100% RHC Event

Dave has worked in industrial cooling since 1996, first in compressor R&D for Howden Compressors in his native Glasgow, then for Star Refrigeration Ltd. Early projects included ice rinks, cold storage, high performance data centres as well as process cooling for petrochemical facilities. In 2009 after a period at food freezer experts, Starfrost, Dave moved back to Star as Director of Innovation. Within months a path into Renewable Heating was plotted for the business and following several successes including Drammen Fjernwarme’s 90C ammonia district heat plant, the business established Star Renewable Energy to focus on “clean heat”. A former director of Scottish Renewables and current Chair of CEED SCOTLAND, a business to business knowledge sharing hub, Dave is current Chair of the RHC Platform as it drives forward a mission for 100%RHC by 2050.

He took up his current position on 1 January 2016. The current directorate covers international and EU climate strategy and economic assessment and evaluation, EU domestic legislative initiatives related to households, road transport (including CO2 emission standards for cars, vans and trucks), waste, agriculture and forestry, carbon capture, use and storage, various financing instruments for EU innovation, monitoring, reporting, and verification. Since 1 September 2003, he was first Head of Unit, and since 2009 Director focussing on international and domestic climate strategy, international climate change negotiations, climate finance, land use and monitoring and reporting. During this time he was one of the EU lead negotiators, Vice-President of the UNFCCC Bureau in 2010-2012, and also co-chair of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) in 2013/14 preparing the Paris Agreement.

Marco Calderoni graduated in 2003 in Mechanical Engineering with expertise in energy at Politecnico di Milano and has been working as a researcher ever since 2003. He has always been committed to the sector of renewable energies, in particular thermal renewables. Since 2012 he has also been involved in district heating, as an ideal energy vector for the collection of locally available renewable sources. He was employed for six years at Ambiente Italia s.r.l., where he worked mainly on solar thermal, from a technological perspective and in dissemination and transfer of knowledge between European countries. From 2009 to 2018 he was a researcher at the Department of Energy of Politecnico di Milano, where he was responsible for the research group on solar thermal and district heating. He has also enlarged his knowledge with projects related to heat pumps, both electricity and heat driven.

Dominik Rutz is Head of the Bioenergy & Bioeconomy Unit at WIP Renewable Energies. Since 2005, he is an Expert at WIP on renewable energies and more specifically on bioenergy. He graduated in Environmental Science as well as in Consumer Science. His main field of experience includes the technical and non-technical analysis of bioenergy and its supporting policies worldwide. Mr. Rutz coordinated and contributed as scientific partner to many research and market support projects in the field of renewable energies. He is editor of two books published by Springer: ” Socio-Economic Impacts of Bioenergy Production” and “Bioenergy for Sustainable Development in Africa”. He is author of many publications and handbooks. Mr Rutz is involved in the RHC ETIP, where he is currently chair of the Biomass Technology Panel and vice-president of the platform.

Paola Mazzucchelli has been EUREC’s Secretary General since April 2008. She is in charge with the day-to-day management of the association, including the strategic definition of its priorities related to renewable energy research and education. She has extensive experience in managing European co-funded projects, since she has been working on energy-research related projects since 2002. She coordinated the KnowRES project from 2014 to 2016. Since 2016, she is coordinating the secretariat of the European Technology and Innovation Platform on Renewable Heating and Cooling. She is a member of the International Association of Facilitators, and has in-depth expertise in leading strategy meetings and workshops for the definition of research priorities in several renewable energy technologies.

Mr Hannes Tuohiniitty is currently the president of Bioenergy Europe. He has been working as Sector Manager for Bioenergy Association of Finland and CEO of Finnish Pellet Energy Association since 2008. Additionally, he has several position of trusts among others chairing Finnish bioboiler energy efficiency steering committee. He has Bachelor’s Degreeion Agriculture and studying Master’s on bioeconomy.

