19. July, 2021
Speakers
LIFE ClimatePath2050 International Conference: Designing Pathways toward Climate Neutrality Hybrid event: Ljubljana and online via Zoom All the international speakers are participating online. Session I: How ambitious are the long-term climate strategies? Gwenaël Podesta, Deputy Head of the emissions, projections and modelling unit, the French Ministry of Ecological Transition Gwenaël is deputy head of the […]
LIFE ClimatePath2050 International Conference: Designing Pathways toward Climate Neutrality
Hybrid event: Ljubljana and online via Zoom
All the international speakers are participating online.
Session I: How ambitious are the long-term climate strategies?
Gwenaël Podesta, Deputy Head of the emissions, projections and modelling unit, the French Ministry of Ecological Transition
Gwenaël is deputy head of the emissions, projections and modelling unit at the French Ministry of Ecological Transition. He is in charge of the quantitative aspects of France’s climate and energy strategies, as well as reporting for the EU and UN. He previously was the former French negotiator on climate change mitigation related issues at the UNFCCC, and coordinator of the EU expert group on mitigation, leading on guidance for Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
Richard Baron, Executive Director of the 2050 Pathways Platform
Richard Baron is executive director of the 2050 Pathways Platform – a multi-stakeholder initiative of countries, international financial institutions, think-tanks and organisations with an interest in developing the Paris Agreement’s long-term low-emission development strategies. Since 2017, the Platform has been active in more than 40 countries, mostly outside OECD. Prior to this position, Richard held positions on climate policy at the OECD, IEA, Iddri (a French think-tank), and research institutes in France (Cired) and the USA (PNNL). His work areas include international negotiations, trade and competitiveness, market mechanisms, industry and public procurement, and the broad alignment of public policymaking with the climate imperative.
Dr. Robert Golob, President of the Management Board, GEN-I
Robert Golob is one of the leading energy experts in Slovenia. He is the President of the Management Board at GEN-I, one of the fastest-growing and most innovative companies in the European energy market. The company which entered the Slovenian market as the first independent supplier of electricity and natural gas, today focuses on green transformation, reducing carbon footprint and ensuring a clean environment for future generations.
Dr. Gertraud Wollansky, Senior expert, Austrian Federal Ministry of Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology
Dr. Gertraud Wollansky holds a PhD in Political Science and has been working at the Federal Ministry for Climate Action, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology since 1993 as an advisor to the Head of the Department of Climate and Energy on climate change issues.
Ayolt de Groot, Msc MA, Head of Unit for Policy Analysis, Department for Climate Policy, Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate Policy The Netherlands
Ayolt de Groot works as Head of Unit for Policy Analysis within the climate policy department of the Ministry of Economic Affairs & Climate Policy in the Netherlands. Prior to this he worked on the NL Climate Agreement as secretary to the (temporary) ‘Climate Board’. Before that, he worked as an economist within the department for General Economic Policy, also within the ministry of Economic Affairs.
Alban Kitous, Policy Officer in the Strategy and Economic Assessment Unit of DG Climate Action, European Commission
Alban Kitous is a policy officer in the Strategy and Economic Assessment Unit of DG Climate Action (DG CLIMA), European Commission. He has a professional experience on energy and climate policies in public research, the private sector and in different services of the European Commission. Alban holds an engineering degree and the MSc “Environmental Technology” from the Imperial College (ICCET).
Katarina Trstenjak, Jožef Stefan Institute – Energy Efficiency Centre
She has joined our team on the LIFE project Climate Path 2050, where she is responsible for the coordination with decision-makers. She was coordinating the preparation of (draft) of Slovenian LTS. Being a geographer and an ecologist, she shares an interdisciplinary view on environmental topics.
Session II: Monitoring and evaluation for better implementation
Martijn Verdonk, Senior advisor, Netherlands Enterprise Agency
Martijn Verdonk is a senior advisor at Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), which is the executive agency of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate policy in the Netherlands. He has more than 15 years of experience in analysing, monitoring and reporting on climate and energy policies in the Netherlands. At RVO, he is involved in the coordination of reporting on climate and energy policies for the national government, EU and UN. He coordinated the analytical basis of the NECP and is now preparing for future NECP-progress reports.
Matthias Duwe, M.Sc. Development Studies, Head, Climate, Ecologic Institute
Matthias Duwe is Head, Climate at Ecologic Institute. He coordinates the institute’s climate policy related work strands. His work focuses primarily on the European Union’s (EU) energy and climate policies, including their connections to national policy, as well as the international regime. He has more than twenty years of experience in EU climate policy, working in Brussels and in Berlin for more than a decade each, and has developed a rich network of experts and policy-makers. He is an accomplished speaker and facilitator and works in both German and English.
