Speaker 2021

Bio

Dr Isabelle de Lovinfosse works for the British Government as the Head of South East Asia COP 26 Strategy, based in Singapore. She works with the diplomatic network, businesses, NGOs and experts in the region, galvanising actions in preparation for COP26 and championing a low carbon, resilient and sustainable growth in South East Asia.

Isabelle is a climate change and energy policy expert with over 15 years of academic, consultancy and public sector experience. Before moving to South East Asia, she was a senior policy adviser with the British Government in London on energy market reform, industrial decarbonisation and European negotiations. Prior to that she was an energy and climate consultant in London.

Isabelle holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Louvain (Belgium), and was Associate Lecturer in International Environment Policies at the Open University in London. She is now a Lecturer at the Nanyang Technological University S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, teaching “Energy and Environment Issues”.

Bio

Ivan Jaques is a Senior Energy Specialist at the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP) of the World Bank. He currently leads ESMAP’s Industrial Decarbonization window and previously worked on improving service delivery of cities through energy efficiency, working across energy, transport, urban, and water sectors to support client engagement, project identification, preparation, and implementation. Before joining the World Bank, he was Deputy Director of Chile’s Energy Efficiency Agency in charge of policy development and design of the country’s long-term action plan. He has also worked on sustainable transport in Chile and Japan.

Bio

Jackie Surtani was appointed Director of the Infrastructure Finance Division that covers East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands in April 2017. Prior to ADB, Jackie led the risk function of Siemens Financial Services’ Asian commercial finance unit as their Regional Chief Risk Officer and was responsible for a team of 80 staff in China and India. Jackie began his career at Chase Manhattan Bank (now JP Morgan) as Director of Global Power and Project Finance; was a Director for Global Project Finance at Credit Suisse; and Head of Project Finance Asia Pacific at KBC Bank for 14 years. Mr. Surtani has 30 years of successful experience in Asian infrastructure lending and advisory. He has a strong credit philosophy and sector and regional knowledge across the entire energy chain (i.e. power generation, renewable energy, LNG), infrastructure and telecommunications. Mr. Surtani is a national of the United Kingdom. He obtained his Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Finance and Economics from the University of East Anglia in 1988 with a First Class Honours degree. He obtained his Master of Philosophy Degree in Management Studies from the University of Oxford in 1990.

Bio

James Laybourn is the Asia Pacific Business Development Manager for DNV Energy Systems, based in Singapore. He first joined DNV in London in 2002, and has since held a range of technical or managerial positions within DNV in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. He previously managed DNV’s upstream/midstream segments in South East Asia and Australia, with a particular focus on FSRUs and the gas-to-power market, and is now managing DNV’s Regional efforts on the transition to low carbon fuels including hydrogen and CCUS. James is a Chartered Engineer and holds a Master of Engineering degree from the University of Cambridge and Master of Science in Business Analytics from National University of Singapore.

Bio

FAN Jing-Li is Professor and a Ph.D. Supervisor at School of Energy and Mining Engineering, China University of Mining and Technology, Beijing (CUMTB). She got her PhD degree Beijing Institute of Technology (CEEP-BIT) in July 2014. She stayed one-year as a visiting scholar at Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University during 2011-2012. Her research and work have been primarily focusing on energy economics and climate change issues since 2009. Moreover, she is a Guest Editor for Journal of Cleaner Production and an anonymous reviewer for over 10 international journals such as Applied Energy, Energy, and Energy Policy. Now, Dr. FAN performs as the director of over 10 projects including that from National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC), China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research, United Nation of Development Programme Organization Department of the Beijing Committee, the Energy Foundation, International Energy Agency and State Key Laboratory of Coal Resource and Safe Mining. As a key researcher, she also joined into several projects from Chinese government agencies including National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), NSFC.

Bio

Mr Jinmiao Xu is an energy specialist with more than 15 years of experience in energy field. He works in energy sector group of sustainable development and climate change of ADB and responsible for (i) contribute to ADB’s energy sector quality-at-entry and innovations, focusing on renewable energy and conventional clean energy power generation including cutting edge technology, system integration technologies and energy policy; (ii) provide technical advice and support to lending and non-lending operations in the regional departments; (iii) process and administer regional technical assistance; (iv) contribute to the formulation and implementation for regional cooperation and integration; (v) conduct knowledge work.

Prior to ADB, he had abundant working experience on leading R&D projects, designing and managing thermal power plant mechanical engineering. His expertise includes domestic and global energy and environmental technologies, policies, and programs.

Mr. Xu received BS (2005) in Environmental Engineering from North China Electric Power University, and MS (2011) in Thermal Engineering from the Tsinghua University. He has more than 15 published academic papers, 2 authorized patents and 2 ministerial awards.

