Energy UK Annual Conference Speakers

Jonathan became Ofgem’s Chief Executive Officer on 3 February 2020. This follows his previous appointment as our Executive Director for Systems and Networks in April 2018. 

He has wide-ranging energy sector experience, having led Electricity Market Reform as the Director for Energy Markets and Networks at DECC. Prior to this, he was Director of the Office of Climate Change, a cross-government strategy unit focussed on climate change and energy issues, where he led the development of the Climate Change Act. Earlier in his career, Jonathan was a senior adviser in the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. 

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics and Physics from Glasgow University and a Master’s degree in Economics from the University of Cambridge.

David Clifford is a registered British Sign Language/English interpreter with over 10 years of experience of providing access for the Deaf community and facilitating communication between Deaf and hearing people. He has worked in a variety of domains, both nationally and internationally, including legal, medical, conference, politics, education, and the performing arts.

Gillian Cooper has been Head of Energy Policy at Citizens Advice since November 2018. She leads the organisation’s work as the statutory energy consumer advocate and is also responsible for its energy advice strategy. 

Gillian has been a consumer advocate in the energy sector for 18 years, working in a number of watchdog organisations. 

Madeleine Gabriel works at innovation charity Nesta, leading its mission to significantly cut carbon emissions from UK homes by 2030. Her work focuses on making it easier and more affordable for households to switch to green heating and use energy more efficiently. Nesta works with governments, consumers and industry to develop, test and scale up ideas, policies and initiatives that can speed up the transition to greener homes. Nesta also invests in early stage businesses and builds new ventures that cut household carbon emissions.

Tom Glover, RWE’s UK Country Chair, and Chair of the RWE UK Renewables Boards, Tom is the most senior representative of RWE in the UK responsible for representing the company at the national level (UK, Wales and Scotland) and managing senior stakeholder engagement. Tom’s earlier roles as Executive Board member in each of RWE’s main operating companies provides him with the ability and insight to ensure that the company has a co-ordinated strategy and that RWE’s UK portfolio is well-positioned for net zero.

Tom has worked at RWE since 2003 and held a variety of senior commercial, trading and business development positions including Chief Commercial Officer of RWE Renewables, RWE Generation and RWE Supply & Trading. In his most recent role, Tom had responsibility for the commercial management and optimisation of RWE’s 10GW global renewable portfolio together with having responsibility for all power purchase agreements, M&A transactions, partnerships and the development of new markets. Prior to that, Tom was commercially responsible for RWE’s European conventional generation fleet, a 40GW portfolio of coal, biomass, gas, hydro, nuclear and other conventional power stations which produced around 200TWh per annum.

Silke Goldberg has over 17 years’ experience of working in the energy sector, advising clients in relation to complex energy and climate change issues internationally with a particular focus on renewable energy and the energy transition.

Silke also advises clients on all aspects of European and UK energy law and regulations, including unbundling issues, REMIT, and network codes. She has long standing experience in electricity and gas trading arrangements and has advised interconnectors and other transmission and distribution system operators. Silke was recently named Individual (London) of the Year for Projects, energy and natural resources by The Legal 500 UK 2020.

Michael is the Managing Director of EMEA & APAC at Sense, chartered with expanding the company’s global footprint into Europe, Middle East, and Asia Pacific. 

Michael brings over 20 years of experience in consulting, strategy and leadership in energy and climate tech.  Michael began his career with Accenture before serving as Head of Strategy for two of the UK’s largest energy retailers, British Gas and SSE. He then built and led SSE’s Smart Home business unit, “Home Intelligence”.  

Before joining Sense, Michael was Managing Director at Verv, a climate tech scale backed by British Gas and Innogy. Michael holds an MBA from the University of Warwick as well as a BA in History from Birmingham University.

David studied economics at King’s College Cambridge, and then worked at JP Morgan and Barclays de Zoete Wedd, before being appointed as Economics Adviser to the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Party in 1994.

