Storage and Integration of renewables in the grid in Mozambique
Augusto de Sousa Fernando was Deputy Minister of Mineral Resources and Energy (MIREME) between 2016-2020 and prior to his appointment to this position, he was Director of the Technical Unit for Project Implementation (2015-2016) at MIREME, where he played a role leadership in the preparation and implementation of several large-scale projects in Mozambique.
His experience includes 23 years at Electricidade de Moçambique (EDM), the company responsible for the production, transmission, distribution and commercialization of energy in Mozambique, as well as energy transactions with SADC Regional Power Companies through the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) . At EDM, he held various management roles, reaching the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors of EDM between 2012 and 2014.
Sousa Fernando was Vice-President of the Order of Engineers of Mozambique (OrdEM) between 2004 and 2010 and then Chairman of the Order between 2010 and 2016. He was also a Consultant at Hidroeléctrica de Cahora Bassa (2016) and Regional Market Director (2015) at Norconsult . He is currently Senior Advisor at Norconsult Mozambique.
He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Energy Regulatory Authority (ARENE), in which he is responsible for the Legal Affairs and Consumer Protection portfolios. From 2014 to 2020 he was a member of the Non-Executive Board of the Communications Regulatory Authority (INCM) and, simultaneously, between 2018 and 2020 he served as Regulatory Affairs Manager at ABSA Bank Mozambique. He was Legal and Compliance Director at Bayport Financial Services between 2017 and 2018, and Legal Advisor to the Ministerial Commission, between 2014 and 2013, created by His Excellency the Minister of Industry and Commerce, to assist and guide the implementation of the Competition Regulatory Authority ( ARC) and prepare and submit for approval the first operating regulations.
Claudio Buque is a Mozambican, Professional Electrical Engineer with more than 10 years’ experience on energy projects in sub-Saharan Africa (Mozambique, South Africa, Malawi, Namibia, Comoros and Angola). He has published over 15 technical papers on topics including power system protection, micro-grid planning, renewable energy and network resilience. He has worked in technical consulting and at the World Bank. He is currently the Renewables Explorer at TotalEnergies in Maputo. In this role he is actively working on business development, seeking project development, partnership and acquisition opportunities in large scale renewable energy projects in Mozambique. Claudio has previously been involved in investment project financing as well as projects design, monitoring and evaluation, construction supervision and completion. He is passionate about innovation for the energy transition, economic development and poverty reduction. Claudio holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cape Town and an Executive MBA from Politecnico di Milano Graduate School of Business.
Ingmar Kreisl has been Deputy Head of Cooperation at the German Embassy in Maputo since 2019. He has been working for the German Federal for Economic Cooperation and Development since 2011 responsible for the ministry’s cooperation with civil society (2011 – 2014) and as Senior Policy Officer for Egypt and Deputy Head of the North Africa Division (2014- 2018) and Libya (2019). Prior to joining the ministry completed the German Development Institute’s Postgraduate Programme in 2010 and holds a Master in Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. He has been living and working in Syria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UK and Chile.
Citizen and resident of the Republic of Mauritius, Mr. Ahmad Iqbal Dreepaul, has more than 25 years of experience in the Mauritius Electricity Sector. He is presently, a Senior Analyst at the Central Electricity Board (CEB), the state-owned electricity utility. As a member of the CEB Strategic Business Planning Unit and also trained by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Ahmad has been actively involved in the strategic planning, policy formulation and business development of the Mauritius Electricity Sector. Ahmad worked on the Feasibility Study for the deployment of solar kits for 10,000 households in the Republic of Mauritius. This project was rated high on its technical merits by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and was selected for a concessional funding by the Abu Dhabi Fund for Development. He was the Project Manager responsible to implement of the project “Removal of Barriers to Solar Power Generation in Mauritius and its Outer Islands’’, a project funded by GEF and supported by the UNDP . At present, with his current position at the CEB, Ahmad is also the Alternate Project Director of the project “Accelerating the transformational shift to a low carbon economy in the Republic of Mauritius”.
João Abel Peças Lopes has a degree and a PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from FEUP. He is a Full Professor at FEUP and is currently Associate Director of the Institute of Systems and Computer Engineering, Technology and Science (INESC TEC). He is a Fellow of the IEEE Power Energy Society and the Director of the Doctoral Program in Sustainable Energy Systems at FEUP. He is the coordinator of Tec4Energy at INESC TEC and the vice-president of the Portuguese Association of Electric Vehicles. Additionally, he is a member of the National Monitoring Commission of the PRR and he was an Adjunct Professor at Iowa State University in the USA from 1996 to 1999. He is the author or co-author of over 400 articles and co-editor and co-author of Springer's book “Electric Vehicle Integration into Modern Power Networks”.
