Piero Ercoli, SNAM

Piero Ercoli was born in Viterbo in 1979 and since July 2022 has been heading the Decarbonization Projects unit at Snam. This unit gathers company's operations in hydrogen as well as carbon capture and storage. Piero joined Snam in July 2021 as Senior Vice President at the CFO and International Office.

Before Snam, he worked 16 years for the Eni Group where he held roles of increasing relevance. From 2005 to 2009 he covered different positions within the gas supply unit at Eni Gas & Power where, among other things, he managed the entry of this company onto the Russian market and the strategy to access the US. From 2010 to 2011 he worked at Eni CEO Office to later support Eni Trading & Shipping activities based in London as Head Power & Carbon Trading and Vice President Biofuel Trading later. In 2016 he returned to Milan where, until 2020, he was Senior Vice President Market Analytics, Strategy and Market Design of Eni Gas Powe & LNG Marketing. From 2020 to 2021 he was Head of LNG Portfolio Management within the Natural Resources at Eni.

With a University Degree in Economics, Management and Engineering at the Milan Polytechnic, he started his professional path in 2004 as business analyst at Busacca & Associati, a strategic advisory firm.

Bart Biebuyck

Bart Biebuyck is since May 2016 the Executive Director of the Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking (Clean Hydrogen JU), a public-private partnership aiming at facilitating the deployment of fuel cells and hydrogen technologies in Europe. Under his leadership, a strong emphasis on cooperation with cities and regions led to the creation of the Hydrogen Valleys concept and the formation of the European Hydrogen Valleys partnership. Dissemination of project results and building technology awareness among the European citizens became an important priority. As an engineer he understands the importance of basic research and is a key focusing point on the call preparations.

Before, Bart Biebuyck was at the Powertrain Division of Toyota Motor Europe where he held various management positions. His expertise in the automotive industry includes extensive knowledge related to the deployment of new technologies such as hydrogen and fuel cells in the European market. Bart was responsible for the European trials of the Toyota Fuel Cell Vehicle, which were conducted partly in the German Clean Energy Partnership (CEP) program. He also had the opportunity to develop and expand his expertise in Japan, where he lived and worked for two years.

In addition to his industrial experience, Bart has been politically active in his local town since 2006. In 2013 he became the vice president of the City Council, responsible, among others, for the local economy and education.

Bart’s term as the Executive Director of the Clean Hydrogen Joint Undertaking was extended for four years until May 2023.

Bart studied Automotive engineering at the HTS Autotechnieken in Arnhem, The Netherlands.

Dr. James Carton

Dr James Carton is Assistant Professor in Sustainable Energy in Dublin City University, Ireland. Dr Carton’s research focus is energy sustainability & green Hydrogen deployment through techno-economic modelling, Power-to-X and renewable energy storage research. Dr Carton is co-founder and chair of Hydrogen Ireland Association, academic advisor to Hydrogen Mobility Ireland & hydrogen expert to the United Nations-ECE as well as a World Energy Council FEL alumina. Dr Carton is Principal Lead of "HyLIGHT" a 25 industry partner & government of Ireland funded project with the Irish Marine Renewable Energy Institute (MaREI) to investigate the role of hydrogen to support decarbonisation on the island of Ireland

Leo Clancy, CEO, Enterprise Ireland

Leo Clancy is Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Ireland, the state agency that helps Irish companies to start, grow, innovate and win export sales in global markets.

Before being appointed as CEO of Enterprise Ireland, Leo was part of the Executive team at IDA Ireland, responsible for a number of areas including Technology and Business Services markets, IT and Marketing. In that role, Leo worked extensively with global technology and services companies invested in Ireland.

Prior to his public sector career, Leo spent 17 years in the telecommunications industry, including in a number of management, technical and engineering roles. He was part of the senior leadership team at e|net, a high-growth Irish wholesale broadband provider. He spent the early part of his career at Ericsson, working as an engineer and manager in Ireland and across Europe, the Middle East and Africa within global services on deployment of telecommunications networks.

Leo is a graduate of Electronic and Electrical Engineering from Dublin Institute of Technology. He grew up on a farm in County Tipperary and retains a strong fundamental understanding of the agricultural and food sector.

