2ND ANNUAL

Chas is Operations Director at Peritus International, a specialist subsea engineering consultancy. He has experience with a wide range of subsea cable projects covering both offshore wind and oil and gas. He is also experienced in subsea pipeline design, having been involved in the design of some of the world’s deepest pipelines at over 3000m.  He holds a Ph.D in Materials Science and a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. He is a Fellow of the institute of Marine Engineers.

Alex Gauntt is the Supply Chain Director of Cierco Energy, part of the Floventis joint venture developing floating wind projects globally. The Floventis portfolio includes the Llŷr 1 & 2 floating wind projects situated around 40 km from the Pembrokeshire, Wales coast and the CADEMO floating wind project off West Coast USA. The Llŷr projects were awarded lease options by the UK’s Crown Estate in 2021 and will be fully operational before 2030. Having spent the best part of 20 years in the offshore & onshore renewable energy sectors, with over a decade experience in the offshore wind subsea cable supply-chain, Alex joined Cierco in 2021 to explore exciting new opportunities to unlock supply-chain innovations and add value for fixed & floating wind projects.”

Daniele Caruso is the Project Director for the BlueFloat-Nadara JV across the Italian project portfolio.

Daniele has nearly 20 years of experience in marine and offshore industries and prior to joining BlueFloat Energy he was responsible for the Italy Country management as well as leading the cables engineering team at in Consultancy space based in London (UK). He served as Country Manager and Head of Cables with responsibility for delivering various scopes in floating wind projects ranging from the development of Cable consultancy services and business development strategy for multiple early development floating wind farms in Italy and worldwide, to Directing the delivery of several floating offshore wind projects in Italy at pre-EIA stage. Previously, Daniele worked for Prysmian Group, an EPCI contractor based in Milan, as Offshore Installation Manager responsible for the Installation of several submarine HV power cables across Europe.

Mareike Leimeister is an Offshore Wind and Renewable Energies Marine Structures Engineer with special interest in floating offshore renewable energy systems. She studied Renewable Energies (B.Sc.) at Stuttgart University, holds M.Sc. (Hons) in both Offshore Engineering (from TU Delft) and Technology – Wind Energy (from NTNU), and graduated in 2020 from the Engineering Doctorate Program at the Renewable Energy Marine Structures (REMS) Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) at University of Strathclyde in UK. She wrote her EngD thesis about reliability-based optimization of floating wind turbine support structures. Since 2017, she is a research associate at Fraunhofer Institute for Wind Energy Systems IWES in the group global turbine dynamics and both coordinates and works on joint research projects, such as AFLOWT on a floating demonstrator.

Jesper is appointed as, Head of Sales and Business Development at Stiesdal Offshore, since February 2022.

Prior to that he was Head of Offshore BoP Innovations within Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy. Since 2012 responsible for future oriented technologies for tomorrows Offshore Wind Farms within Electrical as well as Civil balance of plant areas and offshore logistics solutions. Both Floating and Fixed bottom foundations were his responsibilities.

Before that he was Head of Offshore Technologies within the Technology and Innovation area.

He graduated as an Electrical Engineer from Aarhus Technical College in 1991.  He joined Siemens Gamesa (Bonus Energy) as Project Manager in 2001 and was appointed Senior Proposal Manager in 2005. As Offshore Sales Manager he has been responsible for negotiating contracts for large offshore wind farms, including Greater Gabbard. In 2008 he was appointed head of Offshore Technology and in 2009 he was appointed Director for Offshore Engineering.

Ricardo is an Engineer Geologist with over sixteen years of technical management and consulting experience in the field of geosciences applied to engineering, both onshore and offshore. Particularly in the Offshore Wind Industry, Ricardo gained experience in the full life cycle, of both Fixed bottom and Floating projects, having been involved in the tender preparation, development, consenting, construction, and operation of approximately 6.5 GW of Offshore Wind projects, in 9 Countries, across Europe, North-America and Asia.”

David Carrascosa has a Master in Civil Engineering from the University of Cantabria, Spain. He started his professional career as a structural engineer with a strong focus on structural dynamics. In 2014, he joined Saitec as Offshore Engineer becoming later the Head of the Offshore Wind Department. In 2016, David was appointed Chief Technology Officer at Saitec Offshore Technologies, the Floating Offshore Wind dedicated spin-off from Saitec’s Group. From June 2021, David holds the position of Director of Operations being part of the Board of Directors of the company.

