Ambassadors asia

Marie Couture-Roy is the Program Evaluation Director at Econoler, an international consulting firm with 35 years of experience in the design, implementation, evaluation and financing of energy efficiency and renewable energy programs and projects. She has extensive experience in the energy efficiency sector and more specifically in the evaluation of energy management programs both in Canada and abroad. Marie has participated in the evaluation of numerous energy efficiency programs in most provinces around Canada, as well as on the international market (Mexico and Chile), to measure energy impacts and help improve processes, among other.

With the ultimate goals of shifting the market toward more EE technologies and transforming behaviors, ratepayer-funded programs represent one of the most successful and cost-effective solutions to reducing energy usage and fighting climate change. Achieving these objectives requires regular program evaluations to continuously improve impacts on the market and ensure programs are on track to cost-effectively achieving long-term objectives.

Jialing has worked at Energy Foundation China for 8 years focusing on industry energy efficiency, and appliance energy efficiency and labels. Her experience includes policy research and analysis, program design, implementation and evaluation, grant making, project management, and developing relationships with donors, business enterprises, research institutes and other stakeholders.

Jialing holds a master’s degree in Manufacturing Engineering from Boston University, a master’s degree in Material Science and Engineering from University of Science and Technology Beijing and a B.S. in Inorganic and Nonmetal Material from University of Science and Technology Beijing.

Steivan Defilla is a visiting Professor at the School of Architecture in Tianjin University. He has been the Assistant President of the APEC Sustainable Energy Center (APSEC) since 2018. He is the lead author of a recent report on the topic “APEC Sustainable Urban Development Annual Report – From Models to Results.” At APSEC, he will focus on empowering cities to do results-oriented monitoring of the key Sustainable Development Goals related to energy, CO2 emissions and disaster risk reduction.

He is the former Director of the Energy Charter (2010-2016), an intergovernmental energy organization with 50 Member states, headquartered in Brussels. He managed the expansion of the Energy Charter to include 30 new observer states, among them China, who all signed the International Energy Charter declaration in May 2015 in an ad hoc Ministerial conference in The Hague, The Netherlands. He also supervised or co-authored 26 studies and analyses and 2 books on energy-related subjects.
As Senior Energy Advisor to the Swiss Economics Minister (1999-2010), he contributed to the reform of the Swiss electricity sector, the Swiss infrastructure strategy and the Swiss foreign energy policy. He wrote a book and co-authored 13 articles in English, German, French and Russian languages. He also attended Governing Board meetings of the IEA and co-chaired multilateral negotiations at the Energy Charter.

Steivan holds a Master degree in Statistics and a Bachelor degree in Economics from the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He also holds a Postgraduate degree on Energy from the Federal Polytechnic Institute in Lausanne.

Dr. Archana Walia is a practicing development professional with over twenty-four years of core experience of working on issues across the sectors ranging from climate change; clean energy, energy efficiency, urban development, water management and integrated resource management.

She has served in several leadership position as a country director, deputy office director, senior climate change advisor and a team leader with demonstrable experience to lead teams of professionals and administrative staff, planning strategies and programs, managing the portfolio for results, planning budgets and financial management.

Serving as the Director of India program at CLASP, she provides leadership, management, and strategic direction to all program activities to ensure the efficient use of resources and achievement of results. She oversees strategies and activities for India’s participation in the Global programs such as Superefficient Appliance and Deployment program (SEAD) under the Clean Energy Ministerial as well as actively develops business development strategies.

Archana served as the deputy director of the Office of Clean Energy and Environment at USAID/India. In this capacity, she served as the senior energy and climate change advisor at USAID providing intellectual leadership, advisory and analytical inputs in the development of climate change program strategies including clean energy, sustainable landscape and water. Her experience ranges from developing program strategies and analyzing the financial, economic, institutional, technological and environmental costs and benefits of various regulatory, policy and technological changes especially relating to clean energy and energy efficiency. Prior to this, Archana worked with the Department for International Development (DFID), UK bilateral agency for over four years managing the first ever Power Sector Reform Program in India in the state of Orissa. She worked with the British Council division as Project officer for three years administering and managing projects and training program in the field of Natural Resources and Environment.

