About the Interviewees
Rainer Baake
Rainer Baake is an expert on energy and climate issues from Germany. An economist by training, he has served for almost 20 years as state secretary for various state and federal governments in Germany. Rainer Baake is one of the key architects of the German ‘Energiewende’. In between government positions he has been the national director of an environmental organization and the founding director of the Berlin based think-tank Agora Energiewende. During his career, Rainer Baake has made a significant contribution to the international policy debate on energy transition and climate change. Rainer Baake previously worked as a community organizer in Chicago.
Fatih Birol
Dr Fatih Birol has served as executive director of the IEA since September 2015. He was re-elected in January 2018 for a second four-year term, which began in September 2019. Prior to his nomination as executive director, Dr Birol spent over 20 years at the IEA, rising through the ranks to the position of chief economist responsible for the flagship World Energy Outlook publication. Before the IEA, Dr Birol worked at the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Vienna. He earned a BSc degree in power engineering from the Technical University of Istanbul and received an MSc and PhD in energy economics from the Technical University of Vienna.
Mark Campanele
Mark Campanele is the founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative and conceived the ‘unburnable carbon’ capital markets thesis. Mark is responsible for management strategy, board matters and developing their capital markets framework analysis. Their goal is to align capital markets with natural ecological limits to growth. Mark has 25 years’ experience in sustainable financial markets working for major institutional asset management companies. He co-founded some of the first responsible investment funds at Jupiter Asset Management in 1989 with the Ecology Funds, NPI with Global Care, the AMP Capital Sustainable Future Funds, and Henderson Global Investor’s Industries of the Future Funds.
Philip Cunningham
Philip Cunningham graduated in chemical engineering from the University of Manchester in 1991. After work at a local engineering firm he joined Amoco in 1997, which became a career with BP in engineering and operational roles in the UK, Far East, and Central Asia. Phil returned to Southeast Asia in 2010 with technical and managerial roles for Premier Oil before joining Maersk Oil to support their COO and executive office in Copenhagen in 2014. He became managing director for Maersk Oil Kazakhstan for 4 years after that, transferring to Stavanger in 2019 to head Total’s Norway business after Total acquired Maersk Oil.
Dominic Emery
Dr Dominic Emery was appointed chief of staff for BP in February 2020. Prior to this he was vice president responsible for long-term planning and strategic activities for the company. He has worked for BP since 1986, leading gas and power business development in the UK and northern Europe and running power and utility assets at BP sites. He was chief development officer for the alternative energy business, with responsibility for BP’s corporate venture capital investments and is a member of the board of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative.
Tomas Kåberger
Dr Tomas Kåberger is affiliate professor at Chalmers University of Technology in Göteborg and serves as executive board chairman of the Renewable Energy Institute in Tokyo and a senior adviser to GEIDCO in Beijing. He is a member of the Swedish Climate Policy Council and on the board of the energy company Vattenfall. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and The Swedish Association of Energy Economists. He has served as a member of the government energy commission launching the re-regulated electricity market in Sweden and as director-general of the Swedish Energy Agency.
Zoë Knight
Zoë Knight is a managing director and group head of the HSBC Centre of Sustainable Finance. She joined HSBC in 2010 and previously led the Climate Change Centre of Excellence within Global Research, having been an investment analyst at global financial institutions since 1997. For 10 years she focused on equity strategy, before focusing on socially responsible investing. Zoë is a commissioner on the Energy Transition Commission and is a member of the WEF Global Future Council on Energy. She also sits on the Board of the World Energy Council UK and holds a BSc (Hons) in economics from the University of Bath.
Michael Liebreich
Michael Liebreich is chairman and CEO of Liebreich Associates, through which he provides advisory services and speaks on clean energy and transportation, smart infrastructure, technology, climate finance and sustainable development. He founded and is senior contributor to BloombergNEF and a visiting professor at Imperial College’s Energy Futures Lab. He is also a senior adviser to Sustainable Development Capital Ltd and a member of Equinor’s International Advisory Group.