David became Lib Dem Director of Policy and Research in 1997, and in 2001 he was elected as MP for Yeovil Constituency.

David served on the Treasury Select Committe, and then held a variety of Shadow posts – in the Treasury, Work and Pensions, and Education portfolios.

David was one of the negotiators of the 2010-2015 Coalition Agreement, and he served as Chief Secretary, Schools Minister and Cabinet Office Minister.

Since leaving Parliament in 2015, David has been Executive Chairman of the Education Policy Institute and Education Partnerships Group. David is an Adviser to GK Strategy and a Non Executive Director of Fable Data.

David holds a number of voluntary posts, for example as Chair of the Unlocked Graduates charity.

Alexandra Malone is Director of Corporate Affairs for SSE Renewables. She has global responsibility for policy development, stakeholder engagement, community and government relations, communications and brand. Previously she held several senior positions in Corporate Affairs and worked in SSE’s Energy Portfolio Management business. Prior to joining SSE in 2012, Alexandra worked for the Government of Canada focussing on energy and climate policy.

Anne-Marie Marray has been a qualified British Sign Language/English Interpreter since completing the University of Leeds MA Interpreting course in 2008.  She loves her work connecting with the Deaf and Hearing worlds, interpreting in spaces both personal and delicate such as medical appointments and operations, social services, weddings and births and end of life care.   

She also finds working with students in higher and further education an interesting and important part of her career. She is proud that she has the opportunity to be a part of a team that is working towards greater equality and access for Deaf and Hard of Hearing students and that her career has led her to ensure access to the larger stages of politics, campaigning and protesting, arts and culture.   Interpreting demands constantly learning and developing one’s professional and personal skill, aspects that Anne-Marie embraces.

Ed Miliband is MP for Doncaster North and Shadow Secretary of State of Climate Change and Net Zero. Ed has served as Minister for the Cabinet Office under Gordon Brown in 2007 and then as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change from 2008 to 2010. In this role, Ed oversaw the introduction of the Climate Change Act 2008.

Zoe Morrissey is General Counsel and a Board Director of the Electricity System Operator. She is also responsible for network competition.

Zoe is an experienced energy and regulatory lawyer having spent over 10 years advising a number of the UK National Grid business units, the last 4 years of which have been supporting the Electricity System Operator. Prior to that she worked at Ofwat as a legal advisor and in 2008 qualified as a solicitor in private practice specialising in competition and procurement law.

After a career spanning over 20 years working for major international organisations, Chris joined E.ON in 2014 where he undertook a number of leadership roles both in the UK and internationally before being appointed Executive Board Member (Chief People Officer) in 2018. Chris was appointed E.ON UK’s Chief Executive Officer in 2023. Chris believes that energy is central to people’s lives and that brings an incredible responsibility. There are real challenges – in the short-term making energy more affordable and longer term, the urgent need to decarbonise our economy. By tackling these challenges together, we have the opportunity to deliver for customers and make a difference to our society. Having achieved considerable success in business transformation, Chris has vast experience in developing the culture and diversity of businesses to reflect that of their market, deliver on ESG commitments and create social value. Chris attended both Exeter University and the University of Glamorgan

Alex O’Cinneide is CEO and Chair of the Investment Committee of Gore Street Capital, which he founded in 2015 as a global platform to facilitate the deployment of renewable energy solutions. The company manages London’s first listed energy storage fund, which holds assets worth over £556m across five energy markets in four countries.

Alex’s career has included senior roles at KPMG, Quorum European Partners, Kleinwort Benson, Paladin Capital Group and utility-scale renewables developer Masdar Capital, where he served as Head of Investments and General Manager for six years.

Alex also holds academic qualifications from Trinity College Dublin, the London Business School and the London School of Economics and Political Science, culminating in a PhD that analysed the effectiveness of renewable energy policy in the Republic of Ireland and the UK.

