Didier Van Osselaer

Manager Energy and Process Industry
Port of Antwerp

Didier Van Osselaer is working for the Antwerp Port Authority since 2000. Before he was project leader for a well-known environmental consultant. He is head of the energy development dept. since 2008. His focus lies on ensuring sustainable energy for the port in the broadest sense: securing security of energy supply by supporting the Flemish and National policy makers in shaping and adequate energy policy, managing the port authority’s own energy investment projects as well as motivating the use of energy synergies within the port community.

Nico Van Dooren

Manager Energy and Process Industry
Port of Rotterdam Authority

As director Energy & Industry of the Port of Rotterdam, Nico van Dooren (1970) is commercial responsible for both existing accounts and business development in the field of Energy & Industry. This field consists of dry bulk, chemical industry, gas & power and pipelines. Within business development his focus is on efficiency and sustainable development. Nico also acts as managing director for two joint ventures of the Port of Rotterdam: MultiCore (together with Vopak) for lease of pipelines, and RC2 (together with german ARG) for transport by pipeline of ethylene. Nico van Dooren has a background in Strategic planning and Consultancy. Previous Nico has been responsible for the development of the long term strategy for the Port of Rotterdam and for spatial development of the land reclamation project Maasvlakte 2 of the Port of Rotterdam. Prior to his assignments at the Port of Rotterdam, he worked at Royal Haskoning as Director of an advisory group on environmental technology.

Sandra Capela

Leader of the R&D project for Hydrogen and Power to gas
CRIGEN

Research and Technology Direction
GDF Suez

Sandra Capela, Chemical Engineer and PhD on Environmental Catalysis. I’ve started my activities in 2008 in CRIGEN ( R&D Center of GDF SUEZ) as Research Engineer in charge of activities on catalytic processes. Since 2012 I am in charge of a project on Power to Gas that regroups all activities related to hydrogen and synthetic methane production from the valorization of decarbonated electricity overproduction.

Reinhold Achatz

Head of Corporate Function Technology, Innovation and Sustainability
Thyssen Krupp, Germany

Reinhold Achatz is Head of the Corporate Function Technology, Innovation and Sustainability at ThyssenKrupp AG in Essen, Germany. In this position he is responsible for ThyssenKrupp’s global innovation activities worldwide. He holds a degree in Electrical Engineering (Dipl. Ing.) from the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg (1979), a Ph.D. in Information Technology in Mechanical Engineering (Dr. Ing.), from the Technical University of Munich (2009) and was awarded an honorary advisory professorship from the Tsinghua University in Beijing, China (2010).

Philippe Dumas

Secretary General
European Geothermal Energy council

After a master in European Affairs in 1999, Philippe Dumas first worked in a European engineering company as representative in Brussels for EU affairs (2000-2007).

Firstly he was involved in geothermal energy with EGEC after which he started as project manager for European projects. He is author and co-author of several publications; frequent contributor to conferences, workshops and seminars; teacher at university of Marseille on European lobbying; active in a number of EU-funded research and promotion projects from 2000 until today.

Since September 2008, he is the EGEC Secretary general in Brussels managing the association: The European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC) is an international association, founded in May 1998 and based in the Renewable Energy House in Brussels, Belgium. EGEC unites more than 120 companies and organizations, from 22 European countries, working in the geothermal field in Europe. The main goal of EGEC is to foster market development for geothermal energy and to work for improvement of business conditions in Europe.

Victor van Heekeren

Chariman Dutch Geothermy Platform

Victor van Heekeren is chairman of the Dutch Geothermal Platform. He founded the Dutch Stichting (Foundation) Platform Geothermie (SPG) in the context of a public/private initiative to develop deep geothermal energy activities in the Netherlands. He subsequently coordinated the SPG activities from the start in 2002. The objective of SPG is to advance the implementation of (deep) geothermal energy projects by transfer of knowledge, initiating and coaching local and regional projects, the development of a national policy framework (for geothermal energy) and participating in studies.
Victor van Heekeren represents the Dutch Geothermal Community to the Dutch Government and international organisations as European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC) and International Geothermal Association (IGA) and is member of the EGEC Working Group on Policy and various National Committees in the field of deep geothermal energy.

Furthermore, he is director of Van Heekeren & Frima Management Consultants since 1988. In the period 1985 – 1988 he worked as senior consultant for Van Dien + Co Accountants (nowadays merged into Price¬water¬house¬Coopers). In 1977 – 1985 he worked for the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs, the last years for the Energy Efficiency & Renewables Division. In 1949 he graduated at Leiden University (Chemistry).

