Speaker 2021

Bio

Mr. Francesco Tornieri is Principal Social Development Specialist (GAD) at the South Asia Department (SARD) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and a member of the Gender Equity Community of Practice. Mr. Tornieri has been working passionately for over 20 years in the area of social development, with a focus on gender equality, women’s empowerment, social justice, post-conflict rehabilitation and reconstruction, gender-responsive policy/legal and governance reforms, and gender-related capacity development across SubSaharan West, Central, and East Africa and across the Asia-Pacific. He is the Gender and Social Inclusion Focal Point at the South Asia Region Department (SARD) of the ADB. Mr. Tornieri joined ADB in 2004 working in the Poverty Reduction, Gender, and Social Development Division (RSGS) in the Regional and Sustainable Development Department (RSDD). Prior to his current role, Mr. Tornieri has worked as Social Development Specialist (GAD) at the Africa Region of the World Bank (1996-2004), Washington DC, where he was involved in the implementation of a broad range of gender-related initiatives and directly responsible for the Gender and Law Program in Sub-Saharan West, Central and East Africa.

Bio

Dr. Fraser Thompson is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Sun Cable, which is building the world's largest solar farm, undersea HVDC link and batteries to supply renewable energy from Australia and elsewhere to growing demand centres across Asia. He is a globally-recognised expert on sustainable development and energy transition issues, working with a range of governments, investors, and multilateral institutions.

Fraser previously worked with McKinsey & Company for almost 9 years as a leader in their sustainability practice (with particular expertise on carbon abatement and resource productivity) and with the World Bank before that. He is a Rhodes Scholar, with a PhD in Economics from Oxford University.

Bio

Galen Maclaurin is a senior energy researcher and manager of the Geospatial Data Science group at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). His research examines techno-economic potential of renewable energy at national and continental scales. He leads a geospatial modeling team that develops scalable, innovative methods for understanding the barriers and opportunities for future solar and wind deployment from a cost-performance perspective.

Bio

Gavin has worked across all facets of the Solar and Renewable Energy industries, including technical, project management, commercial, strategic, transactional, and advisory roles.

Prior to founding Coronium, Gavin worked with BP Solar as an Electrical Engineer, Project and Program Manager and finally as Project Developer, where he was a lead developer responsible for the Moree Solar Farm. He managed many of the key development activities including land acquisition, planning and permitting, and grid connection, as well as managing the EPC interface with the Consortium.

Gavin’s experience includes the successful delivery of several multi-million dollar solar power projects around Australia, the Pacific and Asia. Highlights include assisting Tonga Power Ltd. to implement their Renewable Energy Target and the hands-on implementation of 5,000 solar powered water pumping and drip irrigation systems in Sri Lanka.

Bio

Gilles is a Partner in the Strategy and Transactions practice of EY, based in Singapore, where he leads the firm’s activities in the Power & Renewables sector in Southeast Asia. Gilles has over two decades of experience in the Asian power markets, initially as a banker and now as a trusted advisor. He has helped clients develop over 20 GW of energy capacity and raised over US$30 billion of debt and equity capital. He provides management consulting services to boards and the C-suite to create shareholder value, assists clients in their transition to renewable energy and a low carbon economy, and advises on project development and financing. Gilles is the programme director for the UK Government's ASEAN Low Carbon Energy Programme, a 3-year ODA programme aimed at promoting greater activity in the Green Finance and Energy Efficiency space in ASEAN.

Bio

Graham Pugh is a principal and co-founder of Propel Clean Energy Partners, an advisory services firm dedicated to helping public, private and civil society organizations make the greatest possible impact in the global fight against climate change and energy poverty. Graham’s work at Propel draws on three decades of diverse experience in the tech sector, international development, public policy, and philanthropy, including leading a U.S. Department of Energy office that coordinated international clean energy and climate change cooperation. Propel is pleased to manage development of the Clean Power Hub, a highly-innovative suite of integrated capacity development tools that offers Southeast Asia's power sector professionals free guidance and expert advice to support their work on clean power policymaking, regulation, system operations, project development and finance, and more.

