Energy Storage in Emerging Markets: The Next Frontier

Daniel Wiedmer is Unit Head for Greater Mekong Region at the Asian Development Bank. He is responsible for executing loans, guarantees and equity investments for private sector infrastructure projects, and for managing ADB’s infrastructure finance team based in Bangkok. He covers the renewable energy, conventional energy, water, transportation, environment and telecommunications sectors. Previously, he covered investments and loans in financial institutions and private equity funds. Before joining ADB, he worked for SECO, Switzerland, where he made investments in financial institutions and funds in Africa. Prior to joining SECO, he worked for AXA Group. He received a Master of Science in Development Management from the London School of Economics and an MBA from Kent Business School. He is a CFA Charterholder.

Mafalda led the Climate Investment Funds from 2014 until July 2023. During her tenure, she oversaw hundreds of clean energy and climate resilience investments in 72 countries worldwide. The largest solar park in the world and South America’s first geothermal power plant are among the numerous projects realized under her leadership. Mafalda is now expanding the remit of the organization into new areas, which includes accelerating out of the coal and industry decarbonization phase. Committed to putting fairness and equality at the heart of climate finance, she has launched the Climate Investment Funds’ Just Transition Initiative to help achieve that aim.  

Mafalda previously held senior roles at the African Development Bank and the World Bank. A much sought-after speaker on climate finance, she has been quoted in Reuters, BBC World Service, The Economist, and the Financial Times, among many others.

Akshat Rathi is a senior reporter for Quartz in London. He has previously worked at The Economist and The Conversation. His writing has appeared in Nature, The Guardian and The Hindu. He has a PhD in chemistry from Oxford University and a BTech in chemical engineering from the Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai.

Amy Grace is global head of Cleantech Research at BloombergNEF. She oversees BNEF’s solar, wind, storage, and decentralized energy research divisions. Previously, Grace was head of North America Research at BloombergNEF where she led a team responsible for analysis of the North American power and gas sector. Prior to that, she was head of Wind Insight at BNEF, where she led research on the global wind sector.

Amy has spoken at numerous international conferences and been quoted extensively in the media.

She is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame’s Program of Liberal Studies, and holds a master’s degree from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs in energy and finance.

Gianmarco Zorloni is the first employee having joined Energy Vault after the founding members. He was involved in Corporate Finance as well as in Market and Commercial Valuation. In the last years he evaluated storage projects in the 5 continents and stimulated discussion with different utilities to enhance the understanding of the storage market. He has a solid academic background in corporate finance and assets valuation from University of St. Gallen and Columbia University.

Peter Mockel is a Principal Industry Specialist at the International Financial Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank Group.

He focuses on energy storage for emerging markets. He previously served as CTO with a Berlin-based smart electricity metering start-up, and has more than 10 years in telecommunications with Deutsche Telekom AG as VP Strategy Development and SVP R&D, and in consulting with Booz, Allen & Hamilton. He is the co-author of “Applied Technology and Innovation Management” (Springer 2010) and “Technological Trends in ICT” (Springer 2012). Peter holds a B.A. (Hons) and M.A. in Computer Science from Cambridge University, and an M.Sc. in Software Engineering from TU Aachen, Germany

Harsh joined CES in November 2014. He has been involved in providing consulting and market research services to utilities, OEMs, regulation makers and other clients of Customized Energy Solutions and India Energy Storage Alliance on energy storage, renewable energy and other power sector related emerging markets in India. Harsh has over ten years of experience in energy sector with a particular specialization in the areas of market research, process improvement and strategy consulting.

His research experience focuses area of Power Generation and T&D equipment, Power Sector Investments, Renewable Energy Development, Energy Storage Systems and Power Utilities Best Practices. He has also advised companies on the areas of Market Analysis and Forecasting, Organizational Development, Stakeholder Management.

