Speakers
Nic Crowe
Helen Fitzgerald CEng MIGEM
Eva Hennig
Mike Johnson MA MinstP CPhys
Sayda Lees-Manning
Julian Leslie
Karl Simons OBE
Dr Navdeep Singh Eng D
Dr Catharine Skinner
Nic’s role with Grissan sees him identifying routes to significantly scale-up biomethane’s role in the UK energy system.
Prior to joining Grissan, Nic was a senior civil servant with roles in a number of key Government Departments. This included time leading the Renewable Heat Incentive’s reform agenda where he developed and implemented a number of policies designed to increase biomethane deployment.
Eva has been with Thüga AG since 1989 in various positions and since 2019 as Head of the Brussels Office.
The Thüga Group constitutes the largest alliance of nearly 100 municipal utilities in Germany with activities in the gas, electricity, district heating and water sectors, and various sectors. Eva is active in all areas related to the decarbonisation of local gas and district heating systems with renewable and low-carbon gases. She also has a special interest in the reduction of methan emissions.
Since 2012 Eva has been chair on the Eurogas Distribution Committee, representing the interest of gas DSOs and Co-covenor of the Stakeholder Reference Group for the TYNDP scenarios.
Mike is VP Senior Principal Consultant within DNV Spadeadam and has over 46 years’ experience in safety, risk and reliability studies, originally joining British Gas Research & Development, now part of DNV. He provides technical governance for a range of experimental projects, including studies of the hazards associated with the transition to widespread use of hydrogen. He has also delivered training on major accident hazards for over a decade. He is currently providing technical support to The Department of Energy Security and Net Zero on their hydrogen for clean heat project.
Mike has been a member of the DNV explosion investigation team since 1984, having investigated over 60 explosion incidents. He has provided expert support in relation to several major incidents including, most notably, the major explosion and fire at Buncefield in the UK in 2005.
Sayda has been working within IGEM’s Technical & Policy team for five years, supporting the development of IGEM’s policy voice and leading on the production of policy papers and consultation responses.
In that time, Sayda led on the creation of IGEM’s Hydrogen Knowledge Centre and continues to support projects that share research and communicate the important role that low carbon gases can play in the UK’s transition to net zero. More recently, Sayda is supporting efforts to more accurately reflect the current and future role of gas in the school curriculum and teacher resources.
35 years experience includes:
Nav is a Principal Engineer and the Materials Lead at Progressive Energy, working on the development and roll-out of blended hydrogen. He has been instrumental in developing this technology from a 1-page idea into a £23m project called HyDeploy. HyDeploy delivered two successful public trials serving almost 1,000 domestic and commercial customers over a period of 24 months, including two successful safety case exemptions to GSMR, enabling 20% hydrogen injection into the distribution network.
Nav first entered the gas industry 10 years ago as a graduate with the Future Energy Scenarios team at National Grid, developing from here into Cadent’s Future Role of Gas programme, finishing with a stint as an Operations Manager. Prior to the gas industry, Nav completed his master’s degree in aerospace with Rolls-Royce followed by a PhD with E.ON.
Dr Catharine Skinner has 19 years experience working in the energy industry. She currently leads the customer insight team at Cadent, as part of the strategy and regulation directorate.
Prior to joining Cadent, Catharine held positions at British Gas, in heating, smart metering and connected homes and EON Germany, working on residential heating, solar PV and battery solutions across eight European countries. All roles have required a deep understanding of customers to develop products, digital platforms, business strategy and cultural transformation that create market impact.
Most recently she has led a deep dive into the cost of living crisis, by following key consumer trends and a study to look at net zero change across Europe.