Speakers 2020

Cédric Aubert is CEO of geoProRegio AG, a company offering geolocation services for utilities, municipalities and any player engaged in the development of a smart energy world. Along with the decentralization of the energy system, the demand for geodata has grown dramatically. This demand should increase further with the development of renewable energies. Geodata has become essential to the planification, development, operation and maintenance of a new sustainable energy world.

Prior to his current position, Cédric Aubert was formerly a Member of the Executive Board at ewz (Zurich Municipal Electric Utility), Head of the Energy Economics Dept., responsible for the energy portfolio management. During that time, Cédric Aubert was also Chairman of the Board of Directors of Energie Naturelle Mollendruz SA, a company founded to plan, build and operate a wind farm in western Switzerland. Deeply involved in the development of the whole project and especially concerned about its social acceptance, Cédric took a major part in the stakeholder management. He is also the initiator of the communication campaign “Je Suis Pour les Eoliennes du Mollendruz” (www.jesuispour.ch).

After studying physics at the ETH Lausanne, Cédric Aubert worked in the field of technical safety analysis in the nuclear sector before joining Swiss Re as Senior Data Engineer in the Credit Risk Department. For several years he worked at Axpo as Head of Market and Credit Risk Management before joining ewz in 2014 as Head of the Energy Economics Department and eventually geoProRegio AG as CEO late 2019.

Christoph Baumann is deputy head of insurance & risks at the Swiss State Secretariat for International Finance. In this role, he is managing Swiss sustainable finance initiatives and Switzerland's representation in the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action, the International Platform for Sustainable Finance, as well as the IWG on a Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures. Previously, he held various senior positions in the financial industry as well as at technology companies. He studied economics at the University of Zurich, as well as politics and international law at the University of London. He is both a CFA and FRM chartholder.

Josef Baur, born in 1972, graduate in economics and business administration. Founder and managing director of eueco GmbH, the service provider for citizen participation and citizen financing. The Munich-based company offers services relating to the structuring, implementation, marketing and automated processing of citizen financing. Mr. Baur advises municipal utilities, developers, municipalities and cooperatives on the sustainable implementation of citizen financing models.

Stefan Büsser is a Productmanager E-mobility working for Plug’n Roll powered by Repower, one of the top four charging networks in Switzerland. As an energy supplier and producer in the mountains of Grisons, Repower is pursuing the mission to help electrifying as many cars as possible and thus promote locally produced green energy. He is responsible for the B2C portfolio, optimizing processes and customer experience. His goal is to reach the best possible customer satisfaction along every e-mobility journey, whether it’s charging in public, at work or at home. Stefan holds a B.A. in Business Administration and a M.A. in Marketing, Services and Communication Management from the University of St. Gallen.

Cornelia Daniel is a thought leader in the Austrian solar energy sector and runs the solar consulting and development agency Dachgold (Roof Gold) specialised in LCOE for solar energy in the commercial sector. Her academic education at the Vienna Business School of Economics combined with extensive personal research, numerous keynotes and more than 400 published articles in blogs and magazines about solar and renewable energy have made her the most well-known person in the industry. Her personal mission is inspired by Bill Gates and strives for a solar power plant on every commercial roof. The first step to reaching this goal is a private initiative called Tausendundein Dach (1001 roofs) with the goal of solarising 1001 roofs (1 roof = 20 kWp) by the end of 2020 together with one of Austria’s largest solar construction companies 10hoch4. This “mission impossible” is suddenly gaining momentum through the Fridays for Future movement and eventually will have a major impact on the worldwide solar market, since it began with a completely different approach than anything ever done before.

Sandrine was recognised by GreenBiz as one of the 30 most influential women across the globe driving change in the low carbon economy and promoting green business. She is the first female Co-President of the Club of Rome (1968), sits on several Boards, is a senior advisor/associate for CISL, ETC, Interel, E3G, and is a lecturer at the University of Cambridge. She holds several advisory positions within the European Commission including Chair of DG R&I Think Tank ESIR (Economic and Societal Implications of Research and Innovation); Co-Chair, Manufacturing Technical Expert Group on Sustainable Finance/Taxonomy; Member of the Climate Change Mission Assembly.