Rislima Sitompul has been working as a senior researcher at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), with over 20 years of experience in solutions-driven technical research, project leading, and team management. Her research focuses on energy policy, renewable energy studies, energy related CO2 emissions, and the application of appropriate technologies for community development.She has a number of experiences researching and evaluating various industries within Indonesia, and has a firm understanding of the local contexts in which she works. Rislima has conducted research and evaluation on energy financing, reforestation and bio-energy, and promoting regional innovation in Indonesia. She has also experienced working with the World Bank, the Danish Government, the UN Development Program, USAID and the Asian and Pacific Development Centre, mostly on renewable energy issues.

The use of renewable energy has been an important issue in Indonesia’s energy policy as part of the government policy to reduce the use of fossil fuel and also as an effective tool to reduce GHG emissions. A number of policies on renewable energy that have been enacted recently have shown significant increase in renewable energy use, reaching about 12.52 percent in 2017. However, Indonesia aims to achieve the target of 23% renewable energy use by 2025 and 31% by 2050. There are still a lot of efforts that should be done to achieve these target within the remaining few years. Evaluation is crucial in this effort so that any energy development activities can be directed to achieve the target. Evaluation is also important in gaining sustainability of energy development.

Rislima is glad to become a member of the EEAP ambassador team and being able to use her expertise and skill to contribute on making a successful team work on energy evaluation.

Currently, Tubagus Iqbal is an Ambassador for Energy Evaluation Asia Pacific and an affiliate at the Centre for Energy Security Studies, Indonesia Defense University. He is working with colleagues around the world in developing a community of evaluators of energy programs in the Asia Pacific.

Evaluation is a sequence in the process that is very important because it ensures sustainability for a cycle to get improvement. Through this improvement, the quality of life will increase over time. Evaluation in the field of energy will ensure that the quality of life is improving, using the development of new technologies based on the assessment of previous technologies.

Effective evaluation will lead to many opportunities in the private and public sectors in the design, implementation, and evaluation of renewable energy and energy efficiency programs and policies.

The area of energy evaluation is interesting because it opens the opportunities for improving society. Tubagus is excited about working with new and experienced individuals and organizations in this effort. Hopefully, his contribution to the future of the world, and especially to his country Indonesia, will bring Indonesia to be similar to developed countries through future-oriented and sustainable programs and policies.

Ms. Asanova is currently a project coordinator in the private sector. She started her career as a lawyer with the State Department on Land Management and registration of Rights on Real Estate in the Kyrgyz Republic. She provided consultancy services in energy efficiency and waste management projects in the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2016, and was involved as an expert in water management project in Kyrgyz Republic in 2018.

Ms. Asanova is interested in Climate Change, Monitoring and Evaluation of projects. She has completed courses in Monitoring and Evaluation, and, in 2017, she completed an e-learning course, “National Evaluation Capacity Development for Country-led Monitoring & Evaluation Systems,” organized by EvalPartners.

In her view, evaluation and adjustment should be applicable not only in a project cycle but also on policies and strategic measures, so that outcomes of joint efforts on national, regional and international levels could be coordinated and rapidly moved in the right direction. She is particularly interested in decreasing GHG emissions from the fossil-fuel combined heat and power plants by using various methods such as improving fossil fuel technologies at the production stage as well as ensuring effective distribution and rational consumption of heat and power through the installation of customized heat supply stations. She notes that developing countries in Central Asia are not industrialized, but are on the beginning of their path to the renewable resources. In this regard, the balance of interests among communities, governments and businesses at all levels is crucial for achieving common goals together for the greater good of lives, species and our planet Earth.

Somphanh Phomma has more than 20 years working experience on different development projects in Lao PDR. He has studied in Thailand and Laos, having a M.Sc. in Social Science for Development (Thailand) and B.A. in English Language and Literature (Laos).

His project experience includes Lao Evaluation Network, Sustainable Forest Management (SUFORD), ICT capacity building for forest governance (ICT for FLEG), training for socio-economic data collection and analysis in ADB project (ADB RETA), agricultural development (WB), but also hydropower and land titling projects. In these projects, He has worked as a project manager, advisor and procurement specialist, while successfully acting as a link between project stakeholders and providing trainings on a variety of issues required for success in these projects.

Currently, Sarah Sharuddin is an affiliate with the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (MESTECC) in Malaysia and has been involved in energy efficiency programs and workshops for Malaysia since 2017. Started her career with the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI) in 2014 and has been involved in assisting policy making for the ministry particularly on oceanography issues.

