The Active Distribution System Operator (DSO)

Michael Pollitt is Professor of Business Economics at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. He is an Assistant Director of the university’s Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) and a Fellow and Director of Studies in Economics and Management at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. Michael is an elected Vice President (for Publications) of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE). He is a former external economic advisor to Ofgem.

Monica Giulietti is a CERRE Research Fellow and Professor of Microeconomics at the University of Loughborough’s School of Business and Economics, where she heads the Economics Discipline Group focusing primarily of energy economics and regulation.

Previously, she worked at the universities of Warwick, Nottingham, Aston and Exeter. Throughout her career, she has frequently published in international journals and conducted research work for several governmental institutions and organisations.

Andrei Covatariu is a Senior Research Associate at the Energy Policy Group (EPG) in Romania and an expert for the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s (UNECE) Task Force on Digitalization in Energy. At the same time, Andrei is a GYCN Climate Ambassador (World Bank Group initiative), and a Climate Ambassador at Climate Interactive.

He was also a Member of the Board of the Future Energy Leaders-100 community and a Non-resident Fellow at the Middle East Institute, in Washington DC. He is also the co-founder of Circular2050.org, a think tank focused on the various facets of the circular economy model. Andrei holds a MEng in Nuclear Engineering and a Master in Public Policy (MPP) at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Daniel Duma has a background in political science (B.A), public policy (MSc) and economics (PhD) and has worked in the energy sector for almost 10 years, holding various roles related to public policy, development, finance and sustainability at Enel. Currently, he is a Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute.

In 2020, Daniel completed the MBA program at the University of Cambridge, Judge Business School, with a concentration in Energy and Environment. Daniel is also an affiliated expert of the Energy Policy Group, where he contributed to research projects on the green transition and economic growth. Daniel is a fellow of the Aspen Institute Romania since 2015.

Torsten Knop has spent his whole career in the utility industry.

After a brief period working for an industry association, he joined the RWE Group (today E.ON) in 1999. Here he was mostly focused on public affairs issues concerning transmission and distribution grids.

With the start of formal regulation in Germany in 2005, he moved to regulatory affairs and is currently responsible for European Regulation at E.ON SE.

He is an economist by formation.

Sabine Crome is working as a Policy Officer in the “Internal Energy Market” unit at the Directorate General for Energy of the European Commission. Her main assignments relate to DSO regulation, demand side flexibility and electromobility.

Sabine Crome joined the European Commission in 2000. Previously to her current post, she worked in the Directorate General for Mobility and Transport and in the Directorate General for Competition in the field of State aid and merger control.