Energy Horizons 2025: Innovation Across Evolving Energy Markets

Energy Horizons 2025: Innovation Across Evolving Energy Markets

This conference will examine the expanding landscape of new energy markets, highlighting the wide range of challenges and opportunities emerging from this evolution. Covering issues related to reforming Australia's National Electricity Market, new electricity derivatives, decentralised renewable energy systems, Australian Carbon Credit Units, hydrogen markets, storage solutions, and energy efficiency, the event will explore how technological advances, new markets and products are driving the transformation of the energy sector.

This one-day conference – with a strong line-up of outstanding speakers – brings together experts from industry, academia and regulators to discuss and analyse technological innovation and evolving energy markets.

Conference program to be finalised. 

Morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and a drinks reception are inlcuded in the $165 registration fee. 

The conference is organised by the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre at Macquarie University.

Confirmed speakers inlcude:

Tim Nelson

Chair, Review of the NEM, Australian Government

Tim Nelson is the Chair of the Independent Review of the NEM. The Review will provide actionable recommendations to Energy Ministers in late 2025. Prior to this role, Tim was the Executive General Manager, Energy Markets at Iberdrola Australia. In this role, Tim lead the wholesale and retail energy markets functions. He also lead business development for firming and smart solutions. Tim joined Iberdrola Australia in March 2020 from the Australian Energy Market Commission (AEMC). Up until November 2018, Tim was the Chief Economist of AGL Energy.

He is also a Climate Councillor, a member of the Westpac Stakeholder Advisory Council, an advisory board member for My Net Zero and is on the Research Committee for the Centre for Policy Development.

Tim is an Associate Professor at Griffith University and is widely published in Australian and international peer-reviewed journals. He holds a PhD in economics for which he earned a Chancellors Doctoral Research Medal and a first-class honours degree in economics. Tim is also a fellow of the Governance Institute (FGIA FCG CS CGP) and a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (GAICD).

Kathryn Smith

General Manager, Carbon Markets Branch, Clean Energy Regulator

Kathryn Smith is a public policy economist specialising in climate and energy economics. In January 2025 she joined the Clean Energy Regulator as General Manager of Carbon Markets. 

Previous roles include head of the National Adaptation Policy Office in the Department of Climate Change, Energy, Environment and Water, Assistant Parliamentary Budget Officer at the independent Parliamentary Budget Office, leading the modelling and analysis for CSIRO’s second Australian National Outlook and acting as the General Manager of Australia’s Climate Change Authority. Kathryn has also worked in economics consultancy with the London-based Vivid Economics (now part of McKinsey & Co) and advising the Australian government on the development of its carbon pricing mechanism.

Kathryn started her career in the Economic Group at the Reserve Bank of Australia. Her qualifications include an MSc in Environment and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Neil Lessem

Head of Economics, Australian Energy Market Commission

Dr Neil Lessem is head of economics at the AEMC, where he has provided expert advice to the Commission on a diverse range of issues, including retail and network pricing, electricity and gas reliability, resilience, equity and valuing emissions impacts. He also leads AEMC’s academic outreach initiative. Prior to joining the AEMC, Dr Lessem enjoyed an international consulting career - assisting utilities, regulators and technology firms across Asia, North America, the Middle East, Australia and New Zealand on rate design, energy policy, innovative pricing, experimental design, technology adoption and policy impact measurement.

Dr Lessem obtained his Ph.D. from the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), where he used experimental and real-world data to examine consumer motivation for purchasing environmentally friendly products and services.

Cameron Kelly
General Counsel at Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)

Cameron Kelly is currently the General Counsel at the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) where he leads the agency's legal, governance and secretariat functions. Prior to ARENA, Cameron worked for a major Middle East - based renewables project sponsor, where he advised on over a gigawatt of project financed renewable energy and storage projects across Jordan, Egypt, Turkey and Morocco. Cameron completed his PhD at the University of Eastern Finland's Centre for European and Climate Change Law, and is currently involved in developing ARENA's guidelines to initiate the Federal Government's Hydrogen Headstart program.