Harsh holds a Masters of Business Administration in General Management from Leeds University Business School, United Kingdom; a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Visvesvaraya National Institute of Technology, Nagpur, India and Diploma in Management Consulting, certified by CMI, UK. He had a short stint as a Consulting Intern with a couple of small organizations in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Jonathan Walters is an energy economist with 30+ years of experience. He is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies and a consultant to the World Bank and other international agencies, focusing on energy transitions, disruptive technologies, and climate change mitigation. Mr. Walters was formerly a director in the World Bank and his responsibilities included energy policies and projects in Europe and Central Asia and the Middle East and North Africa, including large projects utilizing the Climate Investment Funds. He has also worked in East Asia, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. Mr. Walters has worked on most segments of the energy sector, and he has extensive experience in donor partnerships.

Mr. Walters is a graduate of the Universities of Oxford and London.

Dr. Christopher Kaminker is Head of Sustainable Investment Research & Strategy at Lombard Odier Investment Managers. He leads a team responsible for cross-asset sustainable investment research, strategy, economic analysis, data science and product development. He also oversees the firm’s active ownership and stewardship efforts.

Prior to Lombard Odier, he worked at SEB, a Nordic financial banking group, where he was head of sustainable finance research and a senior advisor in the merchant banking division. During his time in investment banking at SEB, Goldman Sachs and Socie´te´ Ge´ne´rale, he advised on and structured sustainability financing capital markets solutions for investors, corporates and sovereigns. Dr. Kaminker also spent 7 years as the lead economist and policy advisor for sustainable finance at the OECD. During his tenure, he represented the OECD as delegate to the G20 and Financial Stability Board. He is an author of over 30 publications on sustainable finance and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford and graduated from Columbia University.

Dr. Marcelino Madrigal, has twenty years of experience on government, academia, and international development banking on the areas of electricity markets and power systems planning, operations, and regulation.

At the Mexican government he has served in several leadership positions, including a solid carrier with the Mexican Energy Regulatory Commission (CRE) including as a Commissioners during the implementation of the groundbreaking 2013 energy reforms. At the commission he led many aspects of regulatory design in the oil, gas, and specially the electricity sector which transformed the energy industry in Mexico. He served also as the International Committee Chairman of the World Forum on Energy Regulation 2018, Vice president of the Ibero-American Association of Energy Regulators, and Chairman of the International Confederation of Energy Regulators’ working group on electricity.

He has worked over ten years on international development at the Interamerican Development Bank and the World Bank, where he served supporting government agencies, utilities and operators on policy, regulatory, market, project design, and knowledge dissemination on the electricity sector and across all continents. He has designed projects above US$6 billion dollars in value in the areas of renewable energy generation, cross border interconnections, control and market operator’s modernization.

Currently he a Principal Energy Specialist at the Interamerican Development Bank in Washington DC as its principal Energy Sector Specialists supporting regulatory modernization of Latin-American energy sectors and the electrification of transport. Dr. Madrigal graduated from the Morelia Technology Institute and received the degrees of Master of Science and PhD by the University of Waterloo, Canada. He has received several awards, among them, the Outstanding Young Power Engineering Award by the IEEE Power and Energy Society in 2006, and the membership of the Mexico National Researchers System. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE PES.

Giuseppe joined ENGIE Eps in late 2014, with the mission to drive ENGIE Eps’ strategy in the global energy market. He spent his entire career focusing on the energy sector: prior to founding Cautha, a Milan-based project development and advisory company active in the renewable energy space, Giuseppe spent ten years with Lehman Brothers in London, Milan and Rome, as an energy specialist. He was responsible for the utilities sector in southern Europe and coordinated the bank’s corporate finance activities in the European renewable energy field. Giuseppe is a lecturer at Politecnico di Milano, and a member of the board of the Ridef Master Course in renewable energy and energy efficiency. He holds a blog on energy matters on the Huffington Post, and is a contributor to Qualenergia, Staffetta Quotidiana and Quotidiano Energia.

