Dr Spyros Foteinis is a chartered (Technical Chamber of Greece) Environmental Engineer working at the interface of environmental sustainability and climate change, with expertise in life cycle assessment (LCA), carbon dioxide removal (CDR), circular economy, and water and renewable energy. He has nearly two decades of progressive experience in academia and industry; in the latter working as a senior engineer in the water and renewable energy sector where, among others, was involved in several industrial projects that were valued well over €100M.
His research background includes working in large consortium-based research projects and being a principal and co-investigator in several of them, while he has been associated with several institutions such as The University of Cyprus, The University of Edinburgh, The University of Southern California, and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (South Africa). Since 2020, he works at Heriot-Watt University, focusing both on teaching and research of the environmental sustainability of engineering systems including different CDR approaches such as ocean liming, (coastal) enhanced weathering, and electrochemical splitting of waste desalination brines for alkalinity generation.
Spyros currently contributes to the ENSIGN project by examining engineering and particularly environmental aspects of thermal energy storage and avenues to improve the environmental sustainability of future electricity networks thus underpinning decarbonisation and a faster transition to net-zero.
Prof John Andresen is a Professor in Energy Systems at Heriot-Watt University and Associate Director of Hydrogen and Low-Carbon Energies within the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions. He is the ETP Hydrogen Strategic Champion , member of the RSB Power-to-X Working Group and sits on the IEA Hydrogen TCP task force on Underground Hydrogen Storage. Dr Andresen has close to 100 publications spanning a range of energy intensive sectors and has been active securing over £42m funding in the area of decarbonisation and hydrogen. He is the CI of the £20m Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) with particular emphasis on synthetic fuels (PtL) for decarbonisation. Prof Andresen is bringing a 30+year experience working with power-intensive industry to ENSIGN with a particular focus on multiple energy vectors – electricity, heat, hydrogen and storage – to enable decarbonisation of the chemical and related industries especially at clusters.
Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer (FRSE, FIChemE, FRSC, FRSA, FEI) is Champion and Director of the UK Industrial Decarbonisation Research and Innovation Centre (IDRIC) focused on accelerating the transition to net zero of the UK industrial clusters and establishing the first world net-zero industrial cluster.
She is Deputy Principal (Global Sustainability) at Heriot-Watt University leading institutional and global changes in sustainability. She is the Director of the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS), delivering innovation for the wider deployment of low-carbon energy systems required for meeting net-zero targets.
Her internationally recognised track record covers energy systems, CCUS, integration of hydrogen technologies and low-carbon fuels.
Dr Omid Shahrokhi holds a PhD in Petroleum Engineering with a focus on the physics of multiphase flow in porous media. His research focuses on employing subsurface storage capacities to allow the production of low and zero-carbon emission energy sources. Since 2018, when he joined the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions (RCCS) as a postdoctoral researcher, he has worked on solutions for optimising permanent CO2 and temporary hydrogen storage in subsurface reservoirs.
Dr. Shahrokhi is deeply interested in exploring how underground energy storage solutions can facilitate the transition of energy vectors, such as electricity and hydrogen, to net zero. He currently contributes to the ENSIGN project, which examines how different energy vectors and industrial clusters can enhance future electricity networks by reducing operational costs and carbon emissions. His ultimate career goal is to help minimise the economic cost of energy transition (i.e., reducing carbon emissions to zero) for the public by informing policy decisions and optimal use of subsurface resources for carbon and energy storage.
