Monday 11 May 2026 9:30am to 12:30pm
Old Divinity School, St John's College
About
Join us for a symposium on transforming energy and industrial systems toward net-zero futures!
Register: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/decarbonization-pathways-in-power-systems-industry-tickets-1987060982890
About the Event:
This panel brings together leading voices across energy policy, market design, combustion science, and critical minerals.
This panel brings together leading voices from across the energy system, from policy and market design to industrial technologies and critical minerals underpinning the transformation. Jiang Lin (UC Berkeley) will benchmark China's power system transition and non-fossil goals; Michael Pollitt (Cambridge) will examine what the UK coal phase-out teaches us about regulation and market design; Christian Hasse (TU Darmstadt) will present iron fuels as an emerging pathway for retrofitting coal-based infrastructure; and Karla Cervantes Barrón (Imperial College London) will address critical mineral supply chains and what resource efficiency means for low-carbon transitions, including for countries in the Global South.
Keynotes are complemented by short perspectives from Professor Kun Luo (Zhejiang University), Lukas Gast (University College London), Liqun Peng (UC Berkeley), and Arne Scholtissek (TU Darmstadt).
About the Speakers:
Prof. Jiang Lin holds the Nat Simons Presidential Chair in China Energy Policy at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he is a Staff Scientist in the Department of Energy Market and Policy, and a Research Professor at UC Berkeley. His research spans energy and climate policy, emissions pathways, electricity market design, and low-carbon economic transition, with a particular focus on China. He previously co-directed the Berkeley-Tsinghua Joint Research Center on Energy and Climate Change, and spent nearly a decade leading the Energy Foundation's China Sustainable Energy Program.
Prof. Christian Hasse holds the Chair of Simulation of Reactive Thermo-Fluid Systems at TU Darmstadt, and is a Fellow of the Combustion Institute and of the Royal Aeronautical Society. His research combines thermofluid dynamics with high-performance computing, materials science, and chemistry, opening new pathways toward carbon-neutral energy systems, including iron and aluminium as carbon-free energy carriers. He is the 2026 recipient of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, Germany's most prestigious research award.
Prof. Michael Pollitt is Professor of Business Economics and Assistant Director of the Energy Policy Research Group at Cambridge Judge Business School. His research centres on the economics of energy regulation, utility privatisation, and market design. He has published over 100 refereed journal articles and advised bodies including Ofgem, the World Bank, and the European Commission.
Dr. Karla Cervantes Barrón is a consultant based at Imperial College London and Technical Lead of the Critical Minerals in Africa project, which develops a platform to evaluate battery mineral value addition across 14 southern African countries. Her research focuses on the types and amounts of materials required to build low-carbon energy and transport systems, and their broader environmental and supply chain implications. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge.
This event is facilitated by climaTRACES Lab, TU Berlin, TU Darmstadt in collaboration with researchers from the Energy Policy Research Group, UC Berkeley, UCL, ICL, and Zhejiang University.
It is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Researcher-Led Events Funding scheme at the University of Cambridge.