'Climate-Energy-Industry’ Working group

Giles Merritt is the Founder of Friends of Europe, and was its Secretary General between 1999 and 2015, and its Chairman between 2016 and 2020.

A former Financial Times Brussels Correspondent, Giles Merritt is a journalist, author and broadcaster who has for over four decades specialised in European public policy questions. In 2010 he was named by the Financial Times as one of its 30 most influential “Eurostars”, together with the European Commission’s President and NATO’s Secretary General.

Giles Merritt joined the Financial Times in 1968, and from 1972 until 1983 he was successively FT correspondent in Paris, Dublin/Belfast, and Brussels. From 1984 to 2010 he was a columnist for the International Herald Tribune (IHT), where his Op-Ed page articles ranged widely across EU political and economic issues.

In 1982 he published “World Out of Work”, an award-winning study of unemployment in industrialised countries. In 1991, his second book “The Challenge of Freedom” about the difficulties facing post-communist Eastern Europe was published in four languages. His book “Slippery Slope: Europe’s Troubled Future” (Oxford University Press 2016), was shortlisted for the European Book Prize.

Prior to his current position at Barclays, Mark Lewis was Chief Energy Economist at Kepler Cheuvreux and Managing Director and Global Head of Energy Research at Deutsche Bank, where he worked for 14 years. Lewis has nearly 20 years’ experience as a financial analyst covering energy and environmental markets, and has also worked as an academic at London University. His research on power, gas, and emissions was ranked Number 1 by Energy Risk magazine in its 2011, 2010, 2009 and 2008 surveys. He is currently an active member of the G20 industry-led Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosure (TCFD).

Mechthild Wörsdörfer is Deputy Director-General at the European Commission’s DG Energy, where she is in charge of the coordination of the just and green energy transition. This includes steering the work on REPowerEU, accelerating the deployment of renewables and energy efficiency measures and ensuring the EU’s security of supply. Wörsdörfer is also responsible for the relations with the Energy Community, and steers the bilateral relations with Ukraine, Moldova, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Prior to this, Wörsdörfer was the director responsible for sustainability, technology and outlooks at the International Energy Agency (IEA); and held various roles at DG Energy, including director in charge of renewables, research and innovation, energy efficiency; and director for energy policy, international relations, legal aspects and economic analysis. Previously, she was head of Unit on the 2030 Energy and Climate Framework and served in the Cabinet of Erkki Liikanen, former European commissioner for Enterprise Policy and Information Society.

As Chief Energy Modeller, Laura Cozzi oversees the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) outlooks and forecasts. She is in charge of ensuring the consistency of the modelling work and the resulting messages. Cozzi is also Head of the Demand Outlook Division, responsible for producing the annual World Energy Outlook: the IEA flagship publication that is regarded as the gold standard in energy analysis. The Division produces medium- to long-term energy demand, efficiency, power generation, renewables and environmental analysis for this report and other publications.