Jonas Cognell

Senior programme manager, former director of renewable electricity
Göteborg Energi

Jonas Cognell is now a Senior Program Manager and Assisting Coordinator for the Celsius Project . Prior Jonas has been working since 2008 as Director of Renewable Electricity at Göteborg Energi. He was earlier responsible for the AMR (Automatic Meter Reading) services for District Heating, District Cooling, and Gas and Electricity and prior to that he managed with electricity contracts and portfolios for large customers. Jonas has a Master´s Degree in Electrical Engineering.(M.Sc.EE).

Ben Laenen

VITO, Belgium

Ben Laenen, senior expert, geologist: Graduated as a geologist in 1992 and obtained a PhD in Sciences - Geology in 1997 at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium). After his PhD, he worked as a post-Doc at the University of Köln (Germany). In 2000, Ben Laenen joined VITO as junior researcher in the Raw Materials group. At that time he mainly worked on GIS related project, data management and 3D modeling of the subsurface. In 2006, Ben Laenen became project leader of the Resources group. He planned and coordinated several projects in the fields of geological exploration, gas- and CO2-storage, the use of old abandonned mines for energy storeage and geothermal energy extraction. In 2009, he was promoted to Research Coordinator. In this function he identifies strategic research topics and initiates new research programmes in the fields of renewable and unconventional geo-energy resources, the exploration of the deep subsurface and the development of new processing and modeling tools to assess the potential of geo-resources.

Geert De Meyer

VITO, Belgium

After his master's degree in environmental sciences and technologies at Ghent University, he first worked as head of the environmental department of the employers' organization Fedustria. He was responsible for the management of specific environmental files of the members and did a lot of lobby work within cabinets and administrations.

In 1999 he saw the opportunity to start at VITO as a project engineer of EMIS, an intelligent information platform on environmental and energy issues with a strong focus on law and technology.

In 2006, he promoted to Director of MIP or the Environmental Energy Technology Innovation Platform. He was as Director responsible for managing an annual portfolio of 5 million EURO to stimulate eco-innovation in Flanders.

Since 2013 he found internally a new challenge: Business Developer Deep Geothermal Energy. In this capacity, he pulls the cart to introduce deep geothermal energy in Flanders.

Niels Bjarne K. Rasmussen

Danish Gas Technology Centre, Denmark

Danish Gas Technology Centre (DGC) is a public limited company owned by the Danish gas companies and established in 1988. DGC is a technological consultancy and development company. DGC’s main focus area is utilization of natural gas and other energy gases (biogas, gasification and bio-SNG etc.). In 2009 DGC and the Danish gas companies started a new gasification strategy with the aim of introducing bio-SNG based on thermal gasification in the Danish natural gas grid in parallel to upgraded biogas. DGC participates in Danish and international research projects, thereby continually updating its knowledge and methods.

Niels Bjarne K. Rasmussen earned his PhD from the Technical University of Denmark in CFD and thermodynamics. For many years he has been manager of CFD activities at DGC and manager of several research and development projects. With the new strategy he became manager of sustainable energy activities at DGC, including hydrogen, biogas and other renewable energy technologies. He is personally the leader of gasification activities at DGC.

Filip Smeets

General Manager of the Hydrogenics’ Belgian based On-Site Generation (OSG) business
Belgium

Filip Smeets is General Manager of the Hydrogenics’ Belgian based On-Site Generation (OSG) business, a world-wide leading provider of hydrogen generation products for industrial, hydrogen fueling and energy storage applications. He is part of the Task Force Power-to-Gas of the European Association for Storage of Energy (EASE), and the North Sea Power-to-Gas Platform. Mr. Smeets was previously a General Manager with Cabot Corporation, a global performance materials company, headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts USA. During his tenure at Cabot Corporation, Mr. Smeets held increasingly responsible positions in marketing and business leadership. Mr. Smeets received his Master's degree in Chemistry from the University of Antwerp.

Jonas Geerinck

Principal at the Brussels office of The Boston Consulting Group
Belgium

Jonas Geerinck is a Principal at the Brussels office of The Boston Consulting Group. Over the past 10 years, he has worked extensively with leading players in the energy industry to help them on their most pressing strategic, operational and regulatory issues. Jonas co-authored BCG's recent report "Shaping a Vision for Belgium’s Power Landscape" that describes Belgium’s options for its power landscape in light of Europe’s current context.