Energy and Utility Forum

About us

The Energy & Utility Forum is a not-for-profit organisation. Its members hold senior positions in utility companies or are service providers to the sector. In addition, it has two Vice Presidents.

Forum Members

Forum Member Biographies

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan – Vice-President
Lord O'Neill was a Member of Parliament between 1979 and 2005 and represented the Ochil constituency from 1997 to 2005. He was a shadow defence spokesman, from 1995 was Chairman of the Trade and Industry Select Committee, and from 1997 to 2005 was a member of the Liaison Committee. He is currently Chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association, a member of the Select Committee on Science and Technology and is Vice-Chair of the All Party Group on Energy Studies.

Brian Count – Vice-President
Brian Count joined the CEGB in 1974 and subsequently became Director of Power Generation in National Power. In 2000 he was appointed Chief Operating Officer of Innogy plc, becoming Chief Executive Officer in 2002; between 2003 and 2005 he was Chief Executive of RWE Trading. He is currently Chairman of Progressive Energy, working on clean coal technology, Chairman of Ceres Power, working on fuel cell technology, and is a member of the UK Industrial Development Advisory Board.

Sally Barrett-Williams – Chairman
Sally Barrett-Williams has worked in the energy sector and in regulation, in the UK and overseas, since 1990 and held senior posts both in industry and with industry regulators, before returning to private practice in 2001. She qualified as a barrister and spent time at the Administrative Law Bar before going into private practice with Simmons & Simmons. She then joined National Power as Head of UK Commercial Law, before moving on to OFGEM as Assistant Director of Legal Services, from where she went to the Rail Regulator as Director of Legal Services and Chief Legal Adviser. She returned to private practice again with a pan-European law firm, CMS, before joining Troutman Sanders, a global law firm, as partner in the Energy Practice. She is now a director of a number of companies, each of which is connected, directly or indirectly, with the renewable energy market and is a specialist energy consultant to Clarke Willmott LLP as well as a partner in The Carbon Catalysts Group, an organisation of senior executives with particular experience of the power and renewable energy sectors, which provides the full range of regulatory, market, commercial and contractual advice to investors and others.

Edward Libbey – Deputy Chairman
Edward Libbey has nearly 30 years of senior international management experience in the energy and high technology industries. He spent over 20 years with BP, in a variety of commercial, strategic and operational roles in the USA, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands. He played a leading role in setting up and running BP's international oil trading business in the early 1980s. He was subsequently the US President, and Board Director of Whatman plc. He is now Chairman of World Energy Solutions the leading company providing on-line reverse-auction based exchanges for electricity, natural gas, green power and environmental commodities that is listed on both the Toronto Stock Exchange and NASDAQ. He is also a Board Member of the Oil & Pipelines Agency. He is a Fellow of the Energy Institute and of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a member of the Security Institute. He is an independent Consultant, working primarily for the recruitment consultancy, Clive & Stokes International.

Steve Blackwell – Secretary
After a career of 29 years with British Gas and Transco, Steve Blackwell is now involved across a range of utility sector business activities usually with a strategy and/or strategic marketing aspect. With a background in economics, marketing and business planning, he ran the Washington DC office of British Gas in the early 1990s prior to working in 1994-96 on the Transco Price Control Review with Ofgas which went to the MMC. Since leaving British Gas/Transco, he has worked on gas sector liberalisation with the Ukrainian Economy Ministry and the World Bank, on an energy review for the Australian Federal and State Governments as well as developing restructuring proposals on a specific aspect of the utilities sector in conjunction with a US-based investment bank. He writes occasional articles for Utility Week and advises a multi-national on developments in the UK utilities sector.

Bert den Ouden
Bert den Ouden is Chief Executive Officer of APX-ENDEX and one of the founders of the company that started in 1999 as the Dutch electricity spot market under the name APX. Under Den Ouden's supervision, the exchange grew by acquiring British gas and power exchanges, launching gas exchanges in the Netherlands and Belgium, integration of the gas and power futures exchange ENDEX and, recently, the announced merger with Belpex, the Belgian power exchange. Bert den Ouden has been a pioneer in the integration of Europe electricity markets through the Market Coupling mechanism. When he was a chairman of EuroPEX, the European Association of Power Exchanges in 2002-2004, he prepared the basis for the broader European introduction of the idea. Subsequently, together with Belgian and French parties, he co-developed a sound partnership between exchanges and grid companies (TSOs) resulting in the launch of Belpex and the Trilateral Market Coupling between Netherlands, Belgium and France. This success has been followed by many follow-up market integration initiatives wherein Bert den Ouden maintains a close involvement. His other main other focus today is the integration of the gas markets.

