Thank you to everyone who met with us at E‑world energy & water 2026 in Essen. As returning sponsors, we valued the opportunity to engage with operators, regulators, technology providers and market participants on the issues reshaping Europe’s energy system.
Three topics defining the energy industry
Across our discussions at E‑world and our work with clients, three themes continue to dominate the agenda for the German and European energy markets in 2026:
Flexibility across the entire value chain
The German energy system is undergoing fundamental transformation: renewables expansion, sector coupling, coal phase‑out and greater volatility. Flexibility must be developed and deployed across all parts of the system - generation, consumption, storage and reserves. The value drivers are becoming more complex, requiring clear understanding of markets, risks and dependencies.
Digitalisation: AI, cyber and smart grids
Digitalisation continues to accelerate. AI and automation, secure‑by‑design architectures, data‑driven operations and increasingly intelligent grids are reshaping how energy businesses operate. With this comes a rising need for cyber resilience, particularly under evolving German and EU expectations.
People & Productivity
Meeting the demands of the energy transition requires new skills, new ways of working and productivity‑focused operating models. Organisations are reassessing how they build capabilities, redesign processes and equip their teams to deliver change efficiently.
These themes were central to our conversations at the fair and continue to drive strategic decisions across the sector.
If you want to continue the conversation, please reach out.
Session recap: Strengthening cyber defence across modern digital energy infrastructures
On 12 February, Isabelle Sheard and Ralf Kurtz delivered our session on the evolving cyber‑threat landscape facing Germany’s energy networks.
The session explored:
- How geopolitics and accelerating digitalisation are driving new cyber‑security risks
- The role and impact of nation‑state threat actors
- Implications of NIS2 and KRITIS for operators and grid companies
- The growing interaction between physical and digital infrastructure
- Practical steps to enhance resilience: culture, preparedness, supplier assurance, secure‑by‑design engineering and operational readiness
Download the presentation
If you missed the session - or would like to revisit the insights - you can download the full presentation deck here:
Speak to our experts
Jochen Herrmann
Jochen helps energy businesses decarbonise. He also works with energy traders across the continent helping them improve every aspect of their business. A consultant since the beginning of his professional life, Jochen joined one of the big four after studying business administration. For his thesis, he worked with local football club Eintracht , evaluating intangible assets like players licences. Partly as a result, he sees energy as a asset that's much more than a simple transactional product - it has a profound impact on the future of society and the environment. Jochen aims to cultivate long-term, high-impact relationships with clients; including one he has now worked with for a decade, running multi-functional teams designed to address many client issues in a fast, effective and measurable way.
Andrew Singleton
Andrew is a partner in Baringa’s energy trading team, working with his clients to solve complicated problems as quickly and efficiently as possible. He helps them transform their trading business – by changing the way they operate, deliver solutions or the way they’re organised – so they can grow, invest, or compete in a rapidly changing environment. He specialises in architectural and solution delivery for both small and large programmes. For Andy, it’s all about finding the fastest way to release value into his clients’ business, so they can enter a new market, trade in a new location or implement the technology that will help them innovate and compete. In addition to drawing on over two decades of experience in the sector, Andy’s always on the lookout for new insights he can bring to his clients, both from within Baringa and the market at-large. By working on leading projects in the industry, Andy also plays a role in shaping the sector’s future – a future that will require adapting to climate change and transitioning to more sustainable energy sources.
Isabelle Sheard
Isabelle is an energy sector cyber security and resilience expert with extensive experience in energy networks and renewables. She leads large, complex programmes in Critical National Infrastructure to strengthen cyber and operational resilience, ensuring the security and reliability of energy supply against an evolving threat landscape. Isabelle also works with energy organisations to enable strategic growth in the renewables market, leveraging cyber as an enabler for transformation and transactions, helping organisations to unlock innovation and navigate change with confidence. Her expertise lies in safeguarding critical infrastructure while driving innovation and resilience in a rapidly changing energy ecosystem.
Ralf Kurtz
Ralf joined Baringa from PwC where he was an energy consulting partner for 16 years. He has over 30 years of experience in strategy and operational excellence consulting for energy supply companies. He has also advised companies on Smart Metering and Smart Energy in Germany.
He advises whole companies as well as different parts of the value chain to grow their value through a holistic enterprise value creation approach. He analyses both the financial and non-financial success factors of energy supply companies, defines strengths and weaknesses and creates change paths.