Clément is a founder of Green Giraffe and heads the London office, which he created in 2011 and returned to after heading the Paris office in 2017-2019 He coordinates Green Giraffe’s efforts in floating offshore wind and has led multiple transactions in offshore and onshore wind, both on the equity and debt side. He led the Walney offshore wind debt financing (367 MW, UK, 2012) and managed the Walkyrie onshore wind portfolio sale (50 MW, France, 2015), the Rentel offshore wind senior and mezzanine debt raising (309 MW, Belgium, 2016), and the Alizé onshore wind portfolio sale (71 MW, France, 2017). Most recently, Clément closed four development funding transactions in floating offshore wind in California (700 MW, 2018), Hawaii (500 MW, 2018), South Korea (>500 MW, 2019) and Blue Gem (380 MW, UK, 2020) He developed Green Giraffe’s offtake advisory expertise and supervised the sourcing of all its European RE electricity for a large international corporation Before founding Green Giraffe, Clément worked at Dexia in Paris in 2008-10 within the project finance team. He also spent a year in Beijing at AFD in 2006-07 He graduated from Ecole des Ponts ParisTech and holds an MSc in project finance from Université Paris X

Sybille has over 19 year experience in the energy sector. In her current position in the Power and Renewables Industry Group, she works with M&A, ECM, infrastructure finance and IB teams. She is focusing on emerging technologies in the energy sector such as storage,  hydrogen and is leading Natixis IB activities in the  floating offshore wind and bioenergy sectors.

Sybille graduated from HEC Paris

Matt is Celtic Sea Power’s Chief Operations Officer. He is playing a leading role alongside key partners in positioning, formulating, and delivering the strategy for the future of Floating Offshore Wind and the marine sector in Cornwall and Isles of Scilly. He is an experienced commercial and operational leader with over 30 years’ experience across a range of sectors, but predominately in the Marine industry. Following an early career as a Merchant Navy Deck Officer his roles have covered Public Sector economic growth, Marine Operations/Marine Technology/ Marine Renewable Energy, Port Management, Marine Leisure, Shipping and Commercial Services.

Elspeth joined the Scottish Fishermen's Federation as Chief Executive in August 2019, following a career in the public sector. Before joining SFF, Elspeth spent four years as deputy Chief Executive at Food Standards Scotland, where she led its work on Scotland’s strategy and policy for food safety and standards, having spent the preceding 14 years in a range of roles with the UK’s Food Standards Agency in Scotland and London. Elspeth is a science graduate of Stirling and Aberdeen universities and started her working life at what is now the Marine Scotland Science laboratory in Aberdeen.

Sara Xoubanova is a Principal Consultant at Brown and May Marine Ltd. She has over 15 years’ experience in the provision of technical advice in relation to offshore wind developments and their potential interactions with commercial fishing and marine ecology. Throughout her career she has been involved in over 30 offshore wind farm projects including both, fixed bottom and floating technologies.

Øyvind Iversen is graduated from University of Newcastle Upon Tyne in 1996 and since 97 worked at Nexans and participated in qualification of dynamic cable as well as qualification of insulation systems and its materials for specific applications as for dynamic cables. The experience from field service of such cables are fundamental for the designs of cables now being considered for the offshore wind industry.

Thomas joined Barclays in 2009 in the EMEA Power, Utilities & Infrastructure team and has more than 25 years of investment banking work experience with Barclays, Citi and CA Investmentbank. He holds a Masters degree in Technical Mathematics from Vienna University of Technology and is a CFA charterholder. Thomas is leading Barclays’ coverage of a number of large European utilities and advises on European M&A and capital raises in the sector including various projects in the gas transmission and distribution segment. Over the last two years he has also initiated a dialogue with developers and project companies on debt and equity capital raises in the hydrogen space

• More than 23 years of experience in O&G and Green industry specialized in project management, resourcing, bids, recruitment, technology and business development.
• Held various management positions within Moreld Apply, Wood, Subsea7 and ABB until the past years worked directly with offshore floating wind.

TBA

A native of the Netherlands, Aldert is currently the senior specialist for floating offshore wind technology with ESB and has been with the company for 2 years now, working on the engineering of FOW projects in ESB’s development portfolio. He started his career offshore and worked on the construction of a number of fixed offshore wind projects, and was captain for several years on anchor handling vessels. After 15 years at sea he switched to science, graduating with a Masters in Offshore Renewables and a PhD in Floating Offshore Wind at University College Cork. He worked at Ireland’s National Ocean Test Facility for 6 years, after which he joined ESB.

