SPEAKER: Catherine Mitchell Professor of Energy Policy, University of Exeter DATE: Wednesday, April 13th 2016 TIME: 4:00 – 5:30pm LOCATION: 126 Barrows Hall TITLE: Transformative Governance – speeding up change in global energy systems. ABSTRACT: Some energy systems around the world are changing rapidly – for example, Denmark and Germany. Other countries or US States are putting in place / exploring governance which should lead to fundamental change, for example NY State in the US and India. It is clear that there is a strong momentum within Europe and the US towards more renewables and energy efficient systems, and accompanying changes within system operation to better accommodate renewables and make them more flexible – both on the supply and demand side. If one takes the view that the energy system is a whole system – on all sorts of levels – one would expect these changes to roll out around the globe, even if it takes a few decades to occur. However, Asia for example, remains a region with very different country paths – [ranging from Australia and its rapid solar and wind decentralisation, to China and its multi –technology development path and Taiwan and South Korea with VI single monopoly systems] and far greater acceptance of nuclear power. The strength and insularity of these two energy systems will be explored. BIOGRAPHY: Catherine Mitchell is Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Exeter. Previously, she has worked at the Universities of Warwick, Sussex and California, Berkeley. She holds a PhD from SPRU, Sussex University in Technology and Innovation Policy. Catherine is currently working on an Established Career Fellowship with the EPSRC (2012-2016) on the relationship between innovation and governance. As part of this, she has taken up Visiting Scholarships / Professorships  in the Energy and Resource Group, UCal Berkeley; the Centre for Global Energy Policy at the University of Columbia, NY; and at the Environmental Policy Research Centre at FFU in Berlin. She is the Chair of the Regulatory Assistance Project; is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Nature Energy; is on the Board of the GB Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit and the GB Centre for Sustainable Energy; and is a Member of IPPRs Policy Advisory Committee. Catherine was a Lead Author in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (2014), a Co-ordinating Lead Author of the IPCC’s Special Report on Renewable Energy and Climate Change Mitigation (2011); and a Lead Analyst on the Global Energy Assessment undertaken through the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) (2012). She has served on several panels advising the GB government, including the Energy Advisory Panel (1998-2003), the Balancing and Settlement Code Panel (2008-2010), the Academic Advisory Panel to DECC for Electricity Market Reform (2010), and DECC’s Distributed Generation Advisory Panel (2012). She chaired the British Institute of Energy Economics in 2009-10, and has advised numerous national and international companies, NGOs and institutions on various aspects of the transition to a sustainable energy system.