Special conference: Technology innovation for local energy transition

On 15 November 2019, he was appointed as the first Polish Minister of the newly established Ministry of Climate. On 6 October 2020 his portfolio was enlarged, so it became Ministry of Climate and Environment. During his tenure Polish government adopted, for the first time since 2009, a new 2040 Energy Policy, opening a new era of Polish energy transition. He designed the implementation and financing of the energy transition, particularly in launching programmes such as “My Water”, “Green Public Transport”, “Green Cars” and “The City of Tomorrow”. During his tenure Poland registered record increases in development of renewable sources, reaching 10 thousands megawatts of installed capacity in photovoltaics and 1 million prosumers. He launched successfully industrial alliances for hydrogen, photovoltaics, biogas and put a compete framework for he development of offshore wind. He is the author of the government programme for electromobility development in Poland, which was described for the first time as a concept in the book written in 2013–2015, together with Professor Leszek Jesień, New Electricity and New Cars. He was the originator of “The Electromobility Development Plan”, and thereafter he guided the creation of the Act on Electromobility and Alternative Fuels, thanks to which these forms of transport will be able to develop dynamically.

Michał Kurtyka is a graduate of the prestigious Parisian École Polytechnique and a scholarship holder in the field of quantum optics of the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, located near Washington, D.C., where he worked under the leadership of Nobel laureate in physics William D. Phillips. During the course of his studies, he also specialised in economics, with particular focus on industrial and market organisation, studying under Professor Jean Tirole, the 2014 Nobel laureate in economics. In the field of international economics, he studied at the University in Louvain-la-Neuve and he acquired his master’s degree at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics. He defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Warsaw. He was a lecturer in the field of change management, economics, market organization and industrial strategy at the University of Warsaw, the Collegium Civitas and the Oxford Programme On Modern Poland. He is a co-author of the concept of implementation of effective changes in an enterprise, described in the book Change Management. From Strategy to Action, as well as the author of the book From Restructuring to Modernisation. Delayed Transformation of the Polish Power Sector in 1990–2009.

Starting 1 January 2016, Michał Kurtyka served as the Undersecretary of State in the Ministry of Energy, where he was responsible for the technological development and implementation of innovations in the energy sector, implementation of climate and energy policy in the fuel and gas sector, conducting international relations with countries and international organisations. He was also responsible for supervision of the state’s participation in the biggest Polish energy companies in the oil and gas industry, such as Orlen, Lotos and PGNiG.

On 27 April 2018, he was appointed as Government Plenipotentiary for the Presidency of COP24 – the United Nations Climate Summit in Poland. From July 2018, he held also the position of the Secretary of State in the Ministry of Environment. On 2 December 2018, he became the COP24 President, which ended with a great success enabling the effective implementation of the Paris Agreement. At the 24th UN climate summit, the international community agreed on the Katowice Rulebook, but also three important political declarations received major support – on the Solidarity and Just Transition, Electromobilty and Forest Protection.

Michał Kurtyka held successfully various roles in most influential international organizations. Under his Chairmanship of the Ministerial of the International Energy Agency in 2019 in Paris the Organization unanimously adopted, for first time in ten years, an IEA Ministerial Communiqué. He served as Chairman of the 42nd session of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations held in Rome in 2021 and as Co-chairman, together with US Secretary of the Department of Energy, of the Partnership of Transatlantic Energy and Climate Cooperation in Warsaw 2021.

Michał Kurtyka began his professional career in Polish public administration, in the Office of the Committee for European Integration, in the team responsible for conducting accession negotiations with the European Union – where he led the analytical team and was directly responsible for the field of energy and transport. Later, he oversaw the modernisation of many Polish companies by supporting them in adapting to the challenges of the European and global markets. He was a promoter of European cooperation in the area of industrial change and adjustment of the European industry to the challenges of globalisation at, among others, the European University of Labour and the Dublin Foundation. With his passion  for  science and technological progress he also helped establish a number of innovative start-ups leapfrogging from the current model to cleaner and more efficient energy system.

