prior to Acario, Patrick was a Principal at DBL Partners, the leading impact investing VC firm. While at DBL, Patrick was a board observer at Mapbox, Kateeva, Urbansitter, Siva Power, Yerdle, ZincFive, and Brightsource, and worked closely with View, The RealReal, Planet, Brainscope, and SpaceX. Prior to DBL, Patrick was a Director in Samsung’s Corporate Audit Team and a member of the Global Strategy Group. Prior to Samsung, Patrick held corporate strategy, business development, marketing, and product roles at Ventana Medical Systems. Prior to Ventana, Patrick held corporate strategy and product manager roles at Adobe. Patrick also helped spin out Xerox Mobile Solutions, an enterprise mobile data startup, from Xerox PARC. Patrick began his career as a product engineer at Dallas Semiconductor.

Patrick received his MBA and MS-Engineering degrees from Stanford, and BS degrees in EE/CS and Materials Science from UC Berkeley. Patrick is a three-time Olympian in swimming, and was Guam’s Opening Ceremonies Flag-bearer in the 1996 Atlanta Summer Games

Kirsty Salmon

Vincent Sciandra

Young and ambitious CEO, Vincent Sciandra, is a Computer Science Ph.D. holder, and a research engineer, owning a diploma from the Ecole Centrale d’Electronique (Central School of Electronics) of Paris and the Gaspard Monge Computer Laboratory at the University of Paris Est.

Bringing a deep multicultural background in engineering and technology to his current position at METRON, his previous professional background includes many years of expertise in the energy industry, most notably at Veolia and Transdev where he managed key projects on mobility and more.

Stirred by many challenges in the energy industry, Vincent Sciandra completed his Ph.D. in ITS ( Intelligent Transportation Systems) and founded the international company METRON in 2013, to envision creating a digital solution helping industrial energy providers better manage their energy consumption in the most sustainable and efficient way.

With more than 100 employees worldwide based, METRON leverages the impact of AI and big data to usher a new wave of innovation in the energy sector, offering a game changing energy intelligence platform.

Jasmin Schlee

Beres Seelbach

Çağrı Selçuklu

Cassidy Shell

Caroline Shikhule

Rich Sorkin

During his three-decade-long career as a serial entrepreneur, executive, advisor, board member and investor, Mr. Rich Sorkin has led breakthrough companies in numerous industries. Mr. Sorkin focuses on commercializing transformative technologies, with a significant concentration on energy, financial services, the environment, media and politics. A founder of multiple startups, his companies have pioneered the use of satellite data and scalable cloud computing to predict weather events for commodity traders and applied analytics to detect identity theft. In his capacity as CEO of Jupiter, Mr. Sorkin testified before the United States Congress’ Committee on Science, Space, and Technology; cofounded the Coalition for Climate Resilient Investment (CCRI); has served as a member of the climate risk working group of McKinsey & Company; and been a keynote speaker at major global events including the 2019 Amsterdam International Water Week.

Mr. Sorkin is the former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Zip2, an Internet 1.0 company best known for analytics and visualization of geospatial data (acquired by HP for over $300 million). He served as president of Kaggle prior to its acquisition by Google, leading the introduction of big data predictive analytics into the enterprise market and serving as the company’s premier industry strategist.

Mr. Sorkin began his career as a consultant at Bain & Company. Before moving to Silicon Valley to focus on leading technology companies, he helped initiate research of the supercomputer industry at Goldman Sachs. After graduating from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where he was a Lockheed Scholar, he ran the Sound Blaster business at Creative Labs during the time it gained market dominance, growing revenues from under $100M to close to $1 billion.
In addition to Stanford, Mr. Sorkin is an alumnus of Yale University. He has served as a board member at publicly traded companies, private firms, the Yale University Development Board, and several non-profit organizations.

Michael Steininger-Yang

Mark van Stiphout

Holly Stower

Holly is a Senior Associate leading Resources & Environment research at Cleantech Group and is based in the UK. She is focused on emerging innovation and trends, including those in water, waste, the circular economy, natural resources, and corporate sustainability. ​

Prior to joining Cleantech Group, Holly was a Public Affairs & Communications Executive with the Solar Trade Association and the Association of British Insurers. Before this, Holly worked in advocacy for climate and wildlife charities. ​

Holly earned an Undergraduate and a Master’s in Environmental Science from the University of East Anglia.

Aruna Subramanian

Hari Suthan

Hari Suthan Subramaniam is the Chief of Strategic Growth for Opus One Solutions, with over 20 years of experience in R&D, marketing and management consulting. Prior to joining Opus One, he was the CEO of eCamion Inc., a community energy storage company and Vice Chair of Energy Storage Ontario. Hari was also a Vice President with GE Canada’s National Executive team where he drove growth in Canada by seeking out market opportunities across GE platforms and larger infrastructure projects. Additionally, he served in senior roles within Canada’s Provincial and Federal governments, including Deputy Chief of Staff and Director of Policy with the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, and member of the Government Transition Team for the Premier of Ontario as well as Federal Ministers of Canada. Hari is also a veteran of the Canadian Navy. Hari currently sits on the board of Centre for Urban Energy at Ryerson University and has previously served on the Boards of the Distributed Energy Association of Canada, McGill University, and Rouge Valley Health System.