Dr.-Ing. Denis Matha has 13 years extensive experience in the field of Floating Offshore Wind Turbines in both technical and commercial aspects. Denis is Ramboll's Global Head of Floating Wind and leading Ramboll's engineering teams for floating wind. As an internationally renowned pioneer and expert in floating wind technology he has comprehensive holistic technical expertise of the floating wind system. He is involved in various floating wind consultancy projects as Proposal and Project Manager and/or Technical Expert. Denis Matha is the Secretary of the IEC project team PT61400-3-2 which is developing a technical specification for floating wind turbines. He holds a Ph.D. on the topic “Impact of Aerodynamics and Mooring System on Dynamic Response of Floating Wind Turbines”. He is author and co-author of over 35 scientific publications in the field of offshore floating wind. Field of expertise include holistic floating wind system knowledge, managing of teams, leadership, and coordinating and managing proposals, complimented by an extensive professional network in the floating wind market.

TBA

Christian has worked in the Global Wind team at EKF since 2013. He and the team are tasked with the execution of onshore and offshore wind project finance transactions, in support of Danish exports – chiefly those from Vestas and Siemens Gamesa. EKF’s track record of closed projects to date stands at in excess of 33GW. Since 2016, EKF turned its attention also to FOW, where Christian was responsible at the time for EKF’s involvement in Ocean Winds’ Windfloat Atlantic project off the coast of Portugal. More recently, Christian successfully led EKF’s project finance participation in Ocean Winds’ 30MW Golfe du Lion project, off the French Mediterranean cost, which closed in July 2022. Looking forward, EKF is well positioned to take on commercial scale FOW projects, with Christian leading the origination drive to this end.

Richard Ballantyne OBE - biog

Richard Ballantyne joined the British Ports Association in 2007 and became the Chief Executive in 2016.

Richard has in-depth expertise in ports, transport, trade and environmental policy matters as well as a wide experience of the legislative process around the UK. He is a champion of sustainable development and is also a passionate advocate of the value of the UK ports industry both to the regions in which they are based but also as national gateways.

He is a Director of Maritime UK, a Trustee of the Merchant Navy Welfare Board charity and was previously a Director of Port Skills and Safety Ltd.

Before joining the BPA Richard spent five years at a Westminster political consultancy and was previously an MP’s researcher in the House of Commons.

Richard was also awarded an OBE in the 2022 New Year’s Honours for his services to the maritime sector.

Stuart is an experienced Director & CEO with a 30-year track record in business and 15 years working in the offshore renewable energy sector in Scotland and the North Sea. Stuart’s renewables experience covers the whole TRL range from tank-scale testing of wave, tidal, and floating wind concepts through to pre- financial close technical due diligence and construction-monitoring of billion-euro offshore wind projects. He enjoys being part of, as well as managing, motivating, training, and driving productive and highly effective teams, particularly where this involves leading challenging and high profile engineering projects - a perfect skillset for developing EMEC’s new floating offshore wind test and demonstration site off Orkney!

Michael holds a Finance Master's from the London Business School, with 35 years of experience in insurance broking in London and Bermudian markets. Co-founded Lloyd’s Broker and Chartered Insurance Practitioner and drove the establishment of the first renewable energy underwriting unit at Lloyd’s, Ascot Renewco. Served as Commercial Director at SeaRoc, an offshore energy consultancy, and was Head of Financial Risk Mitigation for a UK Renewable Energy Centre affiliate. Presented to academia and industry on renewable energy project risks, and was on the former advisory committee of Wave Energy Scotland Ltd and on the Ocean Energy Forum finance steering committee. Authored and co-authored reports on the insurability of floating offshore wind and early-stage marine energy projects

Tim is the Director for Linear Assets and New Energies at The Crown Estate, with responsibilities for offshore power transmission networks prominent within his portfolio. His motivation is to help society plan and act to deliver Net Zero, a stronger natural environment, and thriving communities that live along our coasts. He is a Naval Architect by training, and started his career in the Royal Navy, where he now realises he had a valuable apprenticeship in the design and operation of safety and mission critical, multi-vector, islanded and complex power and energy systems. The UK in microcosm. In 2009, Tim was awarded a Panasonic Trust Fellowship by the Royal Academy of Engineering. Taking the opportunity to study a Masters in Sustainable Energy Systems at Edinburgh University, focussing his studies on marine renewables and power systems architecture. Tim was the Managing Director of Ocean Power Technologies in the UK and Europe, a leading wave energy technology developer. And later was a member of the interim executive team that established the Energy Systems Catapult - which helps him bring a ‚system wide‘ perspective to challenge of building an offshore energy system to help the UK reach Net Zero. Tim joined The Crown Estate in 2020. prior to taking up his current role, he led the design of TCE’s Offshore Wind Leasing Round 5 to bring up to 4.5GW of Floating Wind to the Celtic Sea.