Lee Beck is CATF’s Senior Director in Europe, leading CATF’s cross-functional, cross-regional and cross-programmatic growth and climate policy impact in Europe. She also focuses on advancing CATF’s efforts on global climate policy, including at COP28 in the UAE.  Having worked on climate and clean energy and lived in the U.S. and Europe, Lee is an expert on transatlantic partnerships and international affairs, and is passionate about advancing and strengthening the transatlantic relationship to achieve climate goals.  
Before stepping into her current role, Lee was CATF’s Global Director for carbon capture, leading the team’s expansion in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East, and helping launch CATF’s overall European efforts. Under her leadership, the carbon capture team played an integral role in advancing cutting-edge carbon management policies globally. The team helped secure $12 billion in funding for carbon capture, removal and storage in the U.S. Infrastructure Bill, as well as make improvements to the 45Q tax credit, and push the vision for a European Strategy for Carbon Capture and Storage.  
Lee came to CATF from the Global CCS Institute, where she served as a Senior Advisor leading the Institute’s advocacy efforts in North America, and was part of a global team focused on advocacy and policy. Previously, Lee worked for the Vermont Energy Investment Cooperation, and at Eni USA in their Washington DC International Relations Office, focusing on international affairs and government relations. She also worked for the EU Delegation to the U.S. as a trainee on transportation, energy, and environmental policy issues. Before working in the energy field, Lee was a journalist reporting for multiple outlets reporting from Germany, Italy, Tanzania and Hong Kong. She has a Master of Arts in International Affairs & Economics with majors in Energy, Resources & Environment and Political Economy from Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Originally from Germany, she speaks German, French and Italian. She is a Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council Global Energy Center.  

Tamara Lagurashvili joined CATF as a Regional Manager, Europe in August 2022. Previously she worked at the environmental think-tank Agora Energiewende as an Operations Manager, where she supported senior management with various organizational development-related matters. Prior to her time at Agora, Tamara worked at Europe Foundation – a leading non-governmental organization in Georgia, where she supported capacity-building initiatives of grassroots organizations. In this role, she primarily focused on fostering participatory budgeting through advocacy and awareness-raising campaigns with local government officials and civil society organizations.
Tamara started her career as a Visiting Lecturer at Caucasus University, Georgia where she taught Policy Analysis.
Tamara holds MA in Social Sciences from the University of Tartu and BA in English Philology from Caucasus University.
 

My research activity focuses on problems related to the low temperature technique (cryogenics), refrigeration and energy conversion processes in the energy sector.
In the 1980s, I was one of the precursors of using gas mixtures as working agents in Joule-Thomson's miniature cryocoolers and home refrigerators. These concepts have been patented and implemented in the cooling systems of infrared detectors, miniature hydrogen liquefiers and refrigerators.
While working at CERN in Geneva in the years 1996-1998, I developed a model of thermohydraulics of the resistive transition of superconducting magnets. The model has been used in the design of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). I have also developed a method of risk analysis of cryogenic systems of large research devices. The proposed approach was used, among others, to optimize the configuration of LHC safety valves after a machine failure in 2008. The effectiveness of the proposed method and its validation by CERN resulted in establishing research cooperation with such laboratories as DESY in Hamburg (Germany), GSI in Darmstadt (Germany), Helmholtz in Karlsruhe (Germany) , SLAC in Palo Alto (USA), Fermilab in Batavia (USA), ITER IO in Cadarache (France), Wendelstein 7X in Greifswald (Germany), ESS in Lund (Sweden), Inter University Accelerator Center in New Delhi (India). I have supervised the research resulting in creating the models of heat transfer through vacuum cryogenic insulation, heat exchange between superfluid helium and magnet coils made of superconductors like alloys (eg NbTi), intermetallic compounds (eg Nb3Sn) or ceramics (eg BISCO).
In my further research work, a method for investigating the heat exchange between solid body and superfluid, compressed Helium II, has been proposed. A dedicated cryostat has been conceptually designed, modelled, produced and commissioned at Wroclaw University of Technology. The cryostat has been delivered to CEA in Paris-Saclay (France) as a part of the EU NED (Next European Dipole) project, where it is still in use today. One of the achievements in the field of helium cryogenics is the development (in cooperation with Institute of Molecular Physics PAN) of the cryostat that allows the continuous separation of a rare 3He isotope from 4He, using entropy filters.

Graduate of HEC Paris and the history faculties of the Paris IV-Sorbonne University and the University of Warsaw.

In 2013, he began working at the Ministry of Environment as part of the Climate Negotiators Team at the United Nations COP19 Climate Summit in Warsaw. Previously, he had gained experience in the field of finance in the private sector.
In 2015–2018, he headed the Environmental Department at the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Poland to the European Union in Brussels, where he negotiated draft legislation on the environment and climate in Council working groups. In 2018, he served as the chief negotiator of the Polish Presidency of COP24 in Katowice, preparing a package of decisions implementing the Paris Agreement, the so-called Katowice Rulebook. In 2019, he once again became the head of the Environmental Department at the Permanent Representation of the Republic of Poland to the EU.