Chris Sworder

Daniel Teichmann

Dr. Daniel Teichmann is co-founder and Managing Director of Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies. The engineer conceptually developed the industrial application of Liquid Organic Hydrogen Carrier (LOHC)-based hydrogen storage as part of his doctorate at Friedrich Alexander University (Germany, Erlangen/Nuremberg). After his first professional station at BMW AG Research and Technology, he decided in 2013 to set up the startup with professors Peter Wasserscheid, Wolfgang Arlt and Eberhard Schlücker – the successful path from research to commercialisation began.

Today, Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies GmbH with its storage and release systems is a leading player worldwide for easy-to-handle, safe and efficient hydrogen infrastructure solutions and has been honoured with awards such as the ” German Industry Innovation Award” and has been named one of the “Global Cleantech 100” every year since 2018.

Together with strategic investors AP-Ventures, Royal Vopak, Mitsubishi Corporation, Covestro, Winkelmann Group and Hyundai Motor Company, Hydrogenious LOHC Technologies is driving the scaling of its LOHC technology in projects worldwide.

Carlo Thelen

After obtaining a Master of Science in Economics at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium, Carlo Thelen joined the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce in 1996 as an Economic Adviser. In August 2003, he joined the Executive Committee of the Chamber of Commerce and in January 2004, he became Director of International Affairs.

In January 2014 he was nominated Director General. Until 2019, he was also the Chief Economist of the Chamber of Commerce, each year preparing and presenting the most important official opinion of the Chamber of Commerce: the opinion on the state budget. Carlo Thelen is also the author of a notable expert blog that highlights current big socio-economic questions, as well as articles and strategic papers published by the Chamber of Commerce. He also represents the Chamber of Commerce in different working groups and councils of Luxembourg institutions and organisations, is in charge of strategic papers, studies, surveys and statistics, research and innovation, documentation and literature on economics, and regularly gives advice and consultations on these subjects.

In addition to his economic expertise, Carlo Thelen has extensive experience in commercial and economic advocacy as he regularly participates in economic missions abroad where he promotes the Luxembourg economy and businesses.

Robert Trezona

Rob is the Founding Partner of Kiko Ventures, a £400m climate tech VC headquartered in London.
Kiko is the cleantech platform for IP Group, a £1.5bn listed venture capital company that sources evergreen investment capital from the public markets. Rob joined IP Group in 2011 to set up its cleantech division, and it has since become the leading early-stage cleantech VC in the UK. Rob has been in venture for over 15 years, starting his investment career at the Carbon Trust, where he was Head of R&D. Prior to Carbon Trust, he was a strategy consultant at McKinsey, and he continues to partner with McKinsey’s Sustainability Practice in his investment work.

Rob started his career as a scientist working on materials for hydrogen and fuel cells in the 2000s working on both PEM and SOFC. He was one of the first employees of Ceres Power and led the fuel cell team that created the world’s first steel-ceria cell. In 2012, he returned to Ceres as an investor, leading IP Group’s turnaround and setting the strategy that turned that company into a billion-pound success story. Rob is also a Commissioner of the Energy Transitions Commission, a leading international think tank dedicated to providing objective techno-economic analysis on the transition to a zero-carbon world. Rob has a Triple First and PhD in Materials Science from Cambridge.

Fredrik Tunberg

Fredrik Tunberg is the CEO of SALLY R. Previously a member of the board as well as one of the first investors in the company. Fredrik has a solid background in tech-startups and predominantly in sales and marketing positions. Sally R is a Swedish cleantech/proptech-startup, which optimizes ventilation in commercial real estates through the cloud-based algorithms and intelligence. The fully-automated service is called ADA and is a scalable solution, which provides stable indoor air quality as well as energy-savings between 30-60% for any type of commercial real estate.

Daniel Turner

Pierre Vanderkelen

Archie Watts-Farmer

Archie, CEO and leading Carnot through its journey. MEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bristol. After Graduating, Archie spent 10 years as lead engineer / project manager on various Rolls-Royce engine programs including the Joint Strike Fighter LiftFan, the Harrier Pegasus engine, the A350 Trent XWB and also qualifying as a chartered engineer,  CEng. In 2014 he moved to Brazil for a post-graduate degree in Offshore Systems Engineering at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, learning Portuguese, obtaining a distinction, with a dissertation on Twin-Screw Multiphase Pumps. In Rio, he guided/translated pro-bono for the Fiji Olympic team. Previously Programme Manager / Chief Engineer at the Litus Foundation where he successfully applied for, managed and delivered two grant-funded R&D projects.

Michael Wictor

Nicolas De Witt

Nicolas joined the Paris office’s corporate department as partner in November 2008. Admitted to the Paris and New York Bars, Nicolas specializes in financing transactions for listed and non-listed corporations.

He has extensive expertise in fund raising (from venture capital to LBO transactions) and M&A transactions, advising both French and international clients, investment funds, managers or targets.

For over 15 years now, Nicolas has been advising issuers or banks on stock exchange law, in the context of initial public offerings, rights offering, block sales, public offers to buy or exchange, and delisting on French and American markets.

He also advises issuers as part of tax exemption transactions by public offering without listing.

Richard Youngman

Since January 2016, Richard Youngman has been CEO of San-Francisco based Cleantech Group (CTG). This followed 7 years of driving the growth of CTG’s activities outside North America, especially in Europe and Israel, and Asia, based in CTG’s office in London.

Richard has more than ten years’ experience researching cleantech innovation, venture capital markets, and start-ups across Europe and globally. He is a regular keynote speaker at major cleantech events and is the driving force behind the annual Global Cleantech 100, a list of the world’s most promising private cleantech companies.