2025 EPRG Winter Seminar: Developments in Global Energy Systems

Lucia Reisch was appointed in 2021 as the inaugural El-Erian Professor of Behavioural Economics & Policy and Fellow of Queens’ College, joining from Copenhagen Business School.  She is also the Deputy Dean of Queens’ College. Lucia is a behavioural economist and social scientist, whose work includes research in sustainable consumption, behavioural public policy and consumers and digitisation. She applies rigorous empirical research on the effectiveness and acceptability of behavioural insights to policymaking. Her publications are cited widely by peer-reviewed journals and by policymakers worldwide. She has worked on numerous sustainable consumption and other issues with the OECD, the European Commission, the World Bank, UNEP and other various United Nations agencies.

Juliette is Chief Communications Officer at Energy UK, the UK’s broadest and most diverse energy trade association, representing companies across the sector including large-scale electricity generators, retailers who sell energy to businesses and households, and companies working towards decarbonising heat and transport. Juliette has a Master’s in Engineering from Cambridge University, and has held a variety of analytical and communications roles across low carbon generation at Equinor, Orsted and EDF Energy.

Andy joined Citizens Advice in April 2021 as Principal Economic Regulation Specialist. He leads the Energy, Networks and Systems team. The team seeks to ensure that consumers receive the services they require from the energy network companies at good value for money and that the energy system works well for consumers. Andy sits on the Ofgem Challenge Group that assesses network companies’ business plans.

Andy has worked in the energy industry for over 20 years, working for Centrica and RWE Npower before joining Citizens Advice. This was in a variety of commercial and regulatory roles, mainly focused on network regulation and system governance.

Gülbahar Tezel is a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). In this role she provides strategic and economic advice to policymakers and businesses. Her areas of expertise include energy transition, environmental economics and the design and regulation of policies, particularly in sectors such as energy, telecommunications and digital platforms. At PwC, she also leads a think tank focused on energy transition, where she sets the research agenda and contributes to related publications. Additionally, Tezel has served as a member of the Expert Team Energy System 2050, commissioned by the Minister of Economic Affairs and Climate. Alongside her role at PwC, Gülbahar Tezel is a Professor of Economics at Tilburg University, where she teaches courses in applied economics and supervises thesis students.

Laura Smart is Deputy Director of Consumer Insight and Behavioural Science at Ofgem, leading the regulator’s research portfolio, including programmes on energy flexibility, perceptions of pricing and consumer experience. She previously led research and consumer functions at the FCA and CMA.

Dr Ramit Debnath is a University Assistant Professor and Deputy Director of the Centre for Human-Inspired AI (CHIA). He is an affiliated researcher of the Energy Policy Research Group. Ramit is an elected member of the Methods Advisory Group (MAG) of the UK Government. He leads the Cambridge Collective Intelligence and Design Group and climaTRACES Lab and has a visiting academic role at Caltech and Stanford University. He is the Mathematics and Programming teaching lead for the Design Tripos course and AI for Sustainability Module leader for the MPhil in Human-Inspired AI.

Dr Debnath’s research involves designing responsible and human-centric AI systems to advance climate action and environmental sustainability at urban and regional scale. This niche and rapidly emerging field is pivotal for mitigating global emissions and ensuring that AI is developed safely and for the public good. Ramit has a background in electrical engineering and computational social sciences, with a MPhil and a PhD from the University of Cambridge as a Gates Scholar. He is a Fellow and Director of Studies of Churchill College.

Amir H. Keshavarzzadeh is a PhD candidate in the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. He holds a Master’s degree in Energy Science and Technology from ETH Zürich and previously worked as a Design Engineer at GE Vernova, specialising in thermal-power systems. His research examines global supply chains from a complex- and chaotic-systems perspective, seeking to understand how interconnected production networks behave under stress and how shocks cascade across countries, industries and firms. By integrating concepts from chaos dynamics, network science and AI-enabled modelling, his work uncovers the hidden nonlinearities and systemic vulnerabilities that shape the resilience of global supply chains. Ultimately, his research aims to provide a big-picture understanding of global supply-chain dynamics and to inform the design of more robust, adaptive and equitable systems to support the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy.

Florian Mayr is a Partner in the Deals Strategy practice at Strategy& Germany, part of the PwC network. He advises financial and strategic investors to realise the full value of their transactions, with a strong focus on the energy transition. Based in Berlin, Florian supports through commercial due diligence, value creation and sector assessments particularly in renewable energy and around flexibility options such as energy storage. With nearly 2 decades of experience as a strategy consultant to the energy industry, he is recognised as a thought leader in shaping the future energy landscape.