Emmanuel Chanfreau, Lead Team of Project Engineering Managers for Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) projects worldwide at Shell

Emmanuel has now been for more than 12 years in Renewables Energies: first as Design & Construction Manager at EDF RE for the 500MW Fécamp bottom-fixed Offshore Wind Project, part of Round 1 in France. Then he joined Eolfi as CTO, more than 6 years ago to build FOW technical team supporting FOW projects and developments.

Now, he leads the team of technical managers ensuring engineering of ongoing 6.2 GW FOW projects and development funnel worldwide, bringing expertise and technical assurance.

He initially started in offshore Oil & Gas at Saipem in West Africa then shifted to Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) import terminals as Project Manager in several locations worldwide (Asia, America, Europe).

Emmanuel is graduated as Mechanical Engineer from Arts et Métiers Paristech.

Luisa is an analyst on the Wind team at BloombergNEF, ), a strategic research provider covering global commodity markets and the disruptive technologies driving the transition to a low-carbon economy. She covers offshore wind markets in Europe and performs research on technology, policy and cost drivers, with a particular focus on floating offshore wind.

Prior to her role at BNEF, Luisa worked as a Strategy Analyst for a floating offshore wind technology provider. Luisa holds a double MSc in Renewable Energy from KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Instituto Superior Tecnico.

Luke Eatough is a Senior Development and Consent Engineer at the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult and leads the Floating Offshore Wind (FOW) Centre of Excellence’s Environmental Interactions Strategic Programme.

Luke is responsible for coordinating a range of research projects and activities addressing development and consenting risks and opportunities for FOW farms.

Current project topics include FOW operational underwater noise, dynamic cable electromagnetic field emissions, fisheries access, and coexistence with other sea users.

Karolina has 10 years of experience in offshore wind farm development in different roles for utilities as well as consultants working on the global market for instance German, U.S. and Polish markets. She was responsible for portfolio development on the East and West Coasts of the U.S. She has extensive market insight, networks and experience in defining market-entry strategies and partnerships, including all aspects of early-stage project development. She has experience leading multi-functional teams during offshore wind auctions preparation. She led federal auction preparation for the last auction in Massachusetts in 2018 for a developer, and worked on the first “zero subsidy” offshore wind auction in Germany. She worked with a major U.S. utility on its 2.6 GW offshore wind project, focusing on technical concept development, construction and operation plan preparation, as well as building permit strategy. In her current role as Deputy Chief Development Manager at Simply Blue Group she is responsible for the floating offshore wind portfolio development globally. She has a power engineering degree from the Warsaw University of Technology, and speaks fluent English, German and Polish

 Chris Willow is Head of Floating Development at RWE Offshore and is working to shape the company into a market-leading floating wind player that can safely develop, build and operate cost-competitive, commercial-scale projects in strategic markets around the world. Current activities include gathering learning from our portfolio of demonstrators projects, including the TetraSpar Demonstrator and DemoSATH, running a multidisciplinary knowledge programme and supporting the development of a multi-gigawatt pipeline of projects around the world. He has worked in the offshore wind industry for 16 years

Marie joined EDF 12 years ago. After a PhD in Economics about The Emergence of Carbon Capture and Storage Techniques in the Power Sector, Marie has experimented several positions as a research engineer (technico-economic evaluation of different business cases involving blockchain, cost benefit analysis of a French smart grid demonstrator for the French DSO and Governmental Agency, etc). After 4 years of leading a project for the EDF Group’s Strategy Division on a wide range of topics – carbon neutrality, offshore wind etc.-, Marie has joined the UK R&D Centre in 09/2022, where she is now the Head of Renewables. She leads a 6.5 M€ research project on offshore wind for the EDF Group.