This expertise has allowed Alex to fulfil key advisory roles for UNICEF and on the boards of several organisations across the global clean energy sector. He is also a trustee of the London Irish Centre, a charity delivering welfare support and cultural events for the capital’s Irish community.

John Pettigrew is the Chief Executive Officer at National Grid plc, having been appointed in 2016.

John is passionate about leading National Grid to achieve its vision to be at the heart of a clean, fair and affordable energy future. One of his key achievements as CEO has been the strategic repositioning of the group towards electricity in the UK, enabling National Grid to play an even greater role in the journey to net zero.

John joined National Grid as a graduate trainee in 1991 and during his time at the company has held a variety of senior roles, including UK Director of Engineering, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President for the US Electricity Distribution & Generation business, Chief Operating Officer for UK Gas Distribution, and UK Chief Operating Officer, joining the National Grid Board as Executive Director, UK in 2014. 

John is a member of the Electric Power Research Institute Board and the Edison Electric Institute Executive Committee. He is also a Fellow of the Energy Institute and of the Institution of Energy and Technology.

He is the Senior Independent Director of Rentokil Initial plc.

John holds a BSc in Economics and an MSc in International Economics and Banking, and completed the Advanced Management Programme at Harvard Business School.

Emma Pinchbeck is the Chief Executive of Energy UK, a position that she has held since July 2020.  She is an expert in whole-economy decarbonisation and the energy transition. She also holds several board advisory positions. Emma has two children and shares childcare with her husband. She is passionate about efforts to improve diversity in the energy industry. 

From 2016-2020, she served as Deputy CEO of the trade body Renewable UK, in which role she also sat on the Board of Scottish Renewables. Prior to this, Emma was Head of Climate Change at WWFU-K. She has an MA from the University of Oxford.

Daisy Powell-Chandler leads the Energy + Environment practice of policy strategy consultancy Public First. Daisy has spent her career advising political parties, charities and global businesses. She worked for David Cameron in the run up to the 2010 election, before joining pollster Populus for a number of years, where she split her time between corporate reputation and electoral politics. Since joining Public First, she has delivered campaigns on carbon capture, corporate net zero plans and home insulation, alongside substantive policy work on everything from food security, to the energy bill support and the structure of the electricity grid in 2030. Daisy also hosts the reputation podcast Why Everybody Hates You.

Raj was appointed Interim Group General Counsel & Company Secretary of Centrica plc with effect from 1 October 2020, and subsequently appointed as the permanent Group General Counsel & Company Secretary on 3 March 2021.

Raj has overall responsibility for legal, regulatory, compliance and secretariat activities across the Group, the effective operating of Centrica plc’s Board and advising on key issues of corporate governance and compliance. Raj joined Centrica in 2014 as the Legal Director for Residential Energy, before becoming General Counsel for the UK and Ireland region in 2017. He has led legal, regulatory and compliance teams at Centrica in various formations across the UK and Ireland region or the Consumer division. Prior to joining Centrica, Raj spent 9 years at Vodafone, holding a number of senior in-house legal roles in the Group and UK legal functions. Raj started his career in private practice, qualifying as a solicitor at Slaughter and May in London and subsequently working for Freshfields in Brussels.

Raj became an EUK board member in March 2022.

Nicholas Winser brings extensive experience in energy systems, markets and regulation with a 30-year career in the energy sector which included as Chief Executive Officer of National Grid across UK and Europe, President of the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Electricity and CIGRE UK Chair. Nick has been the chairman of Energy Systems Catapult since 2015; he was appointed chairman of the Advisory Board for the Energy Revolution ISCF programme in 2018, and served on the Advisory Panel for the Cost of Energy Review in 2017. In July 2022 Nick was appointed as the government’s Electricity Networks Commissioner to accelerate the delivery of crucial electricity network infrastructure; he is also a member of the Net Zero Expert Group which advises the Secretary of State. Nick is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology, serving as its President in 2017/18.