Date/Time: 14th October 2014

Since the first light bulb was lit in the North East, electricity has become a commodity so essential to our world that it would have been hard for Joseph Swan to foresee the scale at which his invention would change our lives and the economy. Now in the 21st century, we produce and consume electricity in ways that did not exist in the 1880s.

The series of technology and market evolutions that have taken place since then have created their own set of issues, and energy is now the subject of passionate political debate.

This lecture reflects the challenges of today associated with low-carbon energy and how this relates to both the history and the future.

Speaker biography

Phil Jones is Chief Executive of Northern Powergrid, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Energy. Northern Powergrid’s primary activity is running the electricity power distribution networks in Yorkshire and the Northeast of England.

Phil has a PhD in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and is a chartered electrical engineer; he has been in the electricity distribution sector since 1993. He progressed through a number of technical and managerial roles in Yorkshire Electricity prior to the merger with Northern Electric in 2001.

Phil joined the board of the combined companies in 2002 and took up his current role in 2006. He is an active representative on the smart grids forum, the environmental advisory group and the predecessor groups that provided technical advice to the Government and Ofgem on the development of distributed generation. Phil was President of the ENA between 2008 and 2010 and, in 2007, was awarded an OBE for his services to the industry.