Charlie Donovan is Executive Director of the Centre for Climate Finance and Investment at Imperial College Business School and Academic Director of the MSc Climate Change, Management and Finance. He is Principal Teaching Fellow in the Department of Finance. In his corporate career, he was most recently Head of Structuring and Valuation for Alternative Energy at BP plc, where he managed a team responsible for investment analysis for large renewable energy projects in North America, Europe and Asia. He was part of the strategy team that launched the alternative energy division in 2005, with a commitment from BP to spend $8 billion over 10 years, and participated in a number of strategic acquisitions. Charlie began his career as an Energy Policy Analyst with the US Environmental Protection Agency during the Clinton Administration and subsequently worked in principal investments at the Enron Corporation. His experience also includes several years in strategy consulting.

Charlie holds a bachelor degree in Psychology from the University of Washington, graduated from the MBA program at Vanderbilt University, and completed a Doctorate in Management at IE Business School. He is the editor and co-author of Renewable Energy Finance: Powering the Future, now in its 2nd edition.

Cyril Ducatez is a Research Analyst working in the Energy Economics department at ewz (Zurich Municipal Electric Utility). His activities include the development of methods and solutions to increase social acceptance of wind energy projects. Cyril holds a Master Degree in Industrial Engineering from a French top engineering school (Grenoble INP). He worked previously as a Junior Energy Power Market Research Analyst at Genscape, a company specialised in fundamental energy data. Multilingual, Cyril was laureate of a prize at a major French economic forum (Les Rencontres Economiques d’Aix-en-Provence) for an essay about possible advantages of developing multilingual environments in companies. He was also finalist of The Spark! Contest, a French-British contest on the future of the energy sector.

Bertram Fleck is a German politician of the CDU and former district administrator of the Rhine-Hunsrück district. From the beginning of his term in office, Bertram Fleck has been committed to decentralized power generation in his district. Today, renewable energy projects produce three times as much energy as the entire district consumes. Bertram Fleck was honored in 2018, when the Rhine-Hunsrück district was awarded the jury prize "Energy Community of the Decade" by the Agency for Renewable Energy from Berlin (AEE).

Guillaume has over 15 years of experience in operations, major project and people management (automotive, micro-mechanics devices and energy). He is currently working for Romande Energie and among other things responsible for the floating photovoltaic project located at lac des Toules (pilot project: 400 kWc, full scale project: 12 MWc)

Dr. Matthias Galus is Head of the Digital Innovation Office at the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE). In this role, he is responsible for identifying and analyzing digital trends and their impact on the energy sector. Under his lead, the Digital Innovation Office is actively supporting digital advances and technology diffusion in the sector and works on the adaptions of the regulatory regime for efficient renewable energy integration, energy efficiency and decarbonisation. Topics include energy data, its access and exchange, cyber security, privacy, decentralized systems and DLT as well as the integration and use of digital technologies, like e.g. artificial intelligence, in the energy sector. He is an expert on smart grids, intelligent metering systems, as well as flexibility and coordination in electricity markets. He has worked at the SFOE since 2012, primarily in the area of regulation, including positions as Deputy Head of Networks, Head of a Task Force on Digitization and Project Manager of the national Smart Grid Roadmap. He graduated in Electrical Engineering and Industrial Engineering from RWTH Aachen University in 2005 and in 2007 with a Diploma in electrical Engineering and Economics. He then graduated at ETH Zurich with a Doctorate in the field of intelligent energy systems.

Jörg Gasser has long-standing experience and a broad-based track record in domestic as well as international politics, diplomacy and financial market policy.

