Speaker 2021

Bio

Shishir has over 21 years of experience of which 15 years in development and social sector. He has gained expertise in portfolio management, aid management, governance, programme planning and management, strategic information, policy making, communication and advocacy with leading government ministries /departments.

He has worked with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank on Secondment to Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Finance, Government of India(GoI). He has been seconded by United Nations Development Program (UNDP) to key ministries like Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (MoHUPA) / Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and Department of Economic Affairs (DEA). Also work with USAID Integrated Healthy Behaviors Program and International NGOs like EngenderHealth, Enable Health Society and contributed to addressing issues of gender and poverty in his work in these organizations. He joined the International Solar Alliance in 2016 and leads cross-cutting activities across partnerships, Governance bodies of the ISA, Resource mobilization & strategy, and programme support. He is currently on secondment from the Asian Development Bank to the ISA and is the Chief of Unit for Governance bodies and Partnerships under Strategy, Finance & Investments Cluster.

Bio

Simon Rolland has 15 years of experience in implementing projects that champion sustainable energy and clean energy transition.

He currently is the Director of the energy portfolio of GIZ in Thailand which includes the four-year programme "Clean Affordable and Secure Energy for Southeast Asia (CASE)", that aims to support energy transition in Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.

Before his current role, Simon worked in Rwanda where he managed a regional multi-donor energy access programme, "Energising Development Great Lakes", and in Ghana as Energy Programme Manager for the European Union. Prior to this, Simon was the Director of the Alliance for Rural Electrification, a business organisation focusing on off-grid and mini-grid renewables in emerging and developing economies.

Bio

Sirpa Jarvenpaa is the Fund Director of the Energy Transformation Program. An Economist from the Paul Nitze School for Advanced International Studies, the Johns Hopkins University, she has worked in Southeast Asia from 1990, initially with UNDP to implement the new economic management system in the Region’s transitional countries. She has an extensive career with the Asian Development Bank of 20 years focused on infrastructure planning, implementation, policy and institutional strengthening, as well as in corporate roles, particularly in strategic resource allocation and mobilization. She served as the Director of the President’s Office at the International Fund for Agricultural Development and as a Strategy and Partnerships Director of the Global Green Growth Institute and prepared its global strategy for low carbon investments.

Bio

Sneha is an energy professional with over 20 years of experience covering the built environment, the intersection of energy efficiency and climate change, and the cooling sector. Sneha currently serves as a Consultant to Rocky Mountain Institute in the USA and has been an integral part of their cooling work and knowledge products over the past three years, including the recently concluded Global Cooling Prize. She also serves as Strategic Advisor to the Alliance for an Energy Efficient Economy in India and has played an instrumental role in significant policy-focused cooling work in India, including the development of the India Cooling Action Plan. Sneha is based in California, USA. She has a B.Arch. from the Institute of Environmental Design in India, and higher studies in Business Management and Energy Policy from the University of South Carolina (USA) and the University of California, Berkeley (USA) respectively.

Bio

Mr. Garnaik leads many flagship programs including business development and large scale implementation of energy efficiency projects through innovative financing mechanisms. At present, he is handling eleven major national and international programs (amounting to annual turnover of $ 250 million) and working on to develop few new programs leading to investment opportunities of at least $ 500 million in next 2 years. The following major programs are being led by Mr. Garnaik are:

• Domestic Efficient Lighting Program (UJALA)
• Street Light National Program (SLNP)
• Building Energy Efficiency Program (BEEP)
• Municipal Energy Efficiency Program (MEEP)
• Solar Based LED Street Lighting Program (Ministry of Renewable Energy, Govt. of India)
• Solar Based LED Study Lamp Program (Ministry of Renewable Energy, Govt. of India)
• Energy Efficiency Program for SMEs under GEF-5 program (UNIDO)
• Energy Efficiency Market Transformation Program under GEF-6 program (ADB & UNEP)
• Partial Risk Sharing Facility program (World Bank and SIDBI)
• Super-Efficient AC Program
• National Motor Replacement Program of India
• Indo-Israel Technology Innovation Program (Deptt. Of Science & Tech, GoI)

Major Work Experience

• Lead trainer in BEE’s capacity building program of DISCOMs on DSM
• Technical Expert & Trainer to USAID-LEAD project in Thailand and India
• Team lead in conceptual design of Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) scheme of Thailand’s PMR proposal to World Bank
• Program Manager for Perform, Achieve & Trade (PAT) and Standard & Labeling Scheme of BEE
• Over 70 major consultancy projects in energy and resource conservation area including policy studies, energy audits, capacity building and national level schemes / programs like APDRP, DRUM etc.
• Member of various national and international committees in the field of energy efficiency. Represented India in the ISO Technical Committee (TC)-257 at Paris and served as Point-of-Contact for Govt. of India in Clean Energy Ministerial

Presented / published over 25 technical papers in various national & international seminars, workshops and websites. He has gone through advance training program on Energy Efficiency at Japan and USA. He was selected by Chiang Mai University, Thailand as an International Expert to design “Energy Performance Certificate Scheme” for Thailand.

Bio

Stephen B. Harrison is the founder and managing director at sbh4 GmbH in Germany. He focuses on decarbonisation. Hydrogen and CCUS are fundamental pillars of his consulting work.

With 27 years at BOC Gases, The BOC Group and Linde Gas, Stephen has intimate knowledge of hydrogen and carbon dioxide from commercial, technical, operational and safety perspectives. His expertise extends to the full length of the value chain from production, purification, distribution, and storage through to utilisation.

