We are delighted to announce the next wave of confirmed judges to join the panel that will meet on Judgment Day – 6 September – to weigh up submissions for the IJGlobal ESG Awards 2023.

The awards night is being hosted in London on Thursday 19 October, celebrating the ESG credentials of organisations and deals in the global infrastructure and energy sectors.

This is the third time IJGlobal has hosted the ESG awards and this year is already shaping up to be the best yet as submissions are pouring in through the portal – which can be accessed here…

Judges will meet – mostly in person – to make decisions on all organisations and transactions which (we believe) make our awards the single most peer-review and hence most impactful in the infrastructure and energy space. We are unaware of any title in the sector that goes to such lengths to achieve impartial assessment of awards.

The independent panel of judges – all of whom have strong ESG credentials – will meet for Judgment Day in early September at IJGlobal’s headquarters just off Fleet Street, London. International judges will join virtually and those who are unable to attend will vote separately and their contribution will build towards the final outcome.

To ensure impartiality, judges are recused from judging in their own section (lawyers do not vote on legal awards, etc.) and on deals where they actively participated.

The initial group of judges were published earlier this month. This latest wave of judges are:

• Carlos Barrera – chief executive of Atlas Renewable Energy
• Gwen Colin – partner and ESG director at Vauban infrastructure Partners
• Simon Currie – founder of Energy Estate
• Clarissa Drysdale-Anderson – partner, ESG transaction and advisory at ERM
• Anne Foster – global head of sustainable investment at Quinbrook
• Khasan Khasanov – consultant to the IFC for PPP
• Ruairi Revell – head of sustainability for core infrastructure at abrdn
• Kailash Vaswani – president of corporate finance at ReNew Power

Previously-announced judges are:

• Jemima Atkins – investment team member, Pioneer Point Partners
• Amy Cleaves – senior associate, Hogan Lovells
• Rachel Fleming – vice president infrastructure debt, BlackRock
• Mark Henderson – chief investment officer, Gridserve
• Dr Patricia Rodrigues Jenner – investment committee member, GLIL Infrastructure
• Arash Mojabi – director and UK sustainable finance lead, ING Bank
• Paula-Ann Novotny – senior associate, Webber Wentzel
• Emi Takehara – chief financial officer, Grenergy Renovables

Carlos Barrera

Atlas Renewable Energy

Atlas Renewable Energy particularly caught IJGlobal’s attention in the first ESG awards in 2021 for a submission that blew the judges away and won it the social category for the amazing impact it has been making across its projects in Latin America.

The judges lauded Atlas’ efforts as “one of few entries to demonstrate true commitment to diversity” with another describing it as a “really good demonstration of effectively closing the gender gap” adding that it was a “great role model”.

Given this previous success and ongoing commitment to ESG, Carlos (Ucho) Barrera makes for a good addition to the judging panel for this year’s awards.

He is chief executive of Atlas – a leading renewable energy company with operations in the Americas, one of the largest solar IPPs in the region – which started operations in early 2017 after a successful MBO backed by Actis. Since then, it has grown to nearly 3.5GW of contracted projects, and to an enterprise value exceeding $3 billion. After a successful acquisition in 2022, Atlas is now backed by Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP).

Prior to his current role, Carlos was managing director of SunEdison for Latin America, responsible for its LatAm business unit and with overall accountability for the commercial strategy, operational execution, P&L and regional corporate results. He oversaw the contracting, construction and execution of more than 500MW and an overall investment of $1 billion structured with project finance.

Before SunEdison, Carlos worked at BP having started his career in the challenger graduate programme working in conventional O&G. He swiftly shifted to the alternative energy division within BP, specifically to the hydrogen power and CCS business, focused on development and strategy for Australia, the US and the EU.

He then moved to the Venture Capital team, leading origination efforts in the carbon trading segment, mainly focused on China and India. This evolved into a role where he was responsible for the development of new markets for large-scale projects at BP Solar, where he led a number of successful large-scale solar project sales to institutional investors across Europe.