She was a National Science Fellowship receiver majoring in Marine Science while in tertiary education. Environmental issues have always been close to her heart. Sarah was involved with a few NGOs like WWF and Save Our Seahorses (SOS) Foundation during her university days.

Juan Ignacio Navarrete is currently Deputy General Director of Energy Efficiency Policies and Programs in the National Commission for the Efficient Use of Energy (CONUEE) of Mexico since 2013. His career in the Mexican energy sector has always been linked to the statistical analysis of energy demand and forecasting exercises for modeling the consumption and supply of energy in my country in the last 16 years.

In Conuee, Ignacio was invited to develop for the first time an area of statistics, evaluation and modeling of the impacts of the energy efficiency policies in Mexico. This challenge meant from the integration of a small team, gathering a data collection in more than 33 public and private institutions to develop a database online of energy efficiency indicators in different sectors such as macroeconomic, energy, transport, industry, commercial-services, residential and agriculture. This task produced more than 150 energy efficiency indicators and a set of online tools that allow to evaluate the progress of energy efficiency in the country since 1990.

Similarly, the work of the last 5 years involved a bilateral agreement with France, in particular with AFD, ADEME and ENERDATA. As a result of this international cooperation, we could write a national energy efficiency report in 2018 and was developed for ECLAC of the UN. This report shows the progress of energy efficiency policies in the last 20 years in Mexico.

Recently, he has been analyzing this information and using it to assess the positive impacts as co-benefits by the energy efficiency policies in the Mexican households, as policy for overcome energy poverty in Mexico.

On the other hand, those achievements in the national statistics and evaluation were sufficient and fundamental to overcome the evaluation of Mexico’s accession process to the International Energy Agency, and they were was useful to develop the demand restriction program for oil products in an emergency during the same evaluation; as a result, Mexico was accepted in the accession as the 30th member.

Dr. Gana Pati Ojha, a national of Nepal, has about 30 years’ experience in development in different capacities in several countries. For the last 20 years he has been actively involved in research and evaluation with state and non-state actors as a team leader. He has used different approaches of evaluation in his work including contribution analysis, appreciative inquiry, and value for money in addition to other common approaches to evaluation. He also has experience in developing M&E guidelines, promoting quality evaluation through knowledge generation in evaluation, evaluation capacity development, and organizing international and national conclaves, workshops, network meetings and seminars. He is also experienced in managing evaluation organizations, and creating enabling environments for evaluation by contributing to the formation of evaluation policy framework, a M&E Bill, motivating parliamentarians to be evaluation sensitive and helping organize evaluation forums of parliamentarians. He has over three dozen publications and was awarded an Award of Excellence by EvalPartners in 2015 for his outstanding work in evaluation.

Dr. Ojha is the Founder and President of Imagine Nepal and Capital College and Research Centre as well as the President of the Association of Fellows, Students, Trainees and Residents of the International Rice Research Institute (AFSTRI) for 1997/98 in the Philippines. He was one of the key persons to establish the Community of Evaluators-Nepal and served as its Chairperson from 2014 to 2017.

Dr. Ojha is on the Board of Trustees of the International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (IOCE), and he is a member of the Management Group of EvalPartners, a global Network for the promotion of Volunteer Organizations for Professional Evaluation. He is also serving as an Adjunct Professor at the Agriculture and Forestry University, Nepal.

Hur has 15 years of experience in designing and conducting evaluations in and around fragility, conflict and violence. He has lived and worked in some of the worst contexts in Asia, Middle East and Africa.

Hur has designed, commissioned and conducted research and evaluations for projects funded by the UN agencies, European Commission, private donors and governments of the UK, Canada, Switzerland, Netherlands and Norway. Hur is an expert in experimental and quasi-experimental designs, participatory and theory-based evaluation approaches and has developed innovative tools that have been used on the face of the conflict and presented internationally.

He is an elected Board Member at the International Development Evaluation Association [IDEAS]. At IDEAS, Hur convenes the Thematic Interest Group on Evaluations in Fragility, Conflict and Violence [EvalFCV]. Hur has 15 years of experience in designing and conducting evaluations in and around fragility, conflict and violence. He has lived and worked in some of the worst contexts in Asia, Middle East and Africa. Hur has designed, commissioned and conducted research and evaluations for projects funded by the UN agencies, European Commission, private donors and governments of the UK, Canada, Switzerland, Netherlands and Norway. Hur is an expert in experimental and quasi-experimental designs, participatory and theory-based evaluation approaches and has developed innovative tools that have been used on the face of the conflict and presented internationally.