Andris Piebalgs
Andris Piebalgs is a professor at the Florence School of Regulation in the European University Institute. His work now focuses on the decarbonization challenges in the energy sector. He is the chairman of the Board of Appeal of ACER. Before coming to FSR Andris Piebalgs was EU commissioner for Energy and EU commissioner for development. He is a key figure in the formation of the EU’s renewable energy and energy efficiency policies and made a crucial impact in the creation of the European energy market. He has been a prominent Latvian politician and diplomat, and was instrumental in Latvia’s accession to the EU.
Kristian Ruby
Kristian Ruby is a widely recognized expert with a strong communication profile and extensive experience in political affairs. He joined Eurelectric from Wind Europe, where he served as chief policy officer and was in charge of development and implementation of the political strategy. Prior to this, Ruby worked as a journalist and served seven years as a public servant in the Danish Ministries of Environment, and Climate and Energy and in the European Commission in the cabinet of the former climate action chief, Connie Hedegaard. Kristian holds a master’s degree in history and international development.
Pierre Schellekens
Pierre Schellekens was deputy head of cabinet for Energy and Climate Change Commissioner Arias Canete. Before this he was the head of communication unit – DG AGRI and the head of the EU Commission representation in Sweden between 2009 and 2014. He joined the European Commission in 1996 and has most recently been working in DG Maritime Affairs, as head of unit for maritime policy in the Baltic and North Sea. Prior to this, Mr Schellekens was the deputy head of cabinet of the Commissioner for Environment Stavros Dimas from 2004 to 2008. This comprised general coordination of environmental files, and responsibility for climate change (international negotiations and the climate and energy package) as well as contacts with Council and the European Parliament. During the first part of 2004, Mr Schellekens was a member of the cabinet of Margot Wallström, then responsible for environment.
Jesse Scott
Jesse Scott is a specialist in clean energy policy. She is senior adviser at think-tank and policy institute Agora Energiewende in Berlin. During 2015–17 she worked at the IEA where she was project leader of the agency’s flagship 2017 report Digitalization & Energy and worked closely with Executive Director Fatih Birol. Jesse has over 15 years’ experience leading major European Union policy campaigns and multi-actor coalitions in Brussels, including for the reform of the EU ETS carbon market, which turned around the failing EU carbon price from €2 in 2011. She was previously deputy secretary general at the EU natural gas sector association Eurogas, head of environment at the EU electricity sector association Eurelectric, head of Brussels office for environment NGO E3G, and worked at law firm White & Case LLP and as adviser to the Italian prime minister and to the Polish foreign minister.
Adam Sieminski
Adam Sieminski is president of the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Research Center (KAPSARC), an independent, non-profit, research think-tank located in Riyadh. Prior to joining KAPSARC in 2018, Mr Sieminski held the Schlesinger chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Sieminski served as administrator of the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) in 2012–16. He was previously Deutsche Bank’s chief energy economist and integrated oil company analyst. He is a member of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE), a senior fellow of the US Association for Energy Economics (USAEE). He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and earned both an undergraduate degree in civil engineering and a master’s degree in public administration from Cornell University.
Paul Stein
Paul Stein was appointed to the Rolls-Royce Executive Leadership Team as chief technology officer in April 2017, accountable for the company’s technology investment and for ensuring close alignment with business strategy, to maintain a competitive edge. He joined Rolls-Royce in 2010 as chief scientific officer and for two years concurrently acted as the engineering and technology director for the company’s nuclear business. Immediately prior to joining Rolls-Royce Paul was director-general, science and technology, at the UK Ministry of Defence. Paul holds an electrical and electronic engineering degree from King’s College, London. He is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Institution of Engineering and Technology.
Lord Adair Turner
Lord Turner chairs the Energy Transitions Commission, a global coalition working out pathways to limit global warming to below 2˚C by 2040. He chaired the Institute for New Economic Thinking where he remains a senior fellow. He is chairman of insurer group Chubb Europe, and on the Advisory Board of Shanghai Envision Energy group. Among his public policy roles, he chaired the UK’s Financial Services Authority (2008–13); was director-general of the Confederation of British Industry (1995–2000); chaired the Low Pay Commission (2002–06); the Pensions Commission (2003–06); and the Climate Change Committee (2008–12). He became an independent member of the House of Lords in 2006. He writes regularly for Project Syndicate, and in 2015 published Between Debt and the Devil (Princeton).