He sees the digitalisation of the energy transition as the decisive issue for grid and metering point operators. Ralf advises on everything from the definition of a new digital strategy to the design of a new target operating model and the development of measures for implementation.
He advises his clients from strategy to implementation and helps with successful and sustainable transformation. For him, the involvement and development of the employees in his clients’ companies plays an essential role, as this is the only way to achieve sustainability.
Juana Tabaza
Juana is dedicated to the energy transition, supporting energy business reach their net zero targets. With her vast amount of experience in energy trading, risk management, system implementations, she has helped businesses adapt their practices to compete in fast changing markets. She is passionate about renewable energy, sustainable business solutions and strategic decision making. Juana has been in the energy industry over 12 years and is currently operating from Switzerland.
Katrin Behte
Katrin works with energy trading teams to help them respond to the dramatic changes the industry is facing. She’s passionate about operational excellence and works with our clients to ensure they’re set up for long-term success. She loves the variety in her work. One moment she’s rethinking processes, organisational design or operating models. The next, designing future system architecture or digital roadmaps to future-proof our clients’ businesses. Katrin knows that bringing the right people together is what delivers lasting results. She thrives in a collaborative environment, working hand in hand with our clients, and within our diverse team.
Isabel Scott-Skinner
Isabel leads our trading architecture centre of excellence, helping clients in the energy and commodities sectors to work through their business design and thorny IT issues. She is at her happiest when solving complex problems, ideally whilst sketching out designs on a whiteboard with her clients to deliver industry leading trading IT design. Isabel has always worked in the energy sector, having first worked for an energy retailer and then Elexon, the UK power market participant, before joining Baringa. She loves working in the energy and commodities trading space because it’s always changing, there are always new challenges to overcome, new technology and solutions to explore, and new markets and products to understand.
Andrey Shutov
Andrey is a risk management expert and programme manager in our Energy, Utilities and Resources practice. He specialises in helping trading organisations to develop fit for purpose risk management frameworks that set them up for success in dynamically changing environments. Over the course of his career, Andrey has worked with trading organisations in this space spanning investment banks, derivatives traders and energy and commodity trading companies. His career highlights include providing strategic risk advisory to CROs of trading organisations, delivering large risk transformation programmes with major European and UK investment banks and setting up new credit and liquidity risk functions for large commodity trading firms.
Karim Alnakkash
With 14 years of experience in wholesale energy markets, including serving as CTO of EDF Energy’s route-to-market business in Great Britain, Karim led the optimisation of diverse portfolios spanning renewables, thermal, nuclear, storage, and demand. He was instrumental in developing EDF’s Powershift platform, growing its controlled battery storage capacity from 6MW in 2018 to 750MW by 2023. Today, Karim advise asset owners, investors, and market-facing entities on unlocking value from short-term markets through strategic capability development, commercial contracting, and organizational design.
Marc Daube
Marc Daube leads the Power Market Advisory team in Germany. He has 15 years of experience in energy and environmental economics and is an expert on European energy markets with a particular focus on the German power sector. He has led numerous transactions in renewables, storage technologies and thermal generation, and possesses deep expertise in regulation and policy, fundamental market modelling as well as asset valuation and commercial due diligence.
Samuel Ebohon
Sam is a highly skilled energy industry expert and market modeler with more than 20 years’ industry experience. Sam’s background is in power market fundamentals, and he is a recognised expert in European power markets, with depth of experience in the Belgian, Dutch, French, German and Great British power markets. Sam co-leads our Electricity Flexibility capability at Baringa, from which he is frequently leading teams delivering qualitative market research and quantitative market analytics to support project developers, equity projects and lenders through commercial and market due diligence, market strategy and economic impact assessment.
Giovanni Sorda
Giovanni has worked in the energy and power sector for over a decade and is an expert in commercial and strategic advisory, market analysis and green transformation programs with a focus on renewables and flexibility assets. His experience ranges from helping large corporates decarbonise power consumption to leading commercial due diligence processes and supporting asset owners/investors in assessing the optimal route to monetize their assets vis-à-vis their risk-return profile.
Is digital and AI delivering what your business needs?
Digital and AI can solve your toughest challenges and elevate your business performance. But success isn’t always straightforward. Where can you unlock opportunity? And what does it take to set the foundation for lasting success?
