Planning Committee asia

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.

Ripu comes with 15 years of international multi-disciplinary experience in facilitating India’s clean energy transition. He specializes in design and development of both on-line and off-line monitoring and evaluation and program and knowledge management systems. Past decade of his specialized experience is in the clean energy sector, during which he has worked with a variety of donors and institutions, including U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), Department for International Developed (DFID), Government of UK, and The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). While framing M&E systems has been Ripu’s forte, leading continuous improvement efforts and knowledge management within organizations and programs has been an equivalent mission all through his career.

Most recently, Ripu has been the Monitoring, Evaluation and Knowledge Management Specialist for USAID Greening the Grid (GTG) Renewable Integration and Sustainable Energy (RISE) Initiative, implemented by Deloitte Consulting. It is a five-year program implemented in partnership with the Ministry of Power (MOP), Government of India (GOI) that aims to support GOI’s efforts to manage large-scale integration of Renewable Energy (RE) into the grid. Previously Ripu served as the M&E Specialist for USAID/India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy – Deployment (PACE-D) Technical Assistance Program. His key responsibilities in these roles have been to develop results-based, gender disaggregated strategy and define Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) including collection of baseline data to demonstrate quantitative results and progress; develop strategy to sustain and scale program interventions including cross cutting initiatives such as gender equality and private sector engagement; provide strategic advisory inputs to the Chief of Party (COP) and USAID for effective program operations and management in light of dynamic global scenario and U.S. and India government priorities; Enable program coordination and joint work planning among U.S. Government (USG) activities, Government of India (GOI) stakeholders; consolidate content and develop weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual reports to USAID on program performance measurement; guide a dedicated support staff for M&E/KM activities along with working closely with the engineering team to deliver agreed deliverables.

Earlier, while at TERI, Ripu travelled across rural India villages, South-East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa on energy access issues working closely with the rural communities, especially rural women at the grassroots level. He worked with a variety of state and local governments, public and private sector stakeholders and donor agencies. He also led multiple key Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) projects for a variety of public and private corporate donors as the Principal Investigator, including ICICI Foundation, Rural Electrification Corporation, Power Finance Corporation, Power System Operation Corporation, and GAIL India Limited.

Ripu is a great believer in forming alliances. In his most recent engagement at USAID GTG-RISE Initiative, he has been instrumental with on boarding of leaders, experts, international agencies and think-tanks in forming interest groups such as the Industry Advisory Council (IAC) aimed at enhanced private sector engagement in the clean energy transition; and South Asia Women in Energy (SAWIE) Initiative aimed at accelerating representation of women at the leadership levels in the energy, industrial and manufacturing sectors in the South Asia Region. Ripu is an expert reviewer for REN21 Global Status Report and Mentor for POWERED Accelerator, an initiative by Shell Foundation, DFID, Zone Start-ups

Ripu loves to interact socially and can be found at LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Balawant Joshi is a founder, promoter and Managing Director of Idam Infrastructure Advisory Private Limited. Balawant is also Adjunct Fellow of Center for Strategic and International Studies, Ranked #1 Think Tank in USA by Global Go TO Think Tank Index and Secretary of Indian Renewable Energy Federation.

He is an energy and infrastructure expert with nearly 30 years of experience. In power sector, his experience spans across entire value chain i.e. generation, transmission, distribution and supply. He has been extensively involved in restructuring/ reforms of utilities and has dealt with various issues ranging from financial restructuring, regulatory, financial due diligence, assessment and development IT processes, etc.

Balawant has been working in renewable energy sector for nearly 20 years and has been involved in several landmark initiatives in the sector. He was involved in the first Feed-In Tariff (FIT) determination for wind and solar sector at state as well as central government. He was involved in implementation of the first three Renewable Purchase Obligations at the state level in the country. He was involved in design, development and implementation of ‘Renewable Energy Certificate Mechanism’ in the country.

In Energy Efficiency, he was closely associated with IEA – DSM Implementing Agreement where he managed “Branding of Energy Efficiency” and “Energy Efficiency Portfolio Standard” tasks as Operating Agent. He developed “Institutional Structure and regulatory framework for Demand Side Management for utility sector in India” for Forum of Regulators, statutory body of electricity regulators in India. He was also involved in design of ‘Perform, Achieve and Trade’ mechanism, a market-based mechanism for promotion of industrial energy efficiency.