Dr Anthony White MBE
Tony White began his career with the CEGB, then joined James Capel on privatisation of the electricity market and, after three years, joined National Grid, where he was Head of Corporate Strategy and a member of the Executive Committee. He subsequently went to Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, where he set up the Pan-European Utility research team, which later transferred to Schroder Salomon Smith Barney, which became Citigroup. In 2002 he was voted the top utility equity analyst by Extel and his team the best sector team covering the European markets. He retired from Citigroup at the end of 2002 and, in 2003, helped form Climate Change Capital, from which he retired in 2009. He now provides advice to CCC, and other companies, through BW Energy. He is currently a Non-Executive Director of the National Renewable Energy Centre at Blyth, the Crown Estate and Green Energy Options. He is a member of DECC's Nuclear Liabilities Financing Assurance Board. He also sits on the Advisory Board of Sussex University's Energy Group.

David Sanderson
David Sanderson's career in the electricity industry spans over 25 years in engineering and commercial roles. Currently he is working in EDF Energy’s New Nuclear Build team. David started working in the electricity industry in 1978 with London Electricity and then moved to Eastern Electricity. At the time of privatisation he worked for the CEGB and then National Power developing coal-fired and nuclear power stations. During the dash for gas period in the 1990s he returned to London Electricity to head up their generation projects team and was seconded to Entergy when they owned London Electricity. In 2000 he took up a strategic planning role at 24 Seven Utility Services covering TXU's and London's distribution networks. When EDF Energy was formed he moved to manage SPN's infrastructure development plan.

Mike Turner
Mike Turner is a Director of Oakland Consulting plc, who has extensive world-wide experience of working at senior level within large and complex multinational organisations to design and successfully deliver business improvement and transformation programmes. He began a career in operations and general management gaining experience in a number of UK and US-based multinational organisations, where he led the implementation of continuous improvement programmes in the areas of lean manufacturing, business process improvement and organisational change. As a Management Consultant, he has managed a number of major consulting assignments in large and medium-sized organisations to re-engineer business processes, introduce strategic deployment systems, apply a number of quality improvement techniques and implement step changes in organisational performance. He has also made a significant contribution to the pioneering work Oakland Consulting has done in the areas of process innovation and creative thinking.

Neil Sampson – Treasurer
For the last 25 years Neil has provided executive recruitment, assessment and development services for business start-ups, performance improvement, team development, restructuring, and career management across the supply chain of the energy and utility sectors, requiring significant understanding of business strategy, technologies, performance targets and stakeholder objectives. Prior to 2002, when he established his own business, he was an Energy & Utility Practice Leader with TMP Worldwide, a global talent management consultancy. His early career was with the National Coal Board, and HR management with Tesco, and a Shell Oil/Dutch water authority JV supplying plastic pipes and fittings to the UK Water, Gas, and Housing sectors. He is an Associate Member British Psychological Society, Member Institute of Personnel & Development and Member Institute of Directors.

Neil Stockley
Neil Stockley has more than twenty years' experience in politics and public affairs. He qualified in law and politics in New Zealand before becoming executive assistant to the then prime minister, David Lange. He went on to become Parliamentary Director of Research for the New Zealand Labour Party. Since 2002, he has been a director at Bell Pottinger Public Affairs, where he provides political counsel to a range of organisations on energy, climate change, electricity market reform, renewable energy and carbon capture and storage. Between 1997 and 2001 he was senior consultant, later head, of the utilities practice at GPC. He was research coordinator (1993-94) and director of policy (1994-97) for the Liberal Democrats and has served as a member of the party's Federal Policy Committee (2003-8) and of a number of policy working groups, including energy. In 2006-07, he chaired the working group that developed a comprehensive new climate change policy for the Liberal Democrats.