Joe Maisano

Chief Technology Officer, Local Volts

Dr. Joe Maisano is co-founder and Chief Technology Officer with Localvolts, an authorised electricity retailer and pioneer of peer-to-peer electricity trading in Australia. Joe has worked in financial markets for over 30 years including in the quant groups of Macquarie Bank and Commonwealth Bank, and since 1996 has been a director of Trading Technology Australia, which supplies software, quantitative analysis, realtime data, derivative pricing and electricity risk management to banks and energy companies. Joe is also a director of Green Trading Systems which specialises in modelling services for forecasting and battery optimisation. Joe has a PhD in applied mathematics from UTS in the field of electricity price forecasting and derivative pricing. He is the co-author of a number of papers on forecasting, derivatives and battery optimisation.

Alan Rai

Executive Director, CORE Markets

Alan leads CORE Markets’ Energy & Carbon Advisory team. He has 20 years' experience in Australia’s Energy and Financial Markets. His clients include buy- and sell-side firms interested in renewables, storage (BESS and PHES), and gas peakers. He provides commercial and strategic advice supporting new market entry and investment business cases, route-to-market support, and transactions advisory DD services. Prior roles to CORE Markets include Baringa Partners, where he led the Market Advisory team, Someva Renewables, Australian Energy Market Commission, AEMO Services Ltd, the CSIRO, and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Sean Foley

Co-director of the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre, Macquarie University

Sean Foley is a Professor of Applied Finance at Macquarie University and is a co-director of the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre. His research expertise is in understanding the structure of complex markets, and spans equities, derivatives, cryptocurrencies and energy markets. His research in energy markets has examined aspects such as the impact of grid scale batteries on the FCAS market, the role of renewables in the 2022 NEM Energy crisis, and consumer adoption of solar panels. The non-storable nature of the energy market, combined with its everyday importance to Australian individuals and industry drives his ongoing research in this space. He has published more than 35 academic articles.

Tina Soliman Hunter

Co-Director and Research and Industry Engagement Lead of Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre

Tina Soliman Hunter is a Professor of Energy and Resources Law at Macquarie University. She teaches and researches in petroleum law (offshore), Arctic resources law, energy law, and fluvial sediments in Siberia. She has received academic qualifications in marine sediments and geology, political science, applied science, and law, completing her PhD at the University of Bergen in Norway. Much of her research is multidisciplinary in nature, and includes working with engineers, geologists and political scientists. She is a former Director of the Aberdeen University Centre for Energy Law (AUCEL).

Madeline Taylor
Stream lead of the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre, Macquarie University

Associate Professor Madeline Taylor is stream lead of the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre, and an Australian Research Council (ARC) EC Industry Fellow. Madeline specialises in issues at the intersection of socio-legal aspects of energy and natural resources. Her research advances the novel examination of transitioning energy regulation and energy policy from comparative and socio-legal perspectives, including the governance of energy and the division of rights and benefits between the state, energy developers, landholders, and communities. Her current research focuses on establishing regulatory frameworks concerning new energy markets, energy development, and spatial planning particularly concerning large-scale solar energy regulation, agrivoltaics, offshore wind, and hydrogen.

Stefan Trück
Director, Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre, ARC Future Fellow, Professor of Business Analytics, Macquarie University

Stefan Trück is a Professor of Business Analytics and Director of the Transforming Energy Markets Research Centre at Macquarie University. Previously, he has held positions at Queensland University of Technology and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany where he received a PhD in Business Engineering. Stefan’s research interests focus on risk management, financial econometrics and business analytics. His is a world leading expert in the area of electricity markets and energy finance, while his research also comprises the areas of and commodity markets, credit risk, systemic risk, emissions trading, climate change economics and international financial markets. He has published in many high impact journals. He has also worked in various consulting projects in the area of energy and financial risk for organisations such as Deutsche Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Australian Energy Market Commission, Saudi Electricity and Co-Generation Regulatory Authority, Maybank, CRC Limited, just to name a few. He also has received various research grants, including two Discovery Grants from the Australian Research Council (ARC) plus an ARC Future Fellowship, one of the most prestigious awards for mid-career researchers in Australia.