Following his studies in economics and international relations at the University of Zurich, he began his career at the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), where he led many negotiations in the Near and Middle East. In senior positions with the Swiss government, including Policy Adviser in the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), Secretary General (Chief of Staff) of the Federal Department of Justice and Police (FDJP) and afterwards of the Federal Department of Finance (FDF), he advocated for a sustainable and competitive business location and financial centre as well as for lean regulation. Most recently, he was State Secretary of the State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF). In this position, he played an important role in shaping the Swiss financial centre. In 2018, the magazine Bilanz designated him a “digital shaper”, one of the leaders in digitalisation in Switzerland.

Jörg Gasser has been CEO of the Swiss Bankers Association since May 2019.

Dr. Susann Görlinger is working at ETH Zurich since 2010 and is Co-Lead of the mobility platform and project lead of the flight reduction project of ETH Zurich since 2016. She is part of the office of the Vice President for Infrastructure of ETH Zurich.

Ismea is student at the University of St.Gallen in the Assessment Year as well as member of Climatestrike Switzerland since February 2019. She initially worked for Climstestrike on a Cantonal level and, after graduating from high school in Ticino, she started participating in projects on the National level. From the August 5-9, 2019, Ismea participated in the Summer Meeting in Lausanne Europe, an international summit of Fridays For Future. She is currently collaborating in the Climate Action Plan and the development of the magazine of the climate strike movement, netto.null.

Judith Häberli is co-founder and CEO of Urban Connect. Together with the Urban Connect team, she offers a wholistic mobility platform for corporate clients with an eco-system of low-carbon vehicles. The goal of urban connect is to accelerate the shift to a low-carbon economy by changing the way we all commute to work. She holds a degree in economics from the University of Zurich and previously studied acting at the European Film Actor School. Judith Häberli was awarded as EY Winning Women Europe 2018 and is the mother of 3 children.

Prof. Dr. Siegfried Handschuh is Full Professor for Data Science and Natural Language Processing at the Institute for Computer Science at the University of St.Gallen. He studied computer science in Ulm and information science in Konstanz. Prof. Handschuh received his doctorate at the University of Karlsruhe (now: Karlsruhe Institute of Technology). His doctoral thesis was conducted in cooperation with Stanford University as part of the American DARPA DAML project. Siegfried spent eight years in Ireland on the West Coast, where he headed the Knowledge Discovery Unit at the Insight Centre for Data Analytics in Galway. He worked with multinational companies such as HP, SAP, IBM, Motorola, Cisco, Avaya, British Telecom, Telecom Italia, Telefonica, Thales and Elsevier Publishing. He also did research on the Digital Aristotle project, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. His teaching at the University of St.Gallen focuses on data science (data engineering, data analysis, machine learning) and natural language processing.

Arthur Honegger is known for hosting the daily news magazine "10vor10" on Swiss Public TV. Prior to this, Arthur served as a foreign affairs correspondent in New York and Washington DC as well as bureau chief for Swiss Public Broadcasting in the United States. Born in Davos, he has been a journalist for over 15 years and authored several books. Arthur held a variety of positions at SRF, as a domestic reporter, covering among other things the Swiss parliament. In 2017, he was host of SRF’s climate change special "+3grad ". He's a graduate of the renowned "Ringier School Of Journalism" and worked as a business reporter for several years, with an emphasis on globalization and international companies.

A former teacher, Anna has worked in sustainable transport and behaviour change since 2008. Her primary work focussed on road transport, enabling children and adults to make sustainable transport choices. She has a background in political campaigning and is a former Green Party candidate, as well as being a published author. A lifelong environmentalist, she made the decision to stop flying ten years ago and founded Flight Free UK in December 2018 in order to inspire others to do the same.

Merla is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Economy and the Environment at the University of St.Gallen, as well as a senior researcher at the Institute of Sustainable Development at the Zürich University of Applied Sciences. In her dissertation Merla Kubli studied the decentralisation dynamics of regional energy systems, focusing on the long-term interactions between increasing self-consumption and central electricity provision system. Within this topic the investment decision of households for self-consumption concepts and new emerging business models for decentral generation were of major interest.

