Leaders to talk fostering and financing innovation at Green Growth Forum in January


19 Nov 2012

Chairman of GreenTouch Thierry Van Landegem, a keynote speaker at the Green Growth Forum

Hosted by Silicon Republic and the Green IFSC, The Green Growth Forum on 25 January will bring together international experts and Ireland’s leaders in green finance, technology, energy and innovation to look at how Ireland can be a leader in the low-carbon economy.

The Green Growth Forum, which takes place in the Convention Centre Dublin, will feature high-profile international keynotes who will offer a global view and highlight international best practice, while local experts and leaders in green finance, technology, innovation and policy will take part in mediated panel discussions, and invited delegates will participate in questions-and-answer sessions, in order to encourage a lively and thoughtful debate on this crucial area.

The Silicon Valley approach has been held up as a model for fostering innovation and developing new global players. In recent years, that model has been applied, most visibly, to clean technologies and green innovation. Speakers and delegates will discuss how Ireland, as a tech hub in Europe, can create a model to foster and finance the green innovation that will shape the country’s future economic prosperity.

Chair of GreenTouch to keynote

Confirmed keynote Thierry Van Landegem, is chairman of GreenTouch, a consortium of leading ICT industry stakeholders dedicated to transforming communication to significantly reduce the carbon footprint. It has set the ambitious goal of improving the energy efficiency of ICT networks by a factor of 1,000. Van Landegem is also head of Global Operations for Bell Labs, the research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, and is an official member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council for Sustainability. He has participated as an expert in the Visionary Research group initiated by the European Commission, as well as serving as a member of the commission’s ISTAG (Information Society Technologies Advisory Group) group.

Confirmed panelists include:

  • PJ Rudden, Group Energy & Environment director, RPS, and RPS project director to the EU Commission for the Management of the EU Green Capital City project, as well as project director for the Irish-Scottish Links Energy Study (ISLES) on offshore renewables.
  • Paul Lynam, chief executive officer, Siemens Ireland, who began his career in 1990 with Smurfit Ireland and then joined Smurfit Germany in 1991. He later moved to Kappa Packaging, Germany, and subsequently joined Siemens Ireland as commercial manager, Energy & Transportation.
  • Paul Harris, head of Natural Resource Risk Management, Bank of Ireland Global Markets, and one of the key architects of Ireland’s Green IFSC initiative, he currently chairs the Carbon & Markets Expert Group. Harris is co-course director of the DCU post-graduate certificate on sustainable energy finance, which he designed.
  • Stephen Nolan, executive co-ordinator of Green IFSC, responsible for overseeing all aspects of Green IFSC activity. Nolan’s experience includes posts as ICT special adviser to the secretary general, Department of Communications, Marine & Natural Resources, Ireland; and adviser to the UN ICT Task Force Board established by then-secretary-general Kofi Annan.

Other panelists will include leaders from UCC/Tyndall and the Bilfinger Group, and many more exciting keynotes and panelists will be added in coming days. For further information, check out the Green Growth Forum site here.