In the lexicon of energy we’re used to hearing about ‘big’ oil, the ‘big’ six, ‘giga’-watts, the ‘national’ grid. It’s the language of scale and historically, as individual users of energy, we’ve found ourselves on the periphery, ‘done to’ by dominant players in a centralised, global market.

But when you look closely at what’s happening in the energy system today you very quickly discover this relationship is being turned on its head. People could in future be the lead actors on a stage being radically reshaped by four parallel trends – decentralisation, democratisation, digitisation and decarbonisation. These are the four Ds of the modern energy age.

In this seminar, Louise Kingham will explore the changing relationship between people and energy, the tensions between costs and benefits, rights and responsibilities, local and global. She will set out her long term, optimistic view that advances in technology and human ingenuity, allied with changes in how we all live our lives, could yet avert the worst impacts of climate change at the same time as opening up access for more than a billion people in the world still living without electricity.

Speaker profiles

Louise Kingham OBE FEI is Chief Executive of the Energy Institute (EI), the chartered membership body for professionals working across the global energy system, from conventional oil and gas to innovative energy efficiency and renewable technologies.

Louise has spent 25 years working with energy professionals around the world. Prior to her appointment as the head of the EI in 2003, Louise was Director General of the Institute of Petroleum and Chief Executive of the Institute of Energy. She is a Council member of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Energy Studies and a Board member of the POWERful Women initiative. She is a former President of the Energy Industries Club, Advisory member of the Energy Policy Board at the University of Birmingham and judge for HM Queen’s Prize for Higher and Further Education.