Henrik Stiesdal is one of the pioneers of the modern wind industry. He built his first wind turbine in 1976 and in 1978 designed one of the first commercial wind turbines, licensed by Vestas in 1979. Stiesdal worked with Vestas until 1986 and joined Bonus Energy, later Siemens Wind Power in 1987. In 1988 he was appointed Technical Manager, and in 2000 Chief Technology Officer. He retired from Siemens at the end of 2014.

During his 40 years in the wind industry Stiesdal has worked with all aspects of wind turbine technology, including fundamental research, turbine design, manufacturing, sales, project implementation, service and quality management. He has been instrumental in the development of offshore wind power and was responsible for the turbine design and supply for the world’s first offshore wind farm in 1991, and for the world’s first floating offshore wind turbine in 2009. By the end of 2018, Stiesdal had been involved in the turbine design of more than half of the world’s cumulated offshore wind capacity.

After his retirement from Siemens Stiesdal has continued working on key technologies for climate change mitigation, including industrialized offshore wind turbine foundations, energy storage, and carbon-negative fuels.

Founded in 1912 with headquarters in Bethesda, Maryland, Lockheed Martin is a global security and aerospace company focused on the development of advanced technology systems. Lockheed Martin Energy is a commercial line of business within Lockheed Martin focused on delivering targeted, flexible, affordable and effective energy management solutions to customers all over the world. As a technology innovator with a 60-year legacy of engineering and designing advanced energy solutions, we approach all our technologies and products with a combination of premium technical expertise and flexible systems integration capabilities. Our solutions include long-duration energy storage, federal energy solutions, commercial and navy nuclear instrumentation and controls and Advance Conversion Technologies. The portfolio includes products and services across the energy value stream from Energy Efficiency to Flexible Energy, Energy storage and Generation.

Michael joined the company in September 1999 and has served in several roles over his tenure at Lockheed Martin. Michael has had responsibility for all LM Energy business capture, strategic planning and internal research and development expenditure in the UK and Europe since 2015.

Michael holds a BSc (hons) Mathematics degree from Sheffield University. He is married to Rose and has two sons, a nine-year-old called Oliver and a two-year-old named Ethan.

Rory McCarthy is a senior analyst with the Global Energy Storage team at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables, where he focuses on the Europe, Middle East and Africa storage markets.

He previously worked at an early-stage tech firm, developing grid-scale front-of- and behind-the-meter storage projects in the U.K. Prior to this, Rory worked at the U.K. energy regulator Ofgem focusing on policy and regulation for the grid edge and storage. He has over eight years of experience in the energy space along with a previous career in software systems and deployment. Rory holds a master’s degree in environmental technology and energy policy from Imperial College and an undergraduate degree in computation from the University of Manchester.

Luis Munuera leads power grid technology work at the Sustainability, Technology and Outlooks directorate of the IEA.

Within the technology team he develops scenarios, methodologies and policy-relevant advice on the impact of technological change and innovation on electricity systems.

He co-ordinates the IEA Smart Energy Systems roadmap and its work on large-scale power grid interconnection, is a co-author of the Energy Technology Perspectives series, Digitalisation and Energy and co-ordinates the IEA’s ongoing efforts mapping electricity access pathways.

Luis holds a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from Imperial College London, and has published 15 peer-reviewed papers on various issues around energy technology analysis and innovation.

He also holds an M.Sc. in Energy Policy and Environmental Technology from the same university, and an M.Sc. in natural sciences from Universidad Autonoma in Madrid and the University of Cambridge.

Josué Tanaka is the Managing Director responsible for the operational strategy and planning function of the EBRD and for leading the Bank’s energy efficiency and climate change activities.

Josué Tanaka joined the EBRD at its creation in 1991 to start its municipal and environmental infrastructure financing activity.

In 1993 he was appointed Country Director responsible over time for the Bank’s activities in Romania, Croatia, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Ukraine.