He is an elected Board Member at the International Development Evaluation Association [IDEAS]. At IDEAS, Hur convenes the Thematic Interest Group on Evaluations in Fragility, Conflict and Violence [EvalFCV].

Romeo is interested in how evaluation can further influence policy-makers and corporate practitioners into getting the right understanding that the true results of energy efficiency programs are not just reducing loss and reaping windfall profits, but that of uplifting the welfare and lives of people.

Romeo Santos strongly believes in the cross and trans-disciplinary fusion of corporate, academia, and community practices. It brings good benefits to individuals and society. After all, living is actually a cross and trans-disciplinary mixture of life pursuits.

Romeo’s affiliation with the College of Architecture, University of the Philippines as a professor helps him develop diverse exposure in the industry and international development fields -including community extension services. The evaluation career that he now practices enables him to work in league with practitioners in national government agencies (NGAs); local and international NGOs; the UN, financial intermediaries; development organizations, and many other professionals in the public, private, and plural sectors. He works with the global evaluation community in advancing the cause of evaluation in all disciplines, but specifically in energy efficiency, which is very relevant to his education in architectural engineering.

Hae-in is working on the evaluations of various programs from energy to international development field, Hae-in has been involved in the entire process of monitoring and evaluation. Working with diverse partners such as utility and government, Hae-in has designed a monitoring and evaluation framework, defined indicators, and developed methodologies for impact evaluations. Currently, Hae-in is focusing on the evaluation of demand side management programs, and has been assessing (or estimating) the impact of the programs.

Good evaluations of energy programs in Asia-Pacific will definitely help to use energy efficiently and achieve a transition to clean energy.

Ilya Dolmatov is Director of the Institute of Pricing and Regulation of Natural Monopolies (link). He also works at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics”.

He is Head of scientific-practical and expert-consulting work in the field of evaluation of the effectiveness of investment programs, tariff policy and tariff setting for utility services (electricity, gas).

Since 2017, he has been a Member of the Expert Council the Committee of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation for Energy. Since 2011, he has been a Member of the editorial board of the journal “Electric Stations.”

Chitra has more than 17 years of experience in advisory/consulting services in the development sector, particularly in the areas of energy (power sector) and climate change. For the past 10 years, she has been deeply involved in conducting monitoring and evaluation as part of technical assistance related to power projects, both off-grid and on-grid, and climate change/low carbon development sector.

Chitra is currently leading a team of Independent Verification Agents to verify the performance of the PLN (Indonesian electric utilities) distribution network against the indicators of PLN’s result-based lending from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the World Bank’s Program for Results.  In this assignment, she also acts as the lead auditor to verify PLN’s achievements of the results framework (both Disbursement Link Indicators (DLIs) and non-DLIs) and of the program action plan.

Chitra was the monitoring and evaluation specialist in an ADB technical assistance project, “Scaling Up Renewable Energy Access in Eastern Indonesia,” where she developed the monitoring and evaluation plan for the “Sumba Iconic Island Initiative,” a program that aims at scaling up energy access in Sumba Island in eastern Indonesia, by using renewable energy sources. The program consists of fifteen sub-programs including scaling up small-scale hydro projects, solar power and biomass power generation.

In a World Bank-funded assignment, Chitra led a team in conducting the evaluation of micro-hydro project operations that had been developed under PNPM (Program Nasional Pemberdayaan Masyarakat (National Program in community empowerment)) green block grants. The evaluation covered 15 micro-hydro locations in Sumatera and Sulawesi, Indonesia, and it included an evaluation of the financial analysis of the operation (investment and revenue), the socio-economic benefits and the operation and management quality of micro–hydro projects.

Chitra’s monitoring and evaluation experience in climate change issues includes assistance to carbon credit transactions and verifications, greenhouse gas accounting and audits for oil and gas industry and cement manufacturers. Her regional coverage of working experience covers China, Indonesia, Malaysia, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, United Kingdom, and Vietnam.

Chitra received her Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Indonesia. She earned her Master’s degrees in Energy Technology from the Asian Institute of Technology, Thailand, and in International Project Management from ESCP Europe, France.

