Independent Stakeholder Group (ISG)

Mike is CEO of Energy and Utilities Alliance (EUA), a not-for-profit trade association based in the West Midlands. He holds degree in Economics, a post-graduate certificate in education and is a chartered management accountant. Having started work in the car industry, he taught accountancy, economics and statistics for six years before becoming MP for Worcester (1997-2010). He served as a Minister for four years, under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, latterly as Minister for International Development. 

Before heading up EUA, Mike was Head of Communications at the international charity WaterAid. He served on the Cadent Gas Ltd Customer Engagement Group for RIIO-GD2. 

Mike is non-exec Chair of Affordable Warmth Solutions, a community interest company that delivered Cadent’s fuel poor network extension programme and allocates the Warm Homes Fund on behalf of National Grid.

Denise is Managing Director of the Energy Innovation Centre (EIC). She is passionate about driving social progress, improving the quality of people’s lives and securing a safe, affordable and sustainable future for generations to come. Since its foundation in 2008, she has built the EIC into a respected organisation at the forefront of innovation in the energy sector.  

Through her talent for fostering collaboration and partnership, Denise works with governments regulators, energy companies and innovators, both nationally and internationally, to help meet the social, political, environmental and economic energy challenges we face. 

Paul has been in the gas industry for 34 years. He joined British Gas in 1990, having worked for the Central Electricity Generating Board and AMEC prior to that, and started his apprenticeship has a pipeline welder. He has a wealth of knowledge and experience in running a gas network, covering transmission and distribution operations, including strategic network planning, operations planning, asset management, network codes, contract management and price control reviews.

He was appointed to the role of Director of Customer Service and Engineering Support when SGN was formed in 2005 and he became Network Director in late 2008 and a member of the executive team. In January 2024, Paul moved to a senior advisory role reporting to the CEO on RIIO-GD3, incident investigations and strategic matters.

Lauren provides expert regulatory and commercial guidance and solutions in energy market design and industry code change. She has 25 years’ experience in the energy industry, most recently joining RWE in 2009 where she has had a wide range of commercial and trading responsibilities, including electricity generation portfolio optimisation and hedging, and assessment of asset and equity investments. Prior to RWE, Lauren was Head of Commercial Management at Ecotricity, overseeing the forecasting, trading and pricing for its retail and renewables portfolios. She originally started her career with British Petroleum as an engineer, before progressing into physical and derivatives trading in the electricity, gas and global oil markets. 

William is Head of Hydrogen at Centrica Energy Markets & Trading, and Chair of the Renewable Energy Association’s Green Gas & Hydrogen Forum. William is responsible for commercialising hydrogen development opportunities for Centrica. Prior to joining Centrica, he was a fund lead at JLEN, a FTSE 250 environmental fund. William has worked in the renewable energy industry since 2010, developing and building commercial-scale green gas anaerobic digestion plants, where he was Head of Projects at Future Biogas, one of the largest anaerobic digestion companies in the UK. He holds a PhD in Bioenergy from the University of Bath. 

Ana is the Executive Director for Policy & Engagement at RenewableUK. She oversees the trade association’s policy work across all renewable technologies, as well as the programme of engagement with members, media and other external stakeholders. Her role is to deliver policy change that accelerates the transition to a renewables-based energy system that delivers socio-economic benefits for the UK. Prior to joining RenewableUK, she was the Head of Policy at Aldersgate Group and also served as a lead consultant for the Green Finance Institute's Coalition for the Decarbonisation of Road Transport.

Thibaut holds an MSc in Geophysics from Strasbourg University and an MSc in Finance from University College London. Thibaut has held technical and leadership positions in Schlumberger, BG Group (now Shell) and CNOOC. Thibaut leads Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) in its work to reduce emissions from offshore operations, supporting the industry commitment to achieving UK net zero emissions targets.

Nilay is Professor of Process Systems Engineering, a former Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Process Systems Engineering at Imperial College London. He is also director of a synthetic fuel start-up, Zero Petroleum Ltd. His research focuses on the use of process modelling and mathematical and systems engineering techniques to analyse complex process and energy systems. 

Nilay is particularly interested in clean energy, hydrogen, bio renewables, bioprocessing and engineering biology. He also works on the application of model-based methods for plant safety assessment and risk analysis. He has published widely and is particularly interested in transferring technological innovations from academia to industry.

Nilay has received many awards, including the Royal Society of Chemistry Beilby Medal and the IChemE Hutchison Medal. He is a Fellow of the IChemE and Royal Academy of Engineering. He earned his PhD at Imperial College London.

Angus joined ESO in November 2023 after 18 years of consulting at AFRY Management Consulting. At AFRY, Angus led on gas topics and in particular global gas prices and flows, including gas pipeline and storage valuation, but also on electricity network digitalisation, hydrogen infrastructure, biomethane, energy law and gas network regulation. From 2020, he led the team producing hourly pan-European electricity market price projections out to 2060, which he migrated to a whole-system basis during 2023. Prior to AFRY, Angus spent ten years planning the GB gas transmission network. 

Kate Martin Bruintjes is a sustainability professional with a wide range of experience developed over 25 years working in consultancy, in industry and for an international charity. In the utility sector she has worked in-house at EDF Energy leading their sustainability-related reporting and has helped a range of electricity and gas distribution companies with their sustainability and stakeholder engagement strategies and reporting.

Kate is the Non-Executive Chair of Resource Futures, an employee owned B Corp consultancy, and is an Honorary Teaching Associate at the University of Bristol. Kate also sits on the SP Energy Networks Independent Net Zero Advisory Council (INZAC) and is and Vice-Chair of the INZAC Customer Group.