Mary Considine, Chief Executive Officer

 Mary is the Chief Executive Officer of Shannon Airport Group. The Group’s core businesses include Shannon International Airport and an extensive property portfolio across its Shannon Campus providing property solutions for FDI and indigenous companies. It also operates a number of key tourist attractions in the region through it’s subsidiary Shannon Heritage.

 The Group is focused on developing its aviation and property businesses with sustainability embedded in its operations. It does this by having an airport that provides vital air connectivity for business and tourism; creating property that make its region an attractive location to set up a business; and supporting the regions’ dynamic and growing cluster of aviation companies servicing the global aviation industry. The Group embraces smart and green technologies and its campus is home to a range of innovative companies developing solutions in the autonomous mobility space.

Mary was formerly Deputy CEO, as well as CFO/Company Secretary of the Group.  Mary is a qualified accountant and she has extensive experience in the areas of aviation, commercial and finance having previously held a number of senior roles within the Group including the role of Airport Director.

Mary is President of the Ibec Midwest Regional Committee and sits on IBEC’s national council and was recently appointed to the new Shannon Estuary Economic Taskforce. Mary is a member of the Governing Authority of Mary Immaculate College. Mary is a former director and past President of Shannon Chamber of Commerce.

Jim Dollard, ESB

Jim Dollard was appointed to the position of Executive Director, Generation & Trading in May 2018. Prior to this he held the position of Executive Director for Business Service Centre (BSC) and Electric Ireland.  Jim was previously the General Manager of Electric Ireland. An accountant, he began his career in ESB in 1992 and has held a number of senior management positions throughout the Group including Acting Group Financial Controller and Financial Controller ESB Energy International.

Karen Doyle, Gas Networks Ireland

Karen is Head of Business Development at Gas Networks Ireland and has responsibility for the development of renewable gas and provision of route to market for green hydrogen. Key focus is on decarbonisation of the gas network by 2050 through enablement of Hydrogen and Biomethane at scale to support the delivery of Ireland’s Net Zero targets. Karen has worked in the energy sector for over 17 years, having previously been Head of Energy and Infrastructure at Ulster Bank where she structured and delivered a number of landmark projects across the sector, including onshore wind (Ireland & UK), offshore development projects in UK, CCGT, biomass and waste to energy projects together with a number of portfolios of windfarm assets for both utility and fund clients.

Energy efficiency and sustainability are keen interests and educating and sharing knowledge with others outside the energy sector to help to monetize opportunities and bring a greater awareness of the benefits of renewable energy to the economy and general society is important to Karen. Karen has also lectured on Sustainable Energy Finance at DCU and is a Board Member of Wind Energy Ireland. She holds an MBS in Financial Services from UCD Smurfit Business School and a BComm International (German) from UCD.

Dr Ali Ekhtiari, Gas Networks Ireland

Dr Ali Ekhtiari has an outstanding track record of research and industry experience of more than 9 years in distribution/transmission gas networks. His works mainly focus on “Development of Gas Networks Incorporating Gas Quality for an Integrated Energy System”. He has established a prominent and internationally recognised specialist portfolio in modelling and optimising reliable, flexible and sustainable energy systems to transform national and international industrial and community priorities into competitive Research and Development projects. Based on this direction, the activities include building theory and applications for the optimisation of energy systems, also upgrading the current gas and power platforms to follow the EU’s energy pathway by considering supply/demand aspects of the interconnected energy systems. Dr Ekhtiari developed novel techno/economic approaches for gas network models with the inclusion of green hydrogen and biomethane to investigate how renewable gases can impact operational variables and how they can have minimum variation in the energy density of end-users. The recent achievements of his research on green hydrogen blends are the Industrial research award from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) and winning the UCD MacElroy research award. Dr Ekhtiari won the prestigious SFI Industry Fellowship award 2021 to work on “End User considerations in the transition to a green gas network” with Gas Networks Ireland.

John Finnegan

John Finnegan is a Principal Officer in the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications. He works in the Energy Division of the Department and is responsible for Energy Networks and Systems, including the development of an integrated hydrogen strategy.

John’s function is also responsible for policy oversight of the electricity grid and related issues such as storage policy and planning future reinforcement of the network. He has a background in finance and economics and was an economic consultant on infrastructure issues before joining the Civil Service

Ivan Guerra, SNAM

Ivan has an MSc in Petrology & Structural Geology from the University of Milan and a PhD in Structural Geology & Geochemistry jointly from University of Lausanne & ETH Zurich. His professional career started thirteen years ago in Scotland at Midland Valley Exploration as a Structural Geologist.