Gwen Colin

Vauban IP

Gwen is Vauban IP's ESG director in charge of overseeing the ESG methodology evolution and its alignment with the infra fund’s long-term strategy – a role she stepped into in March 2022.

She was previously a consultant for private equity and infrastructure funds looking to develop sustainable projects in Europe and Asia.

Gwen has deep experience managing projects on topics like impact management, climate change, and sustainable finance more broadly – including consulting on a Vauban ESG project starting in 2019.

She has spent the majority of her career with major financial corporations, having started as a legal adviser, then project manager, at Credit Agricole Asset Management (now Amundi) in Paris and Luxembourg.

Her involvement in sustainable finance started in 2008, where she led product innovation and supported the distribution of a socially responsible investments offering targeting Middle Eastern and South East Asian sovereign entities, institutional clients, private banks, and family offices.

Vauban is renowned for its work in the ESG space and last year won both the Environment Award and the Governance Award. Further, Vauban chief executive and founder Gwenola Chambon was singled out for honours in IJInvestor Awards 2022 as an outstanding individual.

Simon Currie

Energy Estate

A regular on the ESG judging panel, Simon is something of a shoo-in for these awards given his established credentials – having been on board in this space long before the career re-brands.

He has been on IJ’s radar since the early 2000s when he was at Norton Rose (now Norton Rose Fulbright) at which time he stood out as a renewable energy pioneer in a very un-lawyer-like manner.

Simon – a New Zealander by birth – relocated from London to Australia with NRF to assume the role of global head of energy from its Sydney office.

In the summer of 2018, Simon forged ahead with his ambition to establish Energy Estate – an advisory firm and business accelerator, focused on driving the transformation of the global energy sector. IJ wrote all about this in the autumn of 2019.

He is ideally placed to drive this business as a renowned leader and pioneer in the transformation of the global energy sector with a focus on integrating the energy sector alongside other industries.

Simon is passionate about digitisation of the industry, new and emerging technologies and the potential for creating jobs and economic growth through this approach. He is recognised for his innovative approach to realising the broader environmental, social and economic outcomes of all the projects he works on, while also encouraging partners and other industry leaders to do the same.

Energy Estate’s track record includes many pioneering projects that have delivered broader benefits through community ownership schemes, mandated local content and local employment, Indigenous engagement and biodiversity outcomes.

Clarissa Drysdale-Anderson

ERM

Having picked up a trophy at IJInvestor Awards 2022 for specialist technical advisory, it seemed only appropriate to invite one of the team to join the judging panel for this year's ESG awards.

The award ERM won was created by the independent panel at Judgment Day (a key part of the judges' remit) to recognise the role it plays in advising on emerging technologies.

From discussions with ERM, Clarissa – a partner in the London M&A team – was identified as the ideal person to join the ESG panel. She has worked for almost 20 years in sustainability across 15 countries across a variety of sectors, but mostly within infrastructure and technology.

Clarissa has worked extensively for private equity firms and their portfolio companies as a senior adviser on ESG strategy, climate change risk, NetZero pathways, supply chain risk assessment, and sustainable finance regulations such as SFDR, EU taxonomy, CSRD and TCFD.

At ERM she is focused on ESG integration and value creation solutions for private equity and infrastructure funds, as well as on impact advisory services for energy transition funds.

Before joining ERM, Clarissa worked as the ESG director for First Sentier Investors (now Igneo) in direct infrastructure investments.

Anne Foster

Quinbrook

Winner of the first Outstanding Contribution Award at the inaugural IJGlobal ESG Awards, Anne is steeped in ESG lore and is an established member of the judging committee.

As one of the judges said of Anne, she “embodies ESG leadership in energy and infrastructure sectors” while another recognised her “brilliant achievements” with “no doubt of more in store”.

Anne has even featured in an Infra Dig podcast discussing the role of technology and how it is used to increase the ESG standing of Quinbrook.

