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Sustainable transport - Biographies
Dr Daniel Aklil - Managing Director - Pure Energy® Centre
Dr. Aklil is Managing Director of the Pure Energy® Centre, Member of the Forum for Renewable Energy Development in Scotland (FREDS) and Director of the Scottish Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association. He has over 10 years experience in Energy Efficient Transport technologies which include LPG, Bio-Fuels, Battery hybrid and hydrogen vehicles and has led a team of expert in the deployment of a hydrogen infrastructure. He is the author and co-author of over 30 publications and is trilingual French, English and Arabic. He specialises in transport technologies, electronic control systems, feasibility studies, project management, marketing, and hydrogen fuel cell technologies. He is also a Non-Executive Director to a number of companies.
Peter Bach - Principal Engineer - Ballard Power Systems
Peter Bach has over 15 years of fuel cell and fuel cell system development experience. He has been involved in numerous fuel cell and fuel cell systems applications in automotive, bus, materials handling, and stationary markets. Notably, he has been the product architect and technical leader for three generations of automotive fuel cell stacks as well as the fuel cell system product development leader for European fuel cell bus fleet. His demonstrated technical skills range from the core fuel cell stack technology development to complete turn key fuel cell systems. Mr Bach has also managed large technical teams involving complex technical and business trade offs.
Peter holds a Bachelor in Engineering from the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada.
Ash Gupta - Managing Partner - The Gupta Partnership
Ash Gupta is a respected Marketing man with a classical international business grounding in Ford, which he joined as a graduate trainee in 1969. During the next 10 years he made his mark helping establish the Ford of Europe Transportation office where innovative transport systems and vehicles were developed. He developed “Dial-A Ride”, Britain’s first demand-actuated public transport system, Ash went on to be part of the Small Car Product Planning team that developed the Ford Fiesta, the automotive industry’s fastest 0 - Million selling vehicle. He went on to European roles Co-ordinating the Pan-Europe launch for Fiesta, & controlling Advertising and Sales Promotion for Ford across EMEA. At the start of his career in Ford, he gained further post-grad qualifications in Urban Transportation Planning at the University of London.
He has managed his own Marketing agencies since 1981. Ash Gupta Advertising was the first Scottish agency to gain quality institutional investment. He went on to create Ash Gupta Communications Group & quickly won the reputation for effective & internationally award winning work for precious brands like Harris Tweed,Theakston’s Ales, Newcastle Brown Ale, which they launched in the USA, Linn Hi-Fi & Pringle.
Working with his wife over 30 years, they have now created a powerful niche Consultancy specialising in Sustainable & Disruptive technologies, The Gupta Partnership, based in Edinburgh, concentrating on international marketing for mults like Microsoft, Ford, ITT, Fender, Dialight plc, ADP & RSA, and specialsed micro gen companies like Energreen AS & Zeropex AS. TGP has a strong presence in the area of sustainable transport & disruptive clean-tech.
In 2002 they launched the world’s first production Electric City Car for Ford called Th!nk with a 3 year trial involving 20 Scottish Companies called Think@boutEdinburgh, a joint project with Ford, The Scottish Executive, The City of Edinburgh Council, and The Energy Savings Trust. They are still very heavily involved in the marketing of electric vehicles.
Specialties: In 2007 we were appointed as consultants in Sustainable Automotive Transport to the Scottish Government. We issued our first report the same year. In Nov. 2007 we were asked by the Government to work on the feasibility of building a center for design, engineering and prototyping of sustainable vehicles. TGP has become respected for award winning and effective creative work in technology, software, automotive, food, fashion, finance, wine, beer & whisky, leisure, travel and branded consumer durables.
Shane Slater - Director - elementenergy
Shane is a director of Element Energy, one of the UK’s leading energy and climate change consultancies. Element Energy helps its clients create policies, strategies and products to decarbonise transport, energy generation, and the built environment.
Shane leads the company’s work on low carbon transport. The transport team in Element has: pioneered the use of travel data to understand driving habits and therefore EV infrastructure requirements; a deep understanding of consumer attitudes to low carbon transport; and recently developed the Electric Car Consumer model which projects the mix of drivetrains for the UK passenger car sector to 2050.
Iain Todd - Renewables Champion - Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group
Iain Todd is an engineer, who has worked in both the private sector and the Civil Service. He has held senior posts in the HSE, the Department of the Environment, and the DTI, mostly on energy-related issues. Between 2000 and 2002, Iain was Director of Oil and Gas Development in Aberdeen; then between 2002 and 2004 he was the UK’s Director of Renewable Energy.
Since 2004 Iain has worked as a renewable energy consultant. Much of his time is given to his role as Renewables Champion to the Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group (AREG) In this role he has acted as project manager for the planned Aberdeen offshore wind farm, which is intended not only to act as a power station for the city, but also as a national test centre for offshore wind technology. This project recently received an investment of 40 million Euros as part of the EU economic recovery programme.
Iain is Hon Professor of Renewable Energy Policy at both Aberdeen University and the Robert Gordon University, and is a frequent presenter at conferences on renewable policy issues, including at the Global Wind Energy Conference in Beijing.
He is also chair of the Grampian Biomass Working Group.