Merla holds a bachelor degree in business and economics from the University of Basel and successfully graduated from the European Erasmus Mundus Master program in System Dynamics hosted by the University of Bergen (Norway), the New University of Lisbon (Portugal) and the Radboud University of Nijmegen (The Netherlands).

Nina has worked in the European onshore wind energy industry for 12 years. After graduating from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen with a degree in business, she started her career at Volkswind, a pioneering German project developer and operator that was founded in 1993. At Volkswind, Nina is in charge for the development of new markets, with a particular focus on the French market which has always been one of her core responsibilities. In 2015, Volkswind became part of Axpo and since then manages its wind energy portfolio. As member of the management board of Volkswind, Nina mainly focuses on strategic development in France.

Fabienne Muff is co-founder and CEO of Carbon Removed - https://carbonremoved.com/. Her start-up is offering to permanently remove the emissions of businesses and individuals from the atmosphere. Carbon Removed aims at using technology to transition consumers to a more climate friendly lifestyle. Previously she completed the ABB traineeship program exploring multiple technical areas of the business on a global scale.

She holds a ETH Zurich Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering with the focus on Renewable Energy Technology and is determined to have an impact on the world.

Sanket Puranik is Senior Researcher at Smart Innovation Norway working passionately in bridging the gap between R&D and business development. His research focusses on design optimisation of energy systems, energy management and business model innovations in energy sector. He holds a PDEng degree in engineering from the Technical University of Eindhoven (NL), as well as a master of science in Sustainable Energy Systems from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg (SE). He started his professional career working for ABB India customizing mechanical design of Wind power generator and high voltage (HV) induction motors among other projects. During his PDEng he worked with construction company Homij in Eindhoven (NL), providing design solutions to increase robustness of new building design and feasibility studies of business case on energy performance contracting. Currently he is leading business development related work in two H2020 projects E-LAND and RESOLVD.

Bea is a PhD candidate and research fellow at the Institute for Economy and the Environment (University of St.Gallen), as well as a research fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies (UK). In her dissertation she studies investment decisions in the residential solar energy, focusing on non-financial drivers, the role of perceived risk and their implications for policy. Prior to joining the Institute for Economy and the Environment, she worked for 5 years as energy consultant and editor, specializing in energy market regulation and in the design for the European Union single energy market. Beatrice holds a MSc in economics from the University of Milan-Bicocca (Italy) and completed a one-year exchange at the University of Glasgow (UK). While at university, she collaborated on a research project in the field of experimental economics and information in social networks.

André Reichel is Professor for International Management and Sustainability at the International School of Management (ISM), Germany. He has a university degree in management and a doctoral degree in economics and social sciences from Universität Stuttgart, Germany. Before his tenure at ISM he was Professor for Critical Management & Sustainable Development at Karlshochschule International University, Research Fellow at Zeppelin University and Guest Lecturer at the Environmental Change Institute at University of Oxford. Additionally he serves as honorary director of elobau foundation in Leutkirch, Germany. His research focuses on sustainability and digital business, notions of postgrowth and degrowth from a business and civil society perspective, as well as building a new management theory based on the ‘Laws of Form’ by George Spencer Brown.

Verena Tiefenbeck is assistant professor for Digital Transformation at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. In parallel, she leads the Bits to Energy Lab at ETH Zurich, an interdisciplinary team that combines digital technologies and behavioral research to promote resource conservation. She completed her PhD at ETH Zurich in 2014. Prior to that, she spent 3.5 years in Boston as visiting PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and as research assistant at the Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems. Verena holds diplomas (M.Sc. equiv.) in Mechanical Engineering and Management from both TU Munich and from Ecole Centrale Paris.