At Ecologic Institute, Matthias serves as senior project leader and expert contributor to a variety of projects looking at EU climate policy and its national implementation, as well as international climate diplomacy. Since 2016, his primary focus has been on various elements of transformative climate governance, involving framework climate laws, long-term climate strategies, national energy and climate plans and advisory bodies – but also progress monitoring systems and policy mainstreaming. He has presented his analyses to decision-makers across Europe.
Barbara Petelin Visočnik, M.Sc., Energy Efficiency Expert, Jožef Stefan Institute – Energy Efficiency Centre
Barbara Petelin Visočnik is an energy efficiency expert at Jožef Stefan Institute, Energy Efficiency Centre. Lately, she is involved especially in monitoring and reporting on the implementation of climate mitigation measures and programmes, including reporting on the implementation of the Energy Efficiency Directive. She participated in the preparation of several strategic national energy policy documents. She took part in several EU projects on energy efficiency, education and promotion of new and innovative energy technologies and financing schemes.
Matjaž Česen, Researcher, Jožef Stefan Institute – Energy Efficiency Centre
Matjaz Cesen is a researcher at Jozef Stefan Institute – Centre for Energy Efficiency. He is actively involved in the analysis of past trends and modelling future energy consumption and emissions. He participated in the preparation of several strategic documents, preparation of reports on their implementation and also has reach experience on international reporting. He also participated in the review of National communications and biennial reports under UNFCCC and is also National reference centre for energy and environment under EIONET network.
Session III: The challenges of carbon-neutral pathway modelling and analyses
Prof. dr. sc. Neven Duić, Department of Energy, Power and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture University of Zagreb
Prof. dr. sc. Neven Duić, a full professor at the University of Zagreb has published more than 160 papers in journals referenced in SCI. He is editor of Energy Conversion Management journal, subject editor of journal Energy and Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Sustainable Development of Energy, Water and Environment Systems – JSDEWES. He is organising the SDEWES conference series. He was the coordinator of over 40 international research projects. He has been recognised recently as one of the top 1% cited scientists, by the research team at Stanford. He is secretary of the Energy Systems Department of the Croatian Academy of Engineering. His main areas of interest are energy policy and planning, energy economics, sustainable development policy and resource planning, climate change mitigation and combustion engineering. You can find his full CV here.
Dr. Iva Ridjan Skov, Associate Professor in Energy Planning and Renewable Energy Systems, Aalborg University Denmark
Iva Ridjan Skov is an Associate Professor in Energy Planning and Renewable Energy Systems at Aalborg University Denmark. She holds a PhD in electrofuels and renewable energy systems. Her research is focused on electrofuel (P2X) pathways for liquid and gaseous fuels for 100% renewable systems specifically on energy system analysis of these pathways from a technical and socio-economic perspective. Her research is based on the Smart Energy Systems approach for achieving cross-sectoral integration. She is an International Member of the Croatian Academy of Engineering.
Ravi Kantamaneni, Senior Director, ICF Consulting
Ravi Kantamaneni is a Senior Director at ICF Consulting. He has over 20 years of experience developing and implementing policies and programmes that support the transition to a low carbon economy. He is responsible for developing low carbon growth and investment strategies, designing climate and energy policies, programme management, and providing technical assistance to national governments, regulatory bodies, and the private sector in the Middle East, Central and South Asia, North America, and Europe.
For the European Commission, he has supported the development and assessment of policy solutions for energy efficiency, climate funds, market-based mechanisms, eco-innovation, and biofuels. He supported the development of the European Commission’s climate-neutral 2050 strategy through the assessment of pathways for the decarbonisation of the industrial sector, and led studies to assess the impacts of extending the EU Emissions Trading Scheme to include road transport and buildings, and quantified the energy efficiency potential of EU industrial sectors, and associated policy recommendations. He also led a programme that provided technical assistance to the European Member States in the development of their integrated national energy and climate plans as part of the Energy Union governance.
