IEA SHC Solar Academy: Solar Heat Worldwide 2024 - Harnessing Solar Thermal Energy for a Sustainable Future (1)

Bärbel Epp is the founder and managing director of the German consultancy solrico. She is responsible for the international newsletter of the web portal www.solarthermalworld.org, reporting exclusively about market and technology trends in the solar heating and cooling sector globally. solrico also created the first online World Map of SHIP suppliers (SHIP = Solar Heat for Industrial Processes) see www.solar-payback.com/suppliers and carries out surveys among the around 70 companies listed on the world map annually. Bärbel Epp graduated in Physics at the University of Oldenburg, Germany.

Presentation: Industrial heat decarbonization: challenges, trends and outlook

Guglielmo Cioni is a Nuclear Engineering Graduate. He also holds a Master in Finance.

With 30 years of international experience, Guglielmo was a public servant in the Italian “trade diplomacy” for 15 years, being posted to China, to Poland and to Brussels, to support Italian businesses abroad.

Climate Change mitigation has been a major focus of his activities since 1999, when he established and led the first Italian-Chinese Cooperation Program for Environment and Climate Change, an experience which he later developed in the private sector, when he established and ran for 5 years, the first Italian privately funded “Carbon Fund”, which invested 60 M€ in carbon reduction projects in third countries, within the mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol.

With his hands on experience in carbon mitigation and renewable energy projects, Guglielmo entered the solar thermal sector in 2014, and now is the Chief of Business Development at TVP Solar, with a portfolio of responsibilities ranging from project origination and development to institutional relationship, innovation funding.

He is deeply convinced that Climate Change is a major challenge for the Human Race, to be addressed together, with pragmatism and focused solutions, available here and now, not sometimes in the future.

Guglielmo is the proud President of Solar Heat Europe, the European Federation of the Solar Thermal Industry.

Presentation: Solar Heat Europe: Solar thermal energy - the way to growth

Werner WEISS is founding member of the Austrian research institute AEE – Institute for Sustainable Technologies (AEE INTEC) in Gleisdorf. He was the director of the institute until February 2020 and is now member of the board.

He is working in national and international solar thermal and energy efficiency projects since the beginning of the 1980ies and headed numerous national and international projects – especially in the framework of EU, IEA and UNIDO programs.

Since 2010 he the Austrian representative in the Executive Committee of the Solar Heating and Cooling Programme of the International Energy Agency (IEA). From 2010 to 2014 he acted as chairman of this IEA programme.

Since 2007 he is lecturer at Vienna University of Technology.

Presentation: Global solar thermal market in 2023 and outlook to new developments and applications

With a communications and marketing background, Valérie Séjourné started her career in a couple of FMCG Companies, Danone and Unilever but also as Communication Officer the French energy transition agency in Ademe. She then gained almost 25 years of experience in a well-established pan-European association in Brussels (A.I.S.E.), representing the detergent industry, and leading their sustainability strategy through many voluntary initiatives in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility, product policy/ecodesign, sustainability reporting, coordinating also several sustainable consumption campaigns across Europe. Communications, stakeholder engagement and advocacy outreach towards many different audiences at European and international levels are complementing her passion to make tangible progress for the transformation of society towards more sustainable, low-carbon, just and resilient models. She was appointed Managing Director of Solar Heat Europe in April 2023.