With over 15 years of experience in the energy sector, Martin van ‘t Verlaat leads the technology strategy and business development at Equigy’s crowd balancing platform. Equigy is a joint venture of 6 European TSOs with the mission to enable flexibility from smaller units as solutions for TSO’s balancing and redispatch. With its crowd balancing platform, Equigy is simplifying and standardising market access, thereby encouraging more participation of new types of demand-side flexibility.

Martin combines IT leadership and electricity market acumen to drive innovative solutions in the energy transition. Before joining Equigy, Martin held several professional and program management positions on digital transformation and data in TenneT TSO. He started his career in Business & IT consultancy with focus on Utilities and Public Sector. Martin holds a master in business administration from the Radboud University Nijmegen and a bachelor in information science from The Hague University of Applied Sciences.

Jeroen joined PwC in 1993 and serves as an Energy partner as of 2003. Jeroen is fully focused on the Energy & Utility & Resources (EU&R) industry and has worked with many clients, both in the oil and gas and the utilities sector. These include listed companies, both local and international.

Apart from serving as (lead) partner, he coordinated various carve outs, debt placements and some large utility deals and restructurings.

Jeroen has led the Dutch and EMEA Energy & Utility (EU) practice (Assurance, Tax and Advisory) and as of 2020 he is the Global Energy, Utilities & Resources leader.

Jeroen has advised many international Energy companies and governments on certain industry and policy setting matters.

Michael Mehling is Deputy Director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research. In his work, he focuses on climate policy design and implementation at the domestic and international level, including its intersections with environmental, energy, financial market and trade policy. Previously, Dr. Mehling was a Professor of Law at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow and President of Ecologic Institute in Washington, DC. For over 2 decades, he has worked on climate policy design and implementation at the intersection with environmental, energy, financial market and trade policy, advising decision makers in over a dozen countries, testifying before or briefing legislators in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union and serving as an expert in several climate litigation and arbitration cases.

Dr. Mehling has helped launch several initiatives in the areas of climate law and policy and is a founding board member of, inter alia, the Blockchain & Climate Institute (BCI) in London, the European Association of Climate Law (EACL) and the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition (ERCST) in Brussels. He also established and is Editor-in-Chief of the Carbon & Climate Law Review (CCLR), the first academic quarterly journal focused on climate law and regulation. Currently, he serves on the governance boards of Ecologic Institute in Berlin and Climate Strategies in London, the Scientific Committee of the Enel Foundation in Rome and the advisory board of the Institute for Climate Protection, Energy and Mobility (IKEM) in Berlin.

Dr Anupama Sen is Associate Director – Impact,  for the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, University of Oxford. She is also an Official Fellow in Environmental Change at Reuben College, University of Oxford.  She was previously head of Policy Engagement at the Smith School. Anupama has published extensively on electricity sector restructuring and reform in the context of the energy transition in non-OECD Asia, the transition to renewables in resource-rich economies in the MENA, energy pricing reforms and the impact of the energy transition on international energy markets. She has a strong interest in the socio-economic implications of the energy transition, its implications for energy consumers, producers and governments and in the circular economy in relation to energy. Prior to joining the Smith School, she spent 13 years at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, where she was Senior Research Fellow, Executive Director of the Electricity Research Programme and Deputy Director of the Energy Transition Initiative. Anupama holds a BA(Hons) in Economics from the University of Mumbai, MSc from the London School of Economics and PhD from the University of Cambridge. Anupama is a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Society and has previously been a Junior Research Fellow and a Visiting Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge.

Leigh specialises in European energy law and has published and lectured widely on this topic. She has authored many articles and books on state support to the energy sector in Europe. She is a professor at Tilburg University, the University of Bergen and the Florence School of Regulation.

Professor Reiner’s research focuses on the social licence to operate in a carbon-constrained world including public and stakeholder acceptability of low-carbon (and negative emissions) technologies.  He investigates the challenges of reaching net zero including for hard-to-abate sectors such as residential heating, heavy industry (such as steel, chemicals, cement) and international aviation as well as greenhouse gas removals (blue carbon, direct air capture, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, soils and forests).

He’s a member of the Economics and Policy subject group at Cambridge Judge Business School, which analyses how economics can improve growth and business performance.