He then moved to Schlumberger where he worked across Italy, the US, Saudi Arabia & Kuwait progressing from Senior Structural Geologist to Geology & Integration Team Leader.

Ivan joined Snam in 2021 where he is now the Subsurface Lead in the Decarbonization Business Unit. His various assignments include contributing to the technical contents of CCSA UK, the European Council’s CCUS European Forum & UNI-CEN-ISO “Hydrogen”.

Lisa Fahy, BNM

Lisa joined Bord na Móna in September 2022 as the Strategy and Regulatory Affairs Manager. Over the past year she has led a review of the strategy for the Renewable Energy business which is focused on diversification and enabling the company to play a leading role in Ireland’s energy transition.  Lisa has extensive experience having worked in the energy industry for over 12 years, previously holding roles with CRU, SSE Renewables and the Marine Institute. Lisa holds an MSc in Renewable Energy Development from Heriot Watt University which she completed in Orkney, a BA in English and Geography from NUIG and a Professional Diploma in Leadership from the Irish Management Institute.

Matthew Knight, Siemens Energy

Matthew Knight is Head of Market and Government Affairs for Siemens Energy in the UK, where he spends his time making sense of the energy transition to net zero.

Matthew is a Chartered Engineer and a member of the IET Energy Policy Panel.  He is on the Government’s Hydrogen Expert Group.  He is a previous Board member of Renewable UK.  Past government engagement includes membership of the Renewables Advisory Board, Carbon Capture and Storage Taskforce and other groups.  Matthew has a background in electricity grid projects and offshore wind farms. 

Matthew is passionate about customers, safety, collaboration and being a human being at work. He likes telling stories and is curious about the way culture drives human behaviour and especially energy politics.

Paul Lennon, Gas Networks Ireland

Paul is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer and currently Head of Asset Management at Gas Networks Ireland (GNI).  He has over 20 years’ of asset management experience within the Oil, Gas and Water industries.  The Asset Management function in GNI are responsible for ensuring the safe, reliable and efficient lifecycle management of the gas network and for its strategic development.  It is GNI’s vision to become a net zero emission gas network by 2050 by transitioning to renewable gases such as biomethane and Hydrogen.  Paul and his team are currently performing a technical assessment of the gas network to determine what works will be required to ready the gas network for Hydrogen blends and ultimately up to 100% Hydrogen.

Eddie Lycklama à Nijeholt, Gasunie

Program manager of Gasunie’s Hydrogen backbone in which Hydrogen pipeline infrastructure is being developed in the industrial clusters, which will be connected to each other and across borders.

Has extensive experience as a project manager of natural gas infrastructural projects (LNG terminal, compressor stations and pipelines) and major IT projects (SCADA, GIS, SAP).

Besides project management experience has also worked as the CIO of Gasunie.

Muireann Lynch, Economic and Social Research Institute

Muireann Lynch is a Senior Research Officer in the Economic Analysis division of the Economic and Social Research Institute. Muireann holds a degree in Mathematics and Economics from Trinity College Dublin and a PhD from the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering in UCD. She has published numerous research articles in diverse areas of energy economics and has co-authored submissions to various public consultations and Government Departments. Muireann is Research Area Coordinator for Energy in the ESRI, a funded investigator with the MaREI SFI Research Centre and is Deputy Director of the SFI-funded NexSys Partnership. Muireann’s research interests include electricity market regulation, power system economics and renewable generation integration and her research methodologies include stochastic mathematical programming, optimisation and game theory. Her research is funded by the ESRI’s Energy Policy Research Centre, Science Foundation Ireland, the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland and the Gas Innovation Fund.

Cathal Marley, Gas Networks Ireland

Chief Executive Officer of Gas Networks Ireland and has over 20 years’ experience in the utilities and infrastructure sector, having previously worked in senior roles across the electricity industry with ESB.

He holds an MBA from Michael Smurfit Business School, UCD, is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants, a Board and Council Member of the IMI and is also a member of the DCU Governing Authority and Audit Committee.

His early career was spent with EY in Dublin and Eastern Europe.