Antti is a leader, with wide perspective to energy, research and implementation of technologies. He is expert in techno-economic assessment especially related to bioenergy, biofuels use and conversion, biorefinery and carbon capture and storage technologies in addition to energy strategy assessments and roadmaps. He has wide knowledge on energy and system evaluation of various carbon neutral energy and bioeconomy related concepts backed up with know-how on energy related policies and strategies. In addition to offering development and project acquisition, he is experienced in modelling and process simulation of energy production processes with various simulation tools, specializing in Aspen Plus process simulation software. Antti’s experience in energy sector extends from research to power plant construction and commissioning.

Ralf-Roman Schmidt is a senior research engineer and is working at the AIT since June 2009, where he is responsible for the development and management of national and international projects in the field of district heating and integrated energy systems. His research priorities are decarbonization strategies and sector coupling, digitization and flexibility as well as low temperature district heating networks. He holds key positions in international networks (e.g. alternate Member of the IEA DHC ExCo for Austria, Operating Agent of the IEA DHC Annex TS3 (hybrid energy networks), Chair of the District Heating and Cooling and Thermal Energy Storage Technology Panel in the RHC-ETIP.

Nowadays he leads the ICTvsCC (ICT versus Climate Change group) within the Institute for Advanced Communication Technologies at UPV, called ITACA. where one of his research lines consists in the application of advanced modelling tools for the computationally aided design of energy systems (mainly in buildings and in systems where the soil is used as heat source). A further research line is the application of advanced control strategies for systems energy management. He is author of over 150 journal and conference articles in the field of physics and engineering. Dr. Urchueguía has participated in several European projects in the area of energy (participating also as coordinator). He is Chairman of the Geothermal Panel and Vice-Chair of RHC Platform. He’s also Vice-president of EGEC since 2016.

Sofia Lettenbichler is responsible for the workstreams sustainable cities and digitalisation and coordinates the RHC-ETIP’s HWG on Districts. Sofia holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from Innsbruck University and Sciences Po Lyon. At the University of Leiden, she completed a Research Master in Political Science and Public Administration. She also has a Diploma (BA+MA) in English and American Studies. Her previous experience includes advocacy and policy work in digital technology, as well as the energy & environment sectors. She has worked on EU-funded projects in the fields of ICT, energy, environment and international cooperation.

Riku Huttunen is Director General of the Energy Department at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment since 2015. His department is in charge of national and EU energy policy issues as well as coordination of national climate policy measures. Earlier, he has worked as Director General of the Finnish Energy Authority, Head of Division at the Ministry and in the Finnish Permanent Representation to the EU, Brussels.

Timo Tatar is the Deputy Secretary General for Energy at Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications of Estonia. He has previously served as Head of Energy Department in the same ministry. Before joining the public service in 2012, he was heading power generation development projects in Eesti Energia. He has also worked for State Real Estate Ltd. and Fortum. Timo Tatar (born 1982) holds a Master’s degree in Thermal Engineering from the Tallinn Technical University (TalTech)

She holds a Ph.D. in environmental management and a M.Sc. degree in marketing. Professor Pesonen’s areas of expertise include material flow management, environmental management systems, and sustainability marketing. Lately most of her research has focused on developing sustainable energy business and bioeconomy. Pesonen has participated in the work of several international research groups with partners both from research institutions, public sector, and business. Pesonen has published articles in several international journals. She is co-author of SETAC’s code of practice for environmental life cycle costing (LCC), and member of the editorial board of International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.

Mirja Tiitinen works as an advisor in Finnish Energy (FE) which is a branch organisation for the industrial and labour market policy of the energy sector. FE represents companies that produce, procure, distribute and sell electricity, gas, district heat and district cooling and related services. She is responsible for heating and cooling technology of buildings. She has long and wide experience on district heating and cooling business. Also, she is experienced in energy efficiency and decarbonization of heating sector. Previously she has been responsible for the district heating and cooling statistics.