Unlocking Data Centre Flexibility for Europe’s Clean Energy Transition

Anna Rita Bennato is an Associate Professor (Senior Lecturer) in Economics at Loughborough Business School and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Competition Policy at the University of East Anglia. She spent three years there as an ESRC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, investigating the strategic behaviour of firms in response to government interventions and market regulations. Anna Rita completed her PhD studies at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata.

More recently, Anna Rita has expanded her research into behavioural and experimental economics to explore the drivers of individual decision-making, including social preferences, cooperative and competitive strategies, and cognitive discrimination. Her work combines theoretical modelling with empirical methods to examine how individual and firm-level behaviours influence broader societal outcomes. Her primary research focuses on the pharmaceutical and energy sectors. In 2024, together with a multidisciplinary team of scholars, she was awarded a major EPSRC research grant to establish the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Offshore Wind Energy Sustainability and Resilience, in which she serves as a Co-Investigator.

Dr. Kong Chyong is an applied energy economist and policy analyst with a strong background and more than fifteen years of experience in applications of economics and operational research methods to energy and climate policy questions. Kong’s research interests include economics and geopolitics of Russian natural gas exports, with a focus on Russo-Ukrainian bilateral relations and impacts on Europe and global gas markets. He also works on large-scale modelling of power markets, with a focus on low-carbon generation sources and integration of renewables.

Currently, Kong is a Senior Research Fellow in Energy System Economics and Modelling at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies. Before this, he was Senior Research Scholar with the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. Prior to joining Columbia University, Kong was a research associate with the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) based at the Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge. Kong holds a PhD in Energy Economics and Policy (2011) and an MPhil in Technology Policy (2007) from the University of Cambridge. His PhD topic concerned Russia’s strategic natural gas export policy and Gazprom’s pipeline investment strategy.

Prior to his studies at Cambridge University, Kong was a researcher at the at the National Academy of Sciences in Ukraine.

As the CERRE Director of Research, Zach Meyers has a wide remit, including managing our cross-sectoral programmes and projects.

Previously the assistant director of the Centre on European Reform, Zach Meyers has a recognised expertise in economic regulation and network industries such as telecoms, energy, payments, financial services and airports. In addition to advising in the private sector, with more than ten years’ experience as a competition and regulatory lawyer, he has consulted to several governments, regulators and multilateral institutions on competition reforms in regulated sectors. He is also a regular contributor to media.

Zach holds a BA, LLB and a Master of Public & International Law from the University of Melbourne.

Constanze Picking is Director of the Energy, Mobility, and Sustainability Practice at the Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE). Before joining CERRE, she served as Vice President for Global Government Relations at Garrett. Prior to that, she was Director for Government Relations across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa at Honeywell, where she led EMEA advocacy efforts across aerospace, defence, energy, and transportation. She also brings 12 years of experience at Daimler, 3 of which she spent in Beijing, China and the other heading Daimler’s EU advocacy in Brussels. Constanze has worked for 7 years for the academic sector in London, Warsaw and Prague.

Constanze studied at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the College of Europe. She holds a Master’s degree in Politics, History, and Economics, as well as a Master’s degree in European Economic Integration.