Aodhan McAleer, ESB

Aodhán McAleer is the Hydrogen & Energy Storage Manager and leads ESB’s hydrogen team to deliver the Hydrogen Economy as a pathway to the decarbonisation of Heavy Transport, Industry, Power Generation and as an Energy Storage solution for our future net-zero energy system.  Aodhán is especially focused on delivering ESB’s strategy of Net-Zero by 2040 which will include solving the large scale energy storage challenge using sub-sea geological solutions, the development of clusters/hubs as part of Ireland’s Hydrogen Valley and the deployment of physical hydrogen infrastructure including electrolysers, refueling stations, fuel cells and other forms of zero-carbon dispatchable generation. Aodhán has held a wide range of roles in the ESB include Future Opportunities Manager, Generation Station I-SEM Manager, Operation Manager (Moneypoint), Plant Manager (Donegal Hydro Stations) and Energy Trading.

Paul McCormack, Conference Chair, Belfast Metropolitan College

A research & innovation specialist Paul has many years of extensive skills and experience in developing, leading and delivering international projects. As a Green Hydrogen proponent Paul is passionate about tackling the climate crisis, generating energy security and building resilient communities with hydrogen as the catalyst for change.

A founding member of Hydrogen Ireland Paul is currently leading several international projects including GenComm, H2AZEL and H2CAT, Paul is helping accelerate the EU clean hydrogen journey, develop innovative sector coupling opportunities, establish alternative pathways to net zero and stimulating industry to pivot to new green economy models

His vision is to rise to our energy challenges and use this opportunity to; ensure green hydrogen is commodified, build a stronger resilient global green economy, deliver global energy security and ensure a just transition for all.

Paul McGowan

Paul been a member of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) since 2013 and was Chair from February 2017 to February 2020. His lead responsibilities within CRU include water regulation and energy safety. Since 2000, Paul has held various roles in CRU across energy safety, all-island energy markets and gas regulation. Paul also previously worked in the offshore oil and gas, education and construction sectors. Paul is a Chartered Surveyor by profession with a PhD in the field of Construction/Engineering Management.

Garrett Monaghan, Pinsent Masons

Garrett Monaghan has consistently been one of the most active renewables and project finance lawyers in Ireland and works across several inter-related disciplines including energy, project finance, corporate/M&A and private equity. Garrett specialises in the development, acquisition, disposal and funding of energy and infrastructure assets. In addition to renewables and infrastructure, Garrett has worked on early phase hydrogen-related projects including offshore wind and green ammonia production. Garrett has also worked in-house within investment banking and energy trading (extending to gas, power, green certificates and commodities trading).

Liam Nolan, Gas Networks Ireland

Liam Nolan is Head of Technical Development and Technical Training at Gas Networks Ireland. In this role he is responsible for the management of the Gas Networks Ireland Gas Innovation Fund (GIF) and the newly established Network Innovation Centre located in Citywest Dublin.

Liam Nolan is the President of Marcogaz the technical association of the European gas industry, headquartered in Brussels with membership consisting of national gas industry associations from across Europe and other organisations with an interest in natural gas and renewable gases.

Liam Nolan is the Chair of the Gas Technical Standards Committee (GTSC) of the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAl), responsible for overseeing the national gas infrastructure and gas utilisation standardisation committees covering natural gas, renewable gas and hydrogen. A Mechanical Engineer, Liam has over 30 years' experience in the gas sector and has worked in many areas including gas distribution, network design, construction, operations, market opening, health & safety and innovation.

Liam Nolan is a board member of the Register of Gas Installers of Ireland (RGIl) and a past Chair of the Pipeline Industries Guild, Irish Branch. He also represents Ireland on the International Gas Union (IGU) Council.

Cian Ryan, EIH2

Cian is a Project Manager at EIH2, Irelands first green hydrogen production company. His focus is on green hydrogen projects and the role it plays in the decarbonisation of hard to abate energy sectors. Cian has in-depth knowledge of the requirements to deliver large scale green hydrogen projects such as Green Marlin, a proposed 4GW green fuels facility on Whiddy Island and assessing locations and conditions for the deployment of a 50MW electrolyser. A certified energy manager and PMP, Cian previously worked at Ervia and as a sustainable energy engineer, he looks forward to making Ireland’s hydrogen economy a reality.