Bio

Jiten Ghelani is CEO at Promethean Power Systems, a pioneer in enabling access to sustainable cold chain in the world’s most challenging conditions. He holds an MBA from Emory University and a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan. Jiten previously led successful consulting projects in growth strategy and performance improvement for large Fortune 50 and small startup clients at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). He has over 15 years of experience leading companies and business units ranging in size from $1M to $30M.

Bio

Jiwan Acharya is working in Energy Division of South Asia Department of Asian Development Bank (ADB) as Principal Energy Specialist. He currently focuses on developing and implementing energy efficiency, renewable energy and other broader energy sector projects in India and Nepal. He is also serving as focal person for Regional Cooperation and Integration for Energy in South Asia. Prior to that, he was with Energy Sector Group Secretariat in the Sustainable Development and Climate Change Department of ADB since 1 October 2006 as Senior Energy Specialist. He is a key member of ADB's Energy Sector Group and Climate Change Team and was responsible for overseeing ADB's several key initiatives including Energy for All, and Low Carbon Technology Transfer, among others. Mr. Acharya served as ADB’s focal point for Clean Technical Fund (CTF) and Scaling Up Renewable Energy for Low Income Countries (SREP) under the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) as well as Sustainable Energy for All Initiative (SE4All).

Prior to joining ADB, Mr. Acharya was Senior Research Officer in Winrock International in Kathmandu, Nepal covering climate change, carbon financing, energy access and broader clean energy areas.

Mr. Acharya, who is a Nepalese national, has a Master of Arts in Economics, Master of Science in Energy Systems and Management and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering.

Bio

Dr. John Beirne joined the Asian Development Bank Institute as a Research Fellow in March 2019. Dr. Beirne’s research interests are centered on international finance and macroeconomics. Previously, he worked at the European Central Bank for over ten years mainly on research and analysis of global financial markets, commodities, financial stability, and global governance issues. He has also worked for a shorter period at the IMF, in academia, and as an economic consultant in the private sector. John’s recent research has examined the drivers of private investment in renewable energy in Asia, and the implications of climate change for macrofinancial stability (including a co-authored book entitled ‘Climate Change and Sovereign Risk’, which was published in October 2020). John has published over 25 articles in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of International Money and Finance, Economic Modelling, Review of International Economics, Emerging Markets Review, and China Economic Review. He holds a PhD in Economics from Brunel University in the United Kingdom.

Bio

John is Chief Risk Officer & General Counsel at Export Finance Australia where he has responsibility for the Risk, Legal and Operations function of the organisation. He also has responsibility for managing governance and regulatory compliance for the Export Finance Australia Board.

John has over 20 years’ experience as a senior executive and lawyer, focussed primarily in the finance and corporate sectors. Prior to joining Export Finance Australia, John held various senior executive positions at Westpac, Goodman Group and National Australia Bank in Sydney, London and New York, where he advised on a broad range transactional and corporate matters, including major financings, capital raisings and domestic and cross broader governance, regulatory and compliance issues.

Bio

Dr. John Murton is the UK government’s COP26 Envoy.

John was Her Majesty’s Ambassador to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and non-resident Ambassador to the Republic of the Congo from 2017 to 2019. Prior to this role, he was Deputy High Commissioner at the British High Commission in Nairobi and also served as the UK’s Permanent Representative to the UN in Kenya from April 2013 to August 2017.

Previously the UK’s High Commissioner to Mauritius and Ambassador to Madagascar, John has considerable professional experience in East and Southern Africa, having worked in Zimbabwe and researched his Ph.D. in Kenya, as well as having conducted research in Turkana.

John has previously served in Japan, at NATO Headquarters, and at the UK’s Foreign Ministry in London. His most recent role prior to Nairobi was as Head of the Foreign Ministry department dealing with the UK’s relations with East and South East Asia and Australasia.

Bio

PH.D, M.Sc., Bs.C. energy engineering, M.Sc. economics, MBA

I have developed his professional carrier as Engineer, Consultant and Professor on energy, renewable energy with a special focus on solar energy. I have worked in international cooperation since 1999.

I have led complex, multicultural solar projects in developing countries, teams of national and international experts in: Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Chile, China, Egypt, India Jordan, Peru, Vietnam, Uzbekistan and, Turkmenistan for IFIs, ADB, World Bank, IADB and KfW. Leading projects with individual budgets over 2 million € and more than 20 consultants. I have participated in roadmaps for solar energy development, NAMAS, CSP and PV power plants (large scale, BIPV and rural electrification) projects