Serving as Quinbrook's global head of ESG, Anne has led its strategy since inception – designing and implementing ESG processes.

Over the course of her career, she has advised on billions of dollars of transactions in relation to climate and ESG impact, working with organisations that range from blue chip companies like BHP Billiton, through to start-ups.

She has been appointed on numerous company boards, driving influence through ESG alignment and is a member of Quinbrook's investment committee, valuation committee, procurement and digital innovation committees… which stands testament to the lengths she has driven critical ESG-based decision making.

Anne works day-to-day directly with portfolio companies to drive change – from designing strategies that can provide beneficial impact on vulnerable communities, water stress, to actively forcing change in supply chains, driving suppliers to reassess their transparency and activities.

Her commitment to social impact, assessment and strategy was selected by the KPMG Human Rights team to be showcased in a human rights report.

Khasan Khasanov

IFC – consultant

Uzbekistan-based Khasan is experienced economist with around 20 years of professional experience in public and project management, investments, project finance and PPPs.

He is certified PPP professional and holds 3 levels of APMG certification (foundation, preparation and execution). Last year was very successful for him and his team because his organization won the Public Sector Promoter/Procurer of the Year nomination from the Partnerships Awards as well last year he improved his knowledge in sustainable infrastructure development and project finance and received certificates from Harvard Kennedy School (USA) and Schulich School of Business (Canada).

In October 2021 he joined the PPP Development Agency (PPPDA) as a deputy head of department and in June 2022 he was promoted to deputy director of this agency. His role was coordination of implementation of PPP projects in Energy for Transport, IT and a range of other industry sectors. In last 5 years Uzbekistan has implemented around 30 PPP projects in energy sector with total value of $16 billion and total capacity of 13GW.

Prior joining the PPPDA, Khasan worked at Uzbekhydroenergy JSC as a division head for cooperation with IFIs. He has experience working with ADB, EBRD, AFD, IsDB, World Bank and IFC.

He has many years of working experience at the ministry of foreign economic relations, investments and trade for the Republic of Uzbekistan.

Ruairi Revell

abrdn Core Infrastructure

As head of sustainability at abrdn – or abrdn Core Infrastructure as it (understandably) prefers to be called – Ruairi is part of the infrastructure equity team that invests across diversified UK and European small-mid market infrastructure.

He works with the investment team to assess ESG risks and promote sustainability outcomes throughout the investment lifecycle and ensures compliance with the acronym-soup of disclosure requirements that now apply.

Prior to his current role, Ruairi was head of ESG for core plus and value-add real estate at abrdn.

He joined the company in 2015 from Arup and has 15 years’ experience as a sustainability practitioner in real assets, supporting investors and companies to understand sustainability and develop strategies to support long-term value.

He is particularly interested in exploring the trade-offs and compromises inherent in delivering both sustainability outcomes and financial returns.

Ruairi is a member of GRESB’s infrastructure standards committee and also contributes to industry initiatives on climate change including the IIGCC’s recently-published guidance for infrastructure.

Kailash Vaswani

ReNew Power

As president for corporate finance at ReNew Power in India, Kailash has worked in financial markets since 2001 and started his career as a research analyst at CRISIL which is owned by S&P and is India’s leading ratings provider.

Kailash then moved to Morgan Stanley to assume a fixed income research role, covering the US and European bond markets.

He has worked at Aditya Birla Group and Saffron Asset Advisors in various corporate finance and investment roles and helped them with investment decisions that amount to more than $6.5 billion in India and the US.

Kailash joined ReNew in 2011 as a founding team member to help put the business plan in place as well as supporting the company with its first round of capital raising from Goldman Sachs.

Over the last decade, he has successfully led all capital raises for ReNew on the debt and equity side and has raised cumulative capital of more than $10 billion for the company.

As part of senior management at ReNew Power, he has contributed to the growth of the company by being involved in strategic decisions, organisation build and growth of the portfolio of assets through organic and inorganic additions.