blockchain in energy forum 2018

Alex Anich is the Manager of Renewable Market Intelligence for NRG, Energy Inc., where he oversees the company’s Renewable Energy Certificate (REC) portfolio. Alex leads NRG’s exploration of the application of blockchain technology to the REC and environmental attribute markets. Prior to joining NRG, Alex headed up the Research & Advisory service of Karbone, an NYC based brokerage, project finance and research firm focused on environmental markets. Alex leverages his experience working in the early days of Shell’s renewable energy business to provide a unique perspective on the evolution of energy markets around the world.

Paul joined the EDF Group (Électricité de France) Open Innovation team in June 2015. He supports technology scouting for business units within the entire EDF Group, manages relationships with the start-up and innovation ecosystems in North America, participates and leads R&D projects, and assists business units in accelerating new business development.

EDF is an $80B/yr global, integrated energy company and the world’s largest electricity producer. EDF’s 140 GW’s of generation capacity and 150k employees across 30+ countries generate over 650 TWH’s of electricity for 40M customers – and 85% of that electricity generated is carbon free.  In the US, EDF operates EDF Renewable Energy (formerly enXco), EDF Trading and Energy Services, Groom Energy, EDF R&D, and ~7 GW of generation capacity.  Globally, EDF is active in the entire value chain of the electric industry, including R&D, project development, generation, trading, transmission, distribution, sales, and services.

Paul has over 15 years of experience throughout the value chain of clean energy development, commercialization, and deployment.  Prior to EDF, Paul held key roles on the analysis, marketing, product development, project development, business development, and corporate development teams in start-ups and large international energy companies, including QBotix, AUO/BenQ, Suntech/Gemini, and several C&I PV developer/integrators. Paul graduated from Tulane University in New Orleans with a BSE, MS, and PhD in Mechanical Engineering focused on clean energy technologies, artificial intelligence, entrepreneurship, and electricity demand forecasting.

Scott Clavenna has been leading high-tech market research firms for over 15 years. In his capacity as a trusted analyst and consultant, Scott has helped dozens of companies enter and succeed in complex and intensely competitive markets worldwide. He also has authored more than 30 reports that helped define important emerging market segments in optical and broadband communications.

Prior to founding Greentech Media, Scott was chief analyst at Heavy Reading, the market research arm of Light Reading, the dominant online media company in the telecommunications market. CMP bought Light Reading in 2005. Before creating Heavy Reading, Scott founded PointEast Research, providing strategic consulting and market intelligence to a broad mix of startups, venture capitalists and major suppliers in the communications/IT industry, and worked as director of research for Light Reading. In 1997, Scott co-founded Pioneer Consulting, which quickly grew into the leading market research firm covering the optical and broadband communications industry.

Rachel Flynn-Kasuba is a Senior Program Manager with National Grid’s New Energy Solutions team, which is focused on developing and launching innovative solutions and technologies that unlock value for National Grid’s customers and communities. She is responsible for identifying and evaluating new partners to make those innovations possible, focusing specifically on the Electric Vehicle space, NY REV Demonstration projects, and Non-Wires Alternatives opportunities.  Prior to her role at National Grid, Rachel worked as an Energy Consultant at ICF, focusing on grid modernization for public and private sector clients, including the U.S. Department of Energy. She holds a Dual Masters in Economics and Global Electricity Markets from Johns Hopkins University, SAIS.

David Groarke is an experienced utility technology and strategy consultant. He has worked with power companies globally to define new growth opportunities, business model evolutions and strategic technology deployments. In this capacity, David has designed large capital technology and modernization programs ($1B+), led cleantech research teams and provided subject matter expertise for a range of utilities in the areas of technology strategy, strategic planning, innovation management, business model evolution, customer engagement, utility automation, distributed energy resource management and data analytics. He has published several industry leading smart grid research reports and grid modernization insight pieces. Prior to Indigo, David held executive positions at Accenture and PA Consulting Group and led innovative research at Greentech Media Research. David holds an Honors Degree in Economics from Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland and has studied European programs at Roskilde University in Denmark and Lund University in Sweden.

Joanna Hubbard is the co-founder and COO of Electron, a London based energy tech firm, and a thought leader on the topic of digital transformation in the energy sector. She is a frequent key note speaker at energy and technology events, sits on advisory boards for several UK utilities on digital transformation and community trading models and writes for national newspapers on these topics.

Joanna started her energy career in the early days of the renewable build-out on the asset financing side, at merchant bank Augusta & Co. After this, she moved to international strategy consultancy firm McKinsey & Co, where she focused on digital transformation.

Her enthusiasm for blockchain technology in an energy context stems from its ability to explode the long entrenched, structural trade-offs made by global electricity markets. Blockchain technology enables the coordination of millions of assets and billions of transactive devices, without necessitating a vertically integrated monopoly utility, thus enabling competition and innovation right down the the edge of the grid.

Doug McMahon is the Vice President of Corporarte Strategy for the New York Power Authority, the country’s largest state owned electric utility. He is responsible for the development and execution of NYPA’s corporate strategy. In addition, Doug leads incubation and commercialization of new products, services and technologies at NYPA - aimed at catalyzing New York State’s REV and clean energy goals by developing scalable and financeable solutions that make the energy system cleaner and more efficient, intelligent, flexible and resilient.

As Chief Commercial Officer for EWF, Jesse Morris focuses on two primary outcomes: growing the EWF Affiliate community and helping market participants —from the smallest energy blockchain startup to the world's biggest utilities— develop and deploy solutions on the Energy Web Chain.

Prior to his role at EWF, Jesse was a Principal at the Rocky Mountain Institute.

He received his BA in International Environmental Policy from Colorado College.

Killian is an engineer with an MS in computer science and applied knowledge of system optimization using neural networks and genetic algorithms. Killian has consulted or sold software to utilities for over 18 years. He was responsible for energy platform sales at Oracle Utilities and business development at Uptake (the fastest growing startup of 2015 according to Forbes, beating Slack and Uber).

Ernst is a Partner at Blue Bear Capital, a VC investor for digital technologies in the energy industry. Blue Bear investment themes cover AI, IoT, cyber security, and blockchain technologies, with commercial applications that accelerate the development of wind, solar, and energy storage, while making oil and gas operations more efficient.

Ernst has participated on the Boards of Directors of over a dozen energy companies, and is currently an observer or director on the boards of Shoreline, Mission Secure, Omnidian, MineralSoft, and Element Analytics.

Before Blue Bear, Ernst spent nine years at Riverstone, the world’s leading energy specialist private equity firm with over $35 billion in assets under management across over 130 energy companies. Previously, he worked in the Mergers & Acquisitions team at Citigroup covering the oil and gas, renewable energy, and transportation sectors.

Ernst graduated with honors from Georgetown University with a degree in Science, Technology & International Affairs. He received his M.B.A. from Columbia Business School and London Business School through a joint degree program.

Benjamin Tejblum is an associate in the firm’s Washington, D.C. office and focuses his practice on energy and infrastructure projects and transactions. Mr. Tejblum’s clients include electric utilities, electric transmission owners, independent power producers, power marketers, and public utility holding companies that are active in the electricity markets in the United States. Mr. Tejblum regularly represents clients before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and has counseled clients on matters involving mergers and acquisitions, interconnection procedures and agreements, transmission rates and cost allocation, market-based sales of energy, and the development of distributed energy resources.

Mr. Tejblum also focuses on issues associated with applications of blockchain technology in the energy industry, and counsels energy start-up companies on a variety of regulatory matters.