Bio

Helge Tryti, is Director of Business Development South Asia. Previously he has been serving as Commercial Counsellor at the Royal Norway Embassy in New Delhi and Director of the Innovation Norway India offices.

During his career, Helge has held a number of management positions, nationally and internationally, focusing on business development in companies like Xerox, IBM, KPMG, Storebrand and Eika Group. He holds a MBA in International Management from Thunderbird Global School of Management.

Contact: helge.tryti@innovationnorway.no
Mob. No (Norway) : +47 9348 0899

Bio

Mr. Hoang Van Tam currently is the Deputy Head of Climate change and Green growth Office under the Steering Committee’s Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) of Vietnam about climate change and green growth for the energy and industry sector.

He has been engaged to the climate change and green growth issues under the MOIT for over ten years. He has been the focal person in charge of working various topics related to climate change and green growth such as national program on energy efficiency, negotiation process in the Conference of Parties of UNFCCC, sustainable development and low carbon program on energy and industrial sector, developing and updating NDCs development for energy sectors and NDCs implementation mechanism such as carbon pricing, carbon crediting instrument, emission trading.

Bio

Mr. Hongpeng Liu, Director, Energy Division, United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP).

He is currently leading the energy team in ESCAP to promote regional energy cooperation with focus on implementation of the Sustainable Development Goal 7 in achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and energy connectivity for regional economic cooperation and integration. His work ranges from conducting policy studies, organizing intergovernmental meetings & policy dialogues and providing advisory services to facilitating regional cooperation on sustainable energy development in Asia and the Pacific.

Mr Liu has over 30 years’ experience on sustainable energy. Prior to joining the United Nations, he served as government official in charge of energy policies and plans, new and renewable energy industry development, energy and water conservation, environment industry development at different Ministries and Commissions of the central government of China.

Bio

Hyunjung Lee is Senior Energy Economist in Southeast Energy Division of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and based in Hanoi, Viet Nam. She is mainly working for Viet Nam as an energy sector coordinator and preparing and implementing various investment and technical assistance projects in support for power sector reforms (solar auction mechanism and wholesale electricity market development) and clean energy development (pilot floating solar auction, smart and energy efficiency city, green banking and green financing, demand side management program focused on utility energy efficiency and demand response programs, and grid-connected battery storage project). She is also managing a regional sustainable energy program under the Greater Mekong Subregion (GMS) cooperation, especially organizing various knowledge works among 6 GMS countries related to integrated and strategic power sector planning and leading the demand-side energy efficiency market studies in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar.

Bio

Ick Jin is currently the Director of Economic Analysis Coordination Division of the National Assembly Budget Office. He undertakes financial analyses on the effect of public expenditures and economic programs. Before joining NABO, he worked at Korea Insurance Research Institute, Korea Capital Market Research Institute, and the Bank of Korea. Mr. Jin holds a Ph.D. from the Rice University at Houston, a CFA designation, and a CIPM designation. His primary research interest includes ESG investing, sustainable development, climate finance, climate technology among others. Mr. Jin has authored academic papers and policy reports: including “Analysis of the impact of achieving NDC on public climate finance,” “Is ESG a systematic risk factor for US equity mutual funds?”, “ESG-screening and Factor-risk-adjusted Performance: the Concentration Level of Screening Does Matter,” “Measuring Cross-Cutting Factors Influencing Institutional and Innovation Efficiency for I4R”, “Circular Economy Policy in Korea,” etc.

Bio

Ilya Chernyakhovskiy is the lead author for USAID’s Grid Integration Toolkit under the USAID-NREL partnership. He leads grid integration analysis and capacity building efforts in Central Asia countries, including Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Ilya is also part of the core modeling team for NREL’s grid integration studies in South Asia. Prior to joining NREL, Ilya was a researcher in economic development at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. He holds a M.Sc. in Resource Economics and Econometrics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.