Graham Weale

Why organisations work with Graham Weale

• Nine years as Chief Economist of RWE AG, Germany’s largest power producer, through the sharpest phase of the Energiewende. Few speakers have read the transition from inside a utility of that scale.
• Active academic output on the questions boards are asking now, including a 2023 Energy Policy paper on whether energy-only markets can remunerate investment and a 2024 EnWZ piece on hydrogen supply contract design.
• Cross-border fluency in European energy policy through the CEEM chair at Universite Paris-Dauphine, the German-French Office for Energy Transition, and advisory work for the Energy Transitions Commission.
• Used as an expert witness in natural gas and power arbitration, which sharpens the precision he brings to contract structure, price review, and regulatory risk.
• Comfortable translating between the energy-intensive industry lens (through VIK) and the utility and investor lens. Useful when a room contains both sides of the decarbonisation cost argument.

Biography highlights

• Honorary Professor of Energy Economics and Politics, Ruhr University Bochum (Centre for Environmental Management, Resources and Energy).
• Chief Economist, RWE AG, 2007 to 2016.
• Senior Advisor, Energy Transitions Commission, 2017 to 2018.
• Former Director of European Energy Services, Global Insight (now S&P Global), 2000 to 2007.
• Steering Committee member, Chaire European Electricity Markets, Universite Paris-Dauphine.
• Published in Energy Policy, Intereconomics, Oxford Energy Forum, EnWZ, and the Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law.

Biography

European power markets were designed in a world of predictable demand and marginal-cost dispatch. That world has gone. The question now is how to remunerate the flexible capacity a decarbonised system needs, and whether the current market design can fund it without another round of state intervention. This is the terrain Graham Weale has worked in for four decades, first as a practitioner and now as an academic.

The operator credentials are specific. Weale was Chief Economist at RWE AG, Germany’s largest power producer, from 2007 to 2016, the years in which the Energiewende reshaped the economics of thermal generation. Before that he ran European Energy Services at Global Insight, and earlier worked at ExxonMobil in supply and refining. His training spans physics at Oxford, an MSc in Systems Engineering, and an MBA.

The academic record sits alongside the operator one. As Honorary Professor at Ruhr University Bochum, he has published on power market remuneration in Energy Policy, on hydrogen contract design in EnWZ, and on European power market reform in Intereconomics. He advised the Energy Transitions Commission under Adair Turner between 2017 and 2018, and sits on the Steering Committee of the CEEM chair at Universite Paris-Dauphine.

That combination is useful in specific rooms. Boards deciding whether to sign a long-term hydrogen offtake, investors pricing capacity market risk, or policymakers weighing the next iteration of electricity market design get someone who has sat on both sides of the problem and still writes about it for a living.

Key speaking topics

• Power market design and capacity remuneration
• Industrial decarbonisation and the economics of electrification
• Hydrogen contracts, supply chains, and the European hydrogen ramp-up
• German Energiewende and EU Green Deal implementation
• Natural gas markets and price review arbitration
• Energy geopolitics after the Ukraine invasion
• Nuclear, renewables, and the zero-carbon generation mix

Ideal for

• Utility, grid, and generation boards setting capital allocation under decarbonisation targets.
• Infrastructure funds and institutional investors pricing European power and hydrogen assets.
• Energy-intensive industrial leaders (steel, chemicals, cement) planning decarbonisation roadmaps.
• Policymakers and regulators working on market design, capacity mechanisms, and hydrogen frameworks.

Audience outcomes

• A clear view of where European power market design is heading and what that means for long-term generation investment.
• A realistic read on hydrogen: which use cases will scale, which contracts are bankable, and what the European ramp-up actually requires.
• Sharper framing of the political-economic risk attached to Energiewende-style transitions, drawn from inside a major utility.
• Specific vocabulary for talking to boards and investors about carbon pricing, capacity mechanisms, and industrial decarbonisation.
• A defensible basis for stress-testing internal energy transition plans against the economics, not only the targets.