Balawant also heads ESCO company Enfragy Solutions, wholly owned subsidiary of Idam Infra. Enfragy has carried out more than 250 energy audits and has executed several ESCO projects. Currently, he is assisting distribution utility in obtaining regulatory approvals for its Behavioral Energy Efficiency project.

Balawant is an electrical engineer with post graduation in both finance and software technology. He is a member of Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineer (IEEE) and Life Member of Computer Society of India.

R.M. Soedjono (Jon) Respati is currently Chairman of the Indonesian Energy Efficiency and Conservation (MASKEEI). Before taking his current post at MASKEEI, Jon was a senior clean energy development and a long activist with Indonesian Renewable Energy Society (METI) in which he served twice at its Board of Directors, and in other capacities including Director of Business Development, Solar Energy Focus Group, and in organizing several national and international conferences on renewable energy on METI’s behalf. He is currently a member of METI’s Board of R.E. Business Association.

His business and professional career spans over more than four decades in which he has held senior positions at various national and international companies and organizations in Indonesia and abroad.  He began his professional career as a government civil servant in the early 1960s with the Ministry of Public Works, before moving to the Netherlands to pursue his study in Economics and Business at the Vrije University, Amsterdam. In Indonesia, he worked for an international oil company before he took up the position of CEO with a major international brewery and beverage company, and later in various senior positions with companies in the fields of Tourism Business, Power, Plantations and Renewable Energy.

He was a lecturer in Green Economy at a local University, and led the founding of the Center for Sustainability at the same university. He was also a guest lecturer at several high learning institutions and a speaker at many seminars, workshops and conferences on clean energy. He was involved in the founding of the Indonesia Renewable Energy Society in early 2000, and became a senior activist promoting Indonesia development of renewable energy in collaboration with the government. He later founded the Indonesian Energy Conservation and Efficiency in 2014 and became its first Chairman.

Jon attended a Doctoral Studies program at Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and holds a Master’s Degree in Economics and Business.

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.

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.

Ram Chandra Lamichhane, Ph.D., has been working as a professional trainer, facilitator, researcher, project evaluator and strategic planner for the last 20 years. He has worked for the positive transformation of organizations and facilitated numerous trainings, workshops, conferences in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, China, South Africa, Malaysia, Bangkok and The Philippines.

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.

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.

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.

Linda Dethman is a social scientist and behavior change expert who helps her clients conduct pioneering clean energy and integrated sustainability research projects designed to:

• Protect and efficiently use resources
• Help people, communities, and markets take energy friendly actions
• Create enduring tools for change
• Produce measurable outcomes

She has worked in the United States, Canada, Asia, the South Pacific, and Africa. Her clients include Energy Trust of Oregon, NW Energy Efficiency Alliance, utilities throughout the NW United States, BC Hydro, Efficiency Nova Scotia, New York State Energy Development Authority, Con Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric, USAID, USDOE, and the Secretariat of the Pacific.

Ms. Dethman couples qualitative and quantitative research skills with in-depth knowledge of  the design and results of  hundreds of sustainability programs. Clients depend upon her to solve problems, recommend workable solutions, and track the impacts of programs, including technical assistance, capacity building, social marketing, equipment and behavior changes, and policy efforts. She is a professional facilitator, teacher, presenter, and an award-winning writer.

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.

Verena Pichler is a qualified climate scientist, economist and lawyer specialising in development, implementation and evaluation of best practice economic environmental policies.  With a career that spans the private, public and not-for profit sector, Verena brings a multidisciplinary and diverse perspective to the consideration of policies. With a strong background in energy demand-side management, Verena currently leads the project team evaluating Australia’s largest energy efficiency certificate trading program (the Victorian Energy Upgrades program). This follows from her previous project, which quantified costs and benefits of the program to date over its ten year lifetimes, and set ambitious new emissions reduction targets. Verena specialises in evaluating programs from a technical, environmental, social and economic perspective, including how they can best support consumers, but also governments, in transitioning to a net zero carbon economy.  While her focus lies in strategic evaluation, Verena has also worked extensively in evaluating technologies, including evaluating baselines for deemed, and measurement & verification upgrade methodologies. Verena’s recent focus is in evaluating market dynamics associated with small certificate trading programs in order to promote price efficiency and reduce program costs.