Will Laird is a Principal Renewable Energy Consultant in Wood’s wind analysis team in Glasgow, UK. Will has nine years’ experience in offshore wind measurement with lidar, including with Wood’s Galion scanning lidar. Will is currently involved with several floating offshore wind projects, in UK, Ireland and Asia, providing technical support for floating lidar and metocean measurement campaigns. Will is a member of the IEC TS 61400-50-4 committee for floating lidar and the IEA Wind Task 52 subgroup for scanning lidar. Will is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with experience in low-energy building design, wave energy technology development and wind energy projects. In addition to an undergraduate MEng in Mechanical Engineering, Will also holds a postgraduate MSc in Offshore Renewable Energy

Charlotte works in the origination and structuring team for on- and offshore wind farms at KfW IPEX-Bank. The team has been involved in structuring and arranging financings for more than 30 offshore wind farms worldwide with a cumulative installed capacity of 13 GW to date. Charlotte participated in the bank’s latest financings for offshore wind farms in France, Germany and the USA. She most recently worked on the financing of the 30MW floating offshore windfarm Les Éoliennes Flottantes du Golfe de Lion (EFGL), which successfully closed in spring 2022.

Georgios has 10 years of experience across the power & renewables sector, focusing on debt advisory, M&A and financing in the offshore wind space, new technologies and the energy transition sector, with a focus on floating offshore wind. Georgios has been involved in the financing of one of the first floating offshore wind projects been financed on non-recourse basis.

Vasilis is a Senior Consultant within the Market Studies at OWC and specialised in providing floating wind advisory and engineering services to Renewables developers, port owners, and other members of the maritime engineering community.

 He is principally engaged in conducting site identification and screening studies, and floating wind concept evaluation studies followed by high-level port assessments ensuring the identification of feasible floating wind locations in conjunction with the identification of the suitable port for assembly, integration, wet storage and tow-to-site activities

Louise Efthimiou is WFO’s Floating Offshore Wind Manager where she coordinates and supports the fruitful knowledge exchanges of WFO’s Floating Offshore Wind Committee.

Over the last four years, the Floating Wind Offshore Committee has grown into a genuinely collaborative forum where participants share on the key technology challenges and solutions for commercializing floating offshore wind, lending from various industry experiences mainly in the bottom-fixed wind and oil & gas sectors.

TBC

Senior Manager Floating Wind Aker Solutions, +15 years in the Offshore Wind Industry

Nicolas has worked in the energy and renewable sector since 2002. He has held various engineering and project management positions in large international and offshore projects. He has also co-founded Hympulse Energies in 2018 to accelerate the shift towards renewable energy. Nicolas joined OWC in 2022 as a Senior Engineer. At OWC, Nicolas held the position of Project Manager for Erebus Project. OWC was appointed Owner’s Engineer by Blue Gem Wind for the pre-FEED, FEED and pre-EPCI phase of the project located in the Celtic Sea. Nicolas brings his offshore experience in the development of floating wind projects where the logistics, transportation and installation are crucial topics. Nicolas has a strong background in subsea and marine operations, including mooring installation, anchoring, FPSO hook up, offshore lifting, pipe and cable laying and vessel towing. As Lead Installation Engineer, he was responsible for installation methodology and for the follow up of offshore operations. Later, he was involved in the several large tenders for FPSO’s turret and mooring system, where his responsibilities covered project cost estimation, technical package deliverables and risk assessment. At Hympulse Energies, he focused on hydrogen and solar photovoltaic projects opportunities in the renewable energy production, self-consumption and storage. He was responsible for the commercial activities, business development and partnerships. Nicolas has a wide international experience. He was involved in multicultural teams and projects located in West Africa, Brazil, Europe and Asia

Scott Davie is an Engineer at the ORE Catapult responsible for the delivery of projects within the Floating Offshore Wind Centre of Excellence (FOW CoE). Scott’s key areas of knowledge include dynamic cable systems, mooring systems and carbon footprinting. Prior to joining ORE Catapult, Scott worked as a design engineer, specialising in the design and analysis of protection and buoyancy ancillary equipment for subsea cables and pipelines.

Sonja is an Electronic and Electrical engineer with more than 30 years’ experience in the energy business, having spent the last 8 years within the renewables area.   Based out of the UK she was for three years Plant manager for a bottom fixed windfarm (Dudgeon - 402MW) and the world’s first floating windfarm (Hywind Scotland – 30MW). Based out of Norway she has led the renewable Strategy and Innovation for Equinor, she has been responsible for their Floating wind and led Floating wind project development. 

 Throughout her career Sonja has gained substantial experience within development, O&M and executive management, building extensive knowledge of the market and full value chain.  After 24 years at Equinor having led many teams, Sonja moved to Corio in 2023 as the Head of Floating Wind.