From 1998 to 2007, Mr Tanaka became Corporate Director responsible for strategy, planning and budgeting including coordination of the strategic planning function, formulation and monitoring of the annual business plan and budget, and for operational and strategic portfolio management analysis.

In 2006, he was appointed Corporate Director, Energy Efficiency and Climate Change, leading the EBRD climate change mitigation and adaptation financing activity including the formulation and implementation of the Sustainable Energy Initiative (SEI).

Prior to joining the Bank, Josué Tanaka worked at the World Bank where he was Special Assistant to the President. He worked in various positions on strategic planning, agricultural projects and forest conservation in Madagascar and on the development of the Environmental Programme for the Mediterranean.

A national of France and Brazil, Josué Tanaka graduated from Princeton University with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering and holds a Master of Science and PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Hassen has focused on renewable energy, clean technology and project financing for the past ten years, delivering over 250MW of operational solar and energy storage assets alongside developing extensive pipelines of future projects for grid connected, off-grid, island and micro-grid conditions. He co-founded ion Ventures with the objective of deploying flexible power solutions, capable of meeting energy demand now and through the continuing transition, with energy optimisation and storage central to this. By leveraging experience gained in the UK and Europe, ion Ventures supports the adoption of technology and commercial structures in regions where electrification is a priority, with particular interest in Southeast Asia. Hassen chairs the Singapore branch of the Energy Institute’s working sub-committee on Energy Optimisation and Storage, dedicated to supporting knowledge and delivery capabilities across the region.

Aida Sitdikova is Director Energy, Eurasia, Sustainable Infrastructure Group at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development where she heads a team covering a diverse group of transition countries with a focus on power utilities. Her team’s projects had a specific focus on energy and resource efficiency, renewables and energy infrastructure all underpinned by the Bank’s mandate of supporting transition to lower carbon economies and promoting private sector. Prior to joining the Bank in 2001 Ms Sitdikova worked in private equity. She holds the MBA degree from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management and a CFA designation.

Markus is Head of Policy and Regulation at the German Energy Storage Association. He is responsible for the application of energy storage in the industrial sector, digital transformation and EU affairs.

Markus has extensive expertise across the energy and the industrial sectors having worked in consultancies and for the trade association Economic Council in Berlin.

Markus has studied at Humboldt University Berlin, Technical University Berlin and the London of Economics and political science.He also holds a degree in social science and transport planning.

Chandra Govindarajalu leads the energy climate finance team which is responsible for mobilizing climate finance for the Energy and Extractives Practice at the World Bank working with global funds and bilateral funds including the Climate Investment Funds (CIF), the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and others  He also leads the global energy storage program and the coal transition programs at the Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP). He has over 20 years of experience working at the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) on renewable energy, energy storage, energy efficiency and energy access across 15 countries in South Asia, East Asia as well as Middle East and North Africa. Chandra holds a PhD in Energy and Environmental Policy from the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration, University of Delaware, Newark, Delaware.

Shrey is responsible for London Stock Exchange plc’s debt, structured finance and close-ended investment funds markets. At LSEG, Shrey has covered roles across Product Development, Regulatory Strategy & Government Relations, and was most recently Head of Strategic Development for LSE plc. He also represents LSEG at industry fora, such as the Advisory Council to the Green Bond Principles Executive Committee. During 2018-19, Shrey was seconded to International Finance Corporation as Financial Officer in Treasury & Syndications. He has previously worked at McKinsey and Co. He holds an MSc in Finance and Economics from the London School of Economics and a BSc (Hons) in Physics from University of Delhi.

Paul McCusker, Vice President at Fluence is responsible for Europe, Middle East and Africa regions.

Paul has diverse expertise across the Energy and Information Technology industries, having held leadership roles with AES Corp as Vice President Energy Storage EMEA, Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Europe and Asia, Vice President of Shared Services Europe and Mergers & Acquisitions Europe Solar.