Julia Crause, a German National with roots in Portugal, has more than 20 years of professional experience in international development cooperation. An anthropologist by training, she has worked at KfW Development Bank in the fields of infrastructure, energy and climate finance since 2007. Since 2018, she is the Country Director of the KfW Office in Maputo. Previously, she worked on international environment policy and urban development at the United Nations Environment Programme in Nairobi. KfW Development Bank implements projects of German Financial Cooperation on behalf of the government of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Justin Pengilly has over 10 years of experience in African capital markets. During this period, he has participated in raising over US$160m for development projects in the mining & renewable energy sector. Justin led the development, financing and implementation of the first privately financed Commercial & Industrial ("C&I") solar PV plus Tesla Battery Energy Storage System ("BESS") in Mozambique. Justin founded Captive Power in 2020 to collaborate with C&I consumers and developers in Africa to assist with their energy needs through financed sustainable systems. Captive Power is the current manager of Mozambique Green Power, a private company dedicated to financing bespoke energy projects in Mozambique.
Marcelina works for the Ministry of Mineral Resources and Energy in Mozambique for over 20 years. She has extensive knowledge in the renewable energy sector. With an engineering background coupled with policy experience, her daily work involves the creation of a favourable environment for energy projects to be developed in a sustainable way, in order to contribute to the achievement of access to energy for all.
Marcus Rother is an international expert on renewable energy with 20 years of experience in developing project as well as raising project-funding and leading investor relationships. Being part of EU GET.invest´s Finance Catalyst network, he has successfully connected local entrepreneurial initiatives to funding institutions and implemented training programmes on financial structuring of RE projects within local partner institutions in Mozambique and South Africa.
Previously a senior Investment Officer at EU impact fund ElectriFI, he focuses on catalytic private sector investments in renewable energy companies in the IPP, Minigrid and Solar Home System sector.
Holding a PhD in Technology Policy Marcus collaborates in academia on sustainable energy policies with University of Madrid and University of Stellenbosch as a guest lecturer and sits on the advisory board of Edulink Participia, an EU programme for academic knowledge transfer.
Mark Crossley is Head of Commercial Finance at Solarcentury Africa. He is responsible for structuring the commercial arrangements with end users, arranging the funding and realising value for renewable power projects. Mark has a long history with Solarcentury having worked on some of its largest solar projects in Europe, securing funding at lowest cost and driving projects to financial close. He has been involved with the Solarcentury Africa team from the early days of ground-breaking C&I projects and through the transition into the large industrial user and utility scale sectors.
Mark has over 25 years of corporate finance experience. Prior to joining Solarcentury Africa he had a long and successful career as a global investment banker and independent consultant. During this time he advised on billions of dollars of transactions and led some of the highest profile and transformational transactions in their respective sectors. He worked with leading energy companies, utilities and infrastructure investors for many years, and experienced first hand the development of the renewables sector from being an early stage technology play to becoming the major infrastructure asset class that it represents today.
Mayra Pereira is the founder of Gaia Consulting. She has specialized over the years in renewable energy, environment and sustainability fields. Mayra is an integrated professional with an MSc in Environmental and Geographical Sciences and BSc (Hons) in Environmental Management from the University of Cape Town. She has over 14 years of work experience in the energy and environment sectors, particularly in the fields of research and design (policy, feasibility studies), management of large-scale projects and business development services. On May 24th she became the new ALER President.
Nilsa Pelembe Sibumbe, obtained her degree in Electrical Engineering in 2009, from the University of Camaguey "Ignacio Agramonte Loynaz”, Camaguey, Cuba.
With 12 years of experience in the energy sector, in the areas of Protection Systems, Systems Planning and Grid Operation, where she served as Head of the Operations Department from 2015 to 2017, the year in which she took up the role of System Operations Director. She has also been a member of the Southern African Power Pool (SAPP) through the operating committee since 2015.
