Renovate Europe Day 2012: speakers

Günther H. Oettinger

EU Commissioner for Energy

Günther H. Oettinger has been European Commissioner for Energy since 10 February 2010. From 2005 to 2010 he was Prime Minister of Baden-Württemberg (Germany) and, since 1984, a member of the regional Parliament (Landtag). He was the leader of the CDU Landtag group from January 1991 to April 2005. A lawyer by training, he became actively involved in politics during his adolescence. He is a member of the Federal Executive Committee and of the Steering Committee of the CDU Deutschlands.

Johannes Hahn

EU Commissioner for Regional Policy

Johannes Hahn has held various management functions in different sectors of the Austrian economy and industry, including five years as CEO of Novomatic AG. Between 1992 and 1997 he was Executive Director of the Austrian People’s Party in Vienna; he was elected Deputy Chairman of the party in 2002 and Chairman in 2005. A Member of the Regional Parliament of Vienna from 1996 to 2003, he became Federal Minister for Science and Research in 2007. He has been the Member of the European Commission in charge of Regional Policy since 2010.

Sigurd Naess-Schmidt

Partner, Copenhagen Economics

Helge Sigurd Næss-Schmidt has a Master’s degree in economics from the University of Copenhagen. He provides consulting services primarily to public clients, with a focus on public finance aspects, impact assessments and policy evaluation. Before joining Copenhagen Economics he worked for the Danish Ministry of Finance, the OECD, the European Commission and a Danish business organisation. He has taught economics at both the University of Copenhagen and the Copenhagen Business School.

Eckart Würzner

Mayor of Heidelberg

Dr Eckart Würzner studied at the universities of Mannheim and Heidelberg, receiving his doctorate in 1993. Before that he worked as an environmental consultant to the City of Heidelberg, advising the administration on all questions related to the environment. From September 1991 to the end of 1997 he was Head of the Technical Environmental Protection Division, which involved energy controlling and energy management of all buildings owned by the city, including public swimming pools and lighting. He was responsible for expert opinions on climate protection and energy, on noise and air pollution impacts and emissions, and for environmental chemistry and the environmental information system.

He then became Head of the Environmental and Energy Management Division and deputy director of the office, then Director of the Office of Environmental Protection, Energy and Health Promotion, before taking up the post of Deputy Mayor for Environment and Energy of the City of Heidelberg in 2001. He became Lord Mayor of the city at the end of 2006. Dr Würzner is married with four children.

Adam Szolyak

European Commission, office responsible for the Covenant of Mayors

Adam Szolyak is the policy officer dealing with the Covenant of Mayors initiative in the Directorate-General for Energy of the European Commission in Brussels. He joined the European Commission in 2008 following an earlier career at various companies in the private sector. He holds an MSc in Economics and International Relations from the Budapest University of Economic Sciences.

Christiane Egger

Deputy Manager, O.Ö. Energiesparverband

Christiane Egger is Deputy Manager of the O.Ö. Energiesparverband, the energy agency of Upper Austria, and manager of the Ökoenergie-Cluster, a network of 160 companies active in renewable energy and energy efficiency. She is also Vice-President of FEDARENE, the European network of regional energy and environment agencies, and conference director of the World Sustainable Energy Days, one of the largest annual conferences in Europe on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. She is an expert in energy efficiency in buildings, in solar and biomass heating, and in the dissemination and promotion of sustainable energy production and use. She holds a law degree and a postgraduate degree in environmental engineering.

Marie Donnelly

Director, DG Energy, European Commission

Marie Donnelly was born in Ireland and is Director for New and Renewable Sources of Energy, Energy Efficiency and Innovation in the European Commission’s DG Energy. She is responsible for the development of policy and actions on energy efficiency supporting the target of 20% energy savings by 2020, including the implementation of legislative requirements for buildings, ecodesign and labelling, as well as concrete actions supporting energy saving. She is also responsible for policies and actions leading to the EU target of a 20% share of energy from renewable sources by 2020, and a 10% share of renewable energy in the transport sector.

She leads the coordination of research in the field of energy, including the development of technologies and innovative low carbon solutions leading to their widespread market take-up (the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan, SET-Plan), and actions supporting the 20-20-20 targets through the Intelligent Energy – Europe programme, in cooperation with the Executive Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation. Before joining DG Energy she held several European Commission posts, including Director, Resources and Communication, in the Employment and Social Affairs Directorate-General. Immediately before joining the Commission, she worked as Industry Group Director with the Federation of Irish Chemical Industries in Dublin.