Prior to AES, Paul worked with the SaonGroup in Dublin, Ireland where he was a founding member of a technology start up, Candidate Manager Ltd. Having initially led the development of the technology, he went on to establish and build the UK division becoming COO and then CEO.

Paul has an MBA from the Ulster Business School and is a BSc Agricultural Economics & Management graduate from Queens University Belfast.

Zoe has 15 years’ experience in international climate change policy and programming for the UK government, across areas including climate finance, international negotiations and decarbonisation policy. She is responsibility for oversight of £3bn+ development aid programmes through external partners. Since 2016 she has been Co-Chair of the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) Joint Committee, and represents the UK on the board of the Clean Technology Fund. She previously worked as an adviser on environmental policy areas including sustainable consumption and water pollution, at development programmes in Kenya and Honduras and as a business analyst in the private sector.

Bringing Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) and Thermal Energy Storage from scientific R&D to Commercial Scale up.

Since October 2018 Michael is Senior Advisor for the German Aerospace Center (DLR) in the field of development of thermal energy storage for Carnot Batteries. He advises Malta Inc in the development of pumped heat electricity storage and AAGES in the development of renewable power projects.

From 2001 until 2018 Michael was head of international solar project development first at German CSP developer Flagsol and later at Spanish developer and constructor Abengoa and lead solar thermal electric and PV greenfield project developments in Algeria, Australia, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, India, Israel, Italy, Jordan, Morocco, South Africa and UAE, among them

• 2x50MW Andasol 1 and Andasol 2 – world´s first plants with molten salt thermal storage
• 100 MW Shams parabolic trough plant in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates;
• 100 MW Kaxu parabolic trough plant with 3h molten salt thermal storage in South Africa,
• 50 MW Khi superheated steam solar tower with 3h steam storage in South Africa
• 100 MW Xina parabolic trough plant with 5.5h molten salt storage in South Africa

Michael served as the Executive Secretary of the IEA SolarPACES Implementing Agreement (www.solarpaces.org) 2000 and 2008. Since November 2007 he has been elected Vice-President of the European Solar Thermal Electricity Association ESTELA (www.estelasolar.eu). He is author or co-author of more than 60 publications in the mentioned fields, including technical books, journals, conference papers, studies and reports.

Stephen Gifford joined the Faraday Institution in March 2019. His focus is on making the organisation the go-to place for insights into the technological, economic and social benefits of batteries and electrical energy storage. He is developing techno-economic models of supply, demand and cost, covering both global and the UK markets. Stephen has over 25 years of economics experience, including as the Chief Economist at Grant Thornton, the Director of Economics at the CBI and as a senior economist at KPMG, Oxford Economics and the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. Prior to joining the Faraday Institution, Stephen was Head of Economic Regulation at the Civil Aviation Authority, where he focused on the regulation of Heathrow and Gatwick airports, and the development of the new runway at Heathrow. Stephen is currently a Commissioner in the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales.

Stephen brings particular skills and expertise in economic policy, transport economics, infrastructure, market assessment and the role of the public sector. He has a first-class degree in Economics from the University of Liverpool and a MSc in Econometrics and Mathematical Economics from the London School of Economics.

Dr Matthew Rowe is a global leading expert in Energy Storage, a Senior Consultant, and currently Head of Department for Energy Storage across Europe, the Middle East and Africa at DNV GL. Matthew is a Chartered Engineer and has a PhD in Energy Storage, he has published in internationally recognised energy journals, and often presents at academic and industrial conferences both locally and outside of the UK.

Matthew has worked on, and a lead, a variety of storage projects globally with key industry stakeholders such as System Operators, Regulators, Governments, Utilities and a variety of Investors, developers, suppliers and DNOs. As well as leading the energy storage department for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at DNV GL, he is also the lead technical expert for ESKOM in South Africa on the World Bank funded roll out of 1.4 GWh of Battery Energy Storage Systems.