Stephen has extensive M&A due diligence experience in the energy and clean-tech sectors. Private Equity firms and investment fund managers are regular clients, gaining renewable energy sector insights to support asset allocation decisions. He supports clean-tech startups with commercialisation and securing investment funding for scale up. Stephen also works with the Asian Development Bank on renewable energy and green hydrogen deployment projects and feasibility studies.

Bio

Steve Peters is a Senior Energy Specialist (Waste-to-Energy) in the Energy Sector Group of the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department, Asian Development Bank. He is responsible for developing the knowledge base, project development and implementation in waste to energy and supporting projects across waste, the circular economy and ocean impacts.Prior to joining ADB, Mr. Peters was the Director at Stratcon Singapore Pte Ltd where he consulted on waste to energy, waste to fuels, biomass, biogas, biofuels and innovation in clean technology.

Bio

Steve Olive serves as the Mission Director for the Regional Development Mission for Asia (RDMA) since August 2020. He joined USAID in 2000 and is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service.

From 2018 to 2020, he was the Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for USAID’s Latin America and Caribbean Bureau, often serving as its Acting Assistant Administrator. In 2017-18, he was the Acting Director of the Foreign Service Center in the Office of Human Capital and Talent Management. At USAID/Kenya and East Africa based in Nairobi, he served as the Deputy Mission Director for Somalia from 2014 to 2017. He concurrently served as the Acting Deputy Chief of Mission and occasionally as the Chargé d'Affaires for the U.S. Mission to Somalia from 2016 to 2017.

Before USAID/Kenya and East Africa, Dr. Olive served as a Deputy Mission Director for USAID/Haiti from 2011 to 2014 leading post-earthquake reconstruction and development efforts. He also was posted in Peru and Nicaragua from 2002-2011 managing environment, trade, agriculture, food security and emergency-response programs. Dr. Olive also worked in Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, and American Samoa as an environment and natural resource management and policy specialist. He earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Hawaii where he was an East-West Center scholar, a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Tennessee, and a Bachelor of Arts in Public Administration from Miami (Ohio) University. He is married to Cristina Olive, also a USAID Foreign Service Officer, and they have a son.

Bio

Dr. Sethuvenkatraman is a research group leader in CSIRO with domain expertise in buildings and HVAC systems. He leads smart buildings research activities in CSIRO. His current research focusses on use of digital technologies to decarbonise the built environment sector.

His research leadership has resulted in development of low energy, renewable based cooling solutions for the built environment sector. He also led development of an industry roadmap for improving the uptake of renewable heating and cooling solutions in Australian built environment.

Subbu has experience leading various national, international initiatives and projects related to renewable integration, air conditioning and building energy efficiency. He chairs the Australian Institute of Refrigeration Air conditioning and Heating (AIRAH) Special Technical Group (STG) on renewable heating and cooling.

Bio

Sujata has been with ADB since 2003 and has worked in sovereign and non-sovereign operations of the bank.

Sujata has a PhD from the London Business School, University of London and Master’s and Bachelor’s from the University of Delhi.

Before joining ADB, she was the Director of the Policy Analysis Division, at TERI (then the Tata Energy Research Institute), New Delhi. She has also worked as a visiting researcher at the International Institute of Applied System Analysis in Austria.

She was a member of United Nations (UNFCCC) CDM Methodologies for Baselines and Monitoring Panel and a co-coordinating lead author for the Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Bio

Sunil Kumar Sharma has over 12 years of experience in project management, bilateral development co-operation, policy advisory and strategic planning in the clean energy domain. Sunil is currently working as Technical Expert in Energy Transition with Distribution Utilities project under the Indo – German Energy Programme in GIZ GmbH. He also worked on aspects of grid integration of renewables under the Green Energy Corridors (GEC) project. Previously he worked on accelerated deployment of clean energy in India under the USAID funded PACE-D programme.

Bio

Suzanne Gaboury was appointed Director General, Private Sector Operations Department in January 2021.

Ms. Gaboury has more than 28 years of professional experience in private sector finance and emerging markets with extensive international networks and stakeholder relationships. She has driven total project investment value in excess of US$ 35 billion including transformational climate action projects in infrastructure / renewable energy, agribusiness value chain including forestry, and financial institutions sectors. Direct experience in more than 70 countries, including some 40 emerging economies.

She joined ADB from FinDev Canada, the Canadian development bank where she served as Chief Investment Officer. She was responsible for FinDev Canada’s strategic vision in their 72 countries of operation including defining business markets, client, product investment strategy and development. She designed and executed FinDev Canada’s private sector-oriented investment strategies with equity, debt, and guarantee financial instruments. Prior to this, she served as Global Director Agribusiness, Food and Water at FMO, the Dutch Development Bank in The Hague, where she was responsible for the direction and focus of FMO’s private sector investments in more than 85 developing and emerging markets.

Ms. Gaboury was a Managing Director, and a key-man, of Cordiant Capital, a private emerging market fund manager for 9 years in Montreal. She managed an EUR 500M infrastructure fund (Infrastructure Crisis Facility Debt Pool) and US$ 350M+ in debt and quasi-equity investments across diverse sectors. She was also Director of the US$ 211M Canada Investment Fund for Africa (CIFA) private equity fund co-managed by Cordiant for investors and the Canadian government.

While with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development for 14 years in London as Senior Banker, Ms. Gaboury pioneered new private sector investment programs in debt and equity to capitalize on emerging business opportunities in the former Soviet Union and CIS. Suzanne holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the National University of Ireland, Smurfit Graduate School of Business in Dublin, Ireland, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of Alberta, and has completed Harvard Business School Executive education.