Stjohn O’Connor

Principal Officer, Energy Efficiency and Affordability Division, Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Ireland

Stjohn O’Connor joined the Irish civil service in 1999 and heads the Energy Efficiency and Affordability Division in the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. He has worked in a variety of roles in the Department, most recently as head of the Exploration and Mining Division. Now responsible for national policy on energy efficiency and energy poverty, he chairs the inter-departmental group on the implementation of the EPBD and represents Ireland at the IEA on the Standing Group on Long-Term Cooperation. He holds a doctorate in governance from Queen’s University Belfast.

Tatiana Bosteels

Chair of the IIGCC property working group, Hermes Real Estate

Tatiana is head of responsible property investment at Hermes Real Estate, part of Hermes Fund Management, a global multi-asset manager based in the UK with £29bn of assets under management (March 2012). She joined in 2008 and has led the development and implementation of the Hermes Responsible Property Investment (RPI) programme. Her work focuses on aligning ESG with investment practice to protect and enhance asset value over time.

She has experience of developing innovative sustainability programmes through public-private partnerships. At the London Climate Change Agency, where she advised the Deputy Mayor of London, she developed and delivered the Better Buildings Partnership (BBP) and contributed to the establishment of the London ESCO. Her earlier work covered UK and international climate change policy, carbon markets, Kyoto carbon project mechanisms, the EU and UK emission trading schemes and third-party energy efficiency financing. She chairs the IIGCC Property Working Group, is a Director of the Better Buildings Partnership and of Climate Change Solutions, and sits on the advisory boards of BPIE and GRESB. She holds an MSc in Environmental Management from Imperial College, an MSc in Mechanical Engineering from UCL Belgium, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Sean McLoughlin

Associate Director, Clean Energy & Technology Research, HSBC

Sean McLoughlin is an equity research analyst covering alternative energy and renewables. Before joining HSBC in August 2011 he helped build out coverage of the clean technology sector at an international middle-market investment bank, as part of an Extel-rated team. He has a PhD in materials science and engineering, and worked in the clean tech industry before becoming an equity analyst in 2007.

J. Owen Lewis

Former CEO of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI) and Emeritus Professor of UCD Dublin

Owen Lewis was Chief Executive of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland from 2009 to 2012. Formerly director of the UCD Energy Research Group, he qualified as an architect and building services engineer, practised professionally in Ireland and Zambia, and also taught in Jordan, the USA, and for short periods in China and Germany. He coordinated many EC energy research and dissemination activities and has lectured in most EU Member States. He was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering & Architecture at UCD and later Principal of the UCD College of Engineering, Mathematical & Physical Sciences from 2001 to 2006, and Director for Innovation and R&D at Bord na Móna from 2006 to 2008. In 2011 he received the ACEEE International Star of Energy Efficiency award from US Energy Secretary Steven Chu on behalf of Ireland’s national retrofit programmes.

Adrian Joyce

Campaign Director, Renovate Europe

Adrian Joyce is Secretary General of Efficient Buildings Europe (formerly EuroACE), managing its day-to-day affairs and advising its Members, General Assembly and Board of Directors on issues that affect the energy efficiency of buildings. This includes monitoring the work of the EU Institutions and the market conditions that will encourage a significant increase in energy-related renovation of existing buildings. He is also the Campaign Director of the Renovate Europe Campaign, initiated by Efficient Buildings Europe to bring about a threefold increase in renovation rates of existing buildings by 2020 and to ensure that, by 2050, all existing buildings are at least 80% more energy efficient than they were in 2005.

A professionally qualified architect, he graduated from University College Dublin in 1984 and spent 17 years in private practice (working in the UK, France, Belgium and his native Ireland) before getting involved full-time in architectural policy. From January 2002 he was, for 18 months, Practice Director of the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland, before moving to Brussels to join the Secretariat of the Architects’ Council of Europe, where he became Director before leaving in July 2011. He teaches Construction Technology part-time at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve and is a Board Member of eceee (the European Council for an Energy Efficient Economy) and a Member of the Steering Committee of the European Coalition for Energy Savings.