Dr. Andrea Herbst, Competence Center Energy Technology and Energy Systems, Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI, Karlsruhe Germany
Dr. Andrea Herbst is a senior researcher at the Competence Centre Energy Technology and Energy Systems at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research ISI in Karlsruhe. Her research focuses on the decarbonisation of energy-intensive industries, the assessment of the circular economy for decarbonisation, and scenarios of industrial energy demand and CO2 emissions. Andrea Herbst currently coordinates a multi-disciplinary centre of expertise for the energy transition (EnTEC) funded by DG ENER as well as the analysis on industrial transformation in the German Copernicus project ARIADNE. She has further been involved in various national and European projects, e.g. to support the industrial in-depth analysis of the EU 2050 long-term strategy or to support the impact assessment of technological innovations in industry for the EC Innovation Fund. She is the coordinator for the cross-cutting work on the hydrogen economy at the Fraunhofer ISI.
Dr. Gašper Stegnar, Researcher, Jožef Stefan Institute – Energy Efficiency Centre
Gašper Stegnar, PhD is a researcher at Jožef Stefan Institute – Energy Efficiency Centre. His focus is comprehensive analyses of the building stock in support of decision making in climate and energy-related policies. In the past 8 years, he’s been gathering experience from multiple international research projects that have contributed to a wider picture of the decarbonization of the buildings and systems. He’s passionately trying to contribute to the energy transition to a green future.
Gregor Goričar, Head of Relations with EU Institutions, ELES
Gregor Goričar studied electrical engineering at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University of Ljubljana. He is coordinating cross-sector integration activities for ELES Ltd. between electricity-district heating and cooling systems. He is an active member of the ENTSO-E and Euroheat&Power organisations.
Dr. Matevž Pušnik, Researcher, Jožef Stefan Institute – Energy Efficiency Centre
Matevž Pušnik is an expert in reference energy systems planning and modelling. His research includes the development of reference energy system models, namely models of individual energy sectors and technologies on the basis of modern mathematical approaches. His focus is comprehensive analysis and modelling of the industrial sector in support of decision making in climate and energy-related policies. He is involved in international research and application projects mainly related to energy efficiency in the industrial sector. He also cooperates with industry, especially energy-intensive, where he is exploring the possibilities and potential for GHG mitigation.
Stane Merše, M.Sc., Head of Energy Efficiency Centre
He is an expert in holistic energy planning and recently especially in efficient heating and cooling, heat and power cogeneration (CHP) and district heating. He is also the domain leader for this area in European CA-EED2 project. He was involved in the development of the support scheme of electricity generated from RES and CHP, the preparation of methodology for energy savings assessment and various strategic and action documents dealing with energy efficiency, RES and GHG emission reduction. He is a lecturer at EUREM training and programme manager of annual energy managers conference “Dnevi energetikov”.
Session IV: The challenges of modelling and analysis in the LULUCF sector
Dr. Pilli Roberto, Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission
Dr. Pilli Roberto holds a PhD in Forest Ecology at the University of Padova, in 2007, and a bachelor degree in History at the same University, in 2015. He currently collaborates as a freelance with the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, where he was also employed as a scientific officer until 2020. He mostly worked on forest modelling for assessing the forest biomass and carbon mitigation potential, both at European and at national scale.
Dr. Thomas Ledermann, Senior Scientist, Department of Forest Growth, Silviculture and Genetics at the Austrian Research Centre for Forests
Thomas Ledermann graduated from BOKU University in Vienna. He holds a PhD in Forestry and a post-doctoral lecture qualification (Habilitation) in Forest biometrics and growth modelling. Currently, he is working as a senior scientist at the Department of Forest Growth, Silviculture and Genetics at the Austrian Research Centre for Forests (BFW). He is concerned with the development of individual-tree growth models, projections of forest resources as well as long-term growth experiments. Thomas Ledermann was involved in two studies on CO2 emissions of the Austrian wood utilization chain and did the simulation runs with the forest growth model CALDIS to set up the Forest Reference Level (FRL) in Austria.
Dr. Boštjan Mali, Research Associate, Department of Forest and Landscape Planning and Monitoring
Boštjan Mali studied at the Biotechnical Faculty of the University of Ljubljana, where he completed his university studies in forestry. He continued his education at the same university and received his PhD in 2012 from the interdisciplinary study programme Environmental Protection. He has been employed at Slovenian Forestry Institute since 2007, currently as a research associate in the Department of Forest and Landscape Planning and Monitoring. His work is mainly concerned with the estimation of emissions and removals from land use, land-use change and forestry (LULUCF), including projections using models. Boštjan Mali was involved in the preparation of the National Forestry Accounting Plan, the National Energy and Climate Plan and Slovenia’s Long-Term Climate Strategy until 2050.