Heidi Tuiskula holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering from Tampere University of Technology, Finland and PgDip in Hydrogen Safety Engineering from University of Ulster, Northern Ireland. As a hobby, Heidi is currently learning Python programming and data analytics. Heidi has professional experience around topics related to hydrogen and fuel cell technologies, ranging from component development to large scale demonstrations including safety, quality and regulative framework. Currently at Smart Innovation Norway, she is leading European projects and working in the field of local energy markets, smart grids, storage and renewables. Her main interest lies in fighting the climate change through co-developing sustainable solutions together with end-users and business actors. As the Scientific Coordinator of H2020 project E-LAND, she is contributing in development of viable tools to solve energy challenges in isolated area.

As head of products & investment services department at Raiffeisen Switzerland Cooperative, Kathrin Wehrli is responsible for the entire product management in the private customer sector (among others the mortgage business and all related services e.g. energy efficient renovation) and for the sections investment & pension center, consulting & distribution, as well as analytics and digitalization. Before, she had 10 years of different positions at Credit Suisse (Switzerland) SA, Zurich, most recently as Head Products & Services. Ms. Wehrli holds a master degree in Economics/Business Administration (University Lausanne). Furthermore, she serves as member of the Board of Directors for Aduno Holding SA, Zurich (since 06/2020).

Co-Founder of

- Green Growth Funds - which invest in EU SMEs pre-profitability with proven technology and business models able to solve a major problem of humanity profitably and to reach a billion people eventually, so called “exponential organizations” as defined by Singularity University,

- Wermuth Asset Management GmbH (WAM), a family office investing across all asset classes with positive impact on abating climate change, a member of Toniic 100% network, Europeans for divest-invest, the Institutional Investor Group On Climate Change, UN Global Compact and PRI signatory and a BAFIN licensed investment adviser,

- Climate Endowment, which invests endowment style - i.e. longterm - with a positive impact on the climate across all asset classes, with an emphasis on illiquid assets such as infrastructure.

and
investment committee member of “KenFo”, Germany’s new foundation endowed on 1 July 2017 with €24bn in cash to be invested globally, sustainably, long term and with some 5% return per annum.

Charlie Wilson, PhD, is a researcher in the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (UK) for which he co-leads the Accelerating Social Transitions research theme, and a Reader in the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia (Norwich, UK). He is also a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Vienna, Austria). Charlie’s research lies at the intersection between innovation, behaviour and policy in the field of energy and climate change mitigation, working at both a systems level and a micro level.

Prof. Dr. Rolf Wüstenhagen is director of the Institute for Economy and the Environment (IWÖ-HSG) and holds the Chair for Management of Renewable Energies at the University of St.Gallen. He graduated in Management Science and Engineering (TU Berlin) and holds a PhD in Business. His thesis was on “Venturing for Sustainable Energy”. In 2005, 2008 and 2011, respectively, he held visiting faculty positions at University of British Columbia (Vancouver), Copenhagen Business School, and National University Singapore. He embarked on an academic career after retiring from one of the leading European energy venture capital funds. From 2004-2010 he was member of the Federal Energy Research Commission (CORE). 2011-2015, he was member of the advisory board for the Swiss government’s energy strategy 2050. Professor Wüstenhagen is the academic director of St. Gallen University’s executive education programme in Renewable Energy Management.

Nina is a PhD candidate and research associate at the Institute for Economy and the Environment at the University of St.Gallen with a focus on social acceptance of wind energy. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Business Administration and a Master’s degree in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy from the Vienna University of Economics and Business. In her master thesis, she addressed ‘new conservationism’, which refers to concepts, institutions, processes, actors and instruments related to the new market-based approach to nature conservation and climate protection. After her Master she worked as a research assistant at the University of Applied Sciences in Vorarlberg (AT).

Doris is responsible for the organization of #REMforum as well as other projects at the Chair for Management of Renewable Energies of Prof. Rolf Wüstenhagen. She holds a diploma in German studies and Geography from RWTH Aachen. For ten years she managed the administration of a start up in Germany and Switzerland followed by ten years of experience in the organization of national and international medical congresses. After serving six years as chief medical secretary in a cantonal hospital, she joined Rolf's team.

Tel +41 71 224 2584
energieforum@unisg.ch