Olga Utchavo Madeira, obtained a degree in Electrical Engineering in 2010 from Instituto Superior José António Echevarria, Havana, Cuba and a postgraduate degree in Management in 2020 from the University of Liverpool, England. With 10 years of experience in the energy sector, specifically in the areas of planning of electrical systems and renewable energies, Olga has contributed to the preparation of strategic documents such as the Integrated Master Plan for Energy Infrastructure, EDM's 10-Year Strategy and the PROLER program (Renewable energy auction in Mozambique). Currently, Olga has been the Director of Renewable Energy at EDM since September 2017.
Pedro has over 10 years of experience in the African Renewable Energy space, led the feasibility of just over 2,500 MW of Renewable Energy in South Africa (REPP), Mozambique and Angola. In 2015 Pedro incorporated SOURCE CAPITAL, headquartered in Maputo, a focused private equity and investment advisory boutique sourcing and managing investable assets in Lusophone Africa. The Energy sector quickly become a major focus and lead to the creation of SOURCE ENERGIA, a subsidiary that is the diversified renewable energy platform focused on the development, management, operations and maintenance of large & small scale on- & off-grid projects in Lusophone Africa, now with offices in Maputo and Luanda. SOURCE ENERGIA current portfolio is made of 350+ MW of Renewable Energy Projects (both IPP and C&I) in different stages, and the investment in one of the leading Solar Home Systems Company in Mozambique.
Ricardo Costa Pereira is a founding member and current President of the Board of the Mozambican Renewable Energy Association (AMER).
Ricardo has been working for over a decade in the renewable energy sector in Southern Africa, specifically in Mozambique where he has worked for the public sector through the National Directorate of New and Renewable Energies (Ministry of Energy), contributing to a series of regulations and legislative documents on the development of renewable energy. For the private sector through a large multinational consultancy company where he led multidisciplinary projects and managed teams in a variety of different countries. For donor funded programs, he was part of the core technical assistance team appointed by the EU and AFD to structure the first competitive tender for large scale renewable energy projects (PROLER). Presently, Ricardo is the Portfolio Manager for AECF’s program REACT-SAA in Mozambique providing end-to-end support to companies that AECF has invested in.
Sofia is the Head of the Resource Economics Unit at LNEG-National Energy and Geology Laboratory Portugal. Her work focuses on low carbon energy systems and on energy transitions at European, national and urban scale. Her most recent work focus on: (i) water and mineral resources for low carbon technologies, (ii) transition to an hydrogen economy, and (iii) climate change impacts on the energy system. Sofia has cooperated in several EU and national research projects on energy-economy-environment modelling and on resource use for decarbonization. Sofia worked as a researcher for the European Commission – Joint Research Centre where she implemented the optimization energy system model JRC-EU-TIMES for Europe. She has a PhD from Leiden University (NL) and an MSc from Lund University (SE).
Over 30 years of experience in the power sector. Started with Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authority (ZESA) in 1988 and rose through the ranks to Business Development Director of the Transmission subsidiary up to 2007. Worked as System Planning Advisor in EdM (Mozambique) in 2007 and as Senior Manager responsible for Planning and then Renewable Energy & System Integration in NamPower (Namibia) from 2008 to 2012. Worked from 2013 to 2016 as a consultant Power Engineer for African Development Bank in Zimbabwe. Was Principal Director in the Ministry of Energy and Power Development of Zimbabwe from 2016 to 2017. Joined SAPP in December 2017. Has a Master's degree in Electrical Power Engineering from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST), UK and a Bachelor's degree in Engineering Honours in Electrical Engineering from the University of Zimbabwe and a Diploma in Management, Institute of Supervision & Management, UK.
Tiago has joined IFC in January 2021, as a Senior Investment Officer, Infrastructure MEA based in Luanda, and looking at investments in both Angola and Mozambique. The infrastructure sub-sectors includes power, renewables, roads, rail, ports, airports, telecom and municipalities. Previous to IFC, Tiago was an Investment Manager with the Debt Project Finance team of the CDC Group (UK DFI) in London, focusing on infrastructure investments in Africa and South Asia. His experience also spans several years working in South Africa, as a Senior Transactor in the Infrastructure Finance team at Rand Merchant Bank (“RMB”). Tiago has a vast experience in originating and leading several project finance transactions across Sub-Saharan Africa.
Veerle Smet is a political scientist working in international partnerships since 2001. She has worked for the European Union both in Headquarters and in Delegations in Africa and Latin America. Since 2019, she is working in Mozambique as Team Leader in Infrastructure, Private Sector Development and Investment contributing as such to the promotion of trade and investment as well as the development of infrastructure projects, both with public and private sector.
