Special Session: Fireside Chat with Philippe Dumas

This session features:
Philippe Dumas, Secretary General, European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC)
Jamie Beard, Founder & Executive Director, Project InnerSpace
About the Speakers:
Philippe Dumas, first worked in a European engineering company as representative in Brussels for EU affairs (2000-2007). He was first involved in geothermal energy with European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC), starting as delegate in Brussels, and since September 2008, he has been the EGEC Secretary General in Brussels managing the association:
The European Geothermal Energy Council (EGEC) is an international association, founded in May 1998 and based in Brussels, Belgium.
EGEC unites more than 180 companies and organizations, representing more than 500 entities from 30 European countries, working in the geothermal field in Europe.
The main goal of EGEC is to foster market development for geothermal energy and to work for improvement of business conditions in Europe.
Philippe has been author and co-author of several publications (Market reports, policy-financial & socio-economical papers, Research & Innovation agendas and roadmaps), and is a frequent contributor to conferences, workshops and seminars. He is active in more than 30 EU-funded research and market uptake projects since 2000, related to climate and energy, with a focus on geothermal.
An energy and regulatory attorney, Beard left the white-shoe law firm scene to try her hand at bringing about fast, efficient climate change solutions. She is Founder and Executive Director of Project InnerSpace, a non-profit organization focused on removing the major barriers standing in the way of fast global growth and development of geothermal energy, and Principal Investigator of a $165 million USD grant from the US Department of Energy focused on oil and gas technology transfer into geothermal. She also founded the Geothermal Entrepreneurship Organization (GEO), a US Department of Energy funded program aimed at recruiting oil and gas talent to launch geothermal startups, and the PIVOT from Hydrocarbons to Heat conference series, which has grown in its fourth year into the largest geothermal conference in the world. A passionate advocate for geothermal energy as the natural and obvious future business