Huijun currently holds the position of a Research Associate at the Energy Studies Institute (ESI) of Singapore. Huijun has always had a strong interest in the environment and nature. Previously, she specialized in the water sector, and has recently made the transition into the energy sector – specializing in energy efficiency. Despite being new, she brings along her previous experiences and has the opportunity to lead research in the area of energy efficiency policy evaluation and policy design in Singapore.

Asela Kalugampitiya is a Sri Lankan lawyer currently working as EvalPartners Executive Coordinator. EvalPartners is a Global partnership of civil society evaluation capacity development. He manages evaluation capacity building initiatives around the world.

Asela has been working in the M&E field for over 15 years particularly in gender equality and policy development. He has worked for international organizations including International Development Law Organization (IDLO), UN Women, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), International Labor Organization (ILO) and CARE International as Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist.

Asela was instrumental in launching International Year of Evaluation 2015 and organizing Global Evaluation Forum held at the parliament of Nepal and parliament of Kyrgyz Republic. He was also instrumental in initiating parliamentarians’ movement promoting evaluation culture: Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation. The first ever parliamentarians evaluation forum was held in Colombo in Sep 2018 with participation of over 250 delegates from over 70 countries where parliamentarians committed for the Colombo Declaration.

He has worked as the (honorary) Director- Center for Evaluation, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka. He is a member of the teaching faculty of the Post Graduate Diploma in Evaluation course run by the same university.

Boonrod Yaowapruek is currently the Director and Head of climate finance practice at Creagy, a result-oriented consultancy specialized in energy and climate change.He has over 18 years of experience in clean energy and financing in Asia. Recently, Roonrod was the investment mobilization lead at USAID Clean Power Asia and the clean energy finance team leader at USAID PFAN-Asia, where he led the team to work with policy makers, developers, investors, and financial institutions in identifying barriers and facilitating the clean energy investment across Asia. He also served in various roles as originator, structurer, analyst and consultant at GDF SUEZ (Engie), Eneco Energy Trade BV, ABN AMRO Bank NV and ERM-Siam.

Since 2015, Boonrod has been focusing his work on monitoring and evaluation for clients to ensure that their programs/projects are effective, efficient and sustainable. Creagy supported the Ministry of Energy to monitor and evaluate national energy policies and their energy projects funded by the Energy Conservation Fund (Encon fund) in Thailand. Some people still don’t understand differences between ‘evaluation ‘ and ‘audit’, and think an evaluator is an evil trying to catch their bad. Boonrod believes evaluation is a very important step that we can’t ignore. It is the whole game to understand more and gain lessons learned & feedbacks to grow and to become better, wiser, and stronger. He really hopes we grow this evaluation community to make our world grow sustainably.

I am currently an Affiliate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), where I was involved in the evaluation of energy efficiency programs and technology performance measurement for over 36 years. I have been working with colleagues around the world in developing a community of evaluators of energy programs in Asia Pacific. As part of this effort, I have been involved in organizing workshops in Asia, as well as organizing our first conference in Asia in Bangkok in November 2017.

Evaluation is critical for improving our way of life: Developing new energy programs and policies as well as improving existing energy programs and policies, for implementing the path to sustainability.
My work and career is evaluation! My close network of colleagues are involved in evaluation, and I look forward to working with others (especially the “next generation”) in promoting evaluation.

Effective evaluation will lead to many opportunities in the private and public sectors in the design, implementation and evaluation of renewable energy and energy efficiency programs and policies.
I am interested in this area of energy evaluation because of the opportunities for improving society, and I am excited in working with new and experienced individuals and organizations in this effort. Evaluation is often misunderstood and under appreciated: I hope this community of evaluators will change that image.

Mr. Hoang Viet Dung is an Energy Expert and Project Coordinator for the World Bank/Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) Project: Vietnam Energy Efficiency for Industrial Enterprises, and he is responsible for oversight and coordination of project implementation. He has been working in the energy efficiency area for 13 years on various subjects: policy, green finance, technology, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation for energy efficiency.

He is also involved as a consultant to the MOIT’s Vietnam National Energy Efficiency Program where he is responsible for the evaluation of energy labeling/MEPS program and is supporting capacity building activities related to energy efficiency. His past work has included evaluation of labeling applications (including site audits) and monitoring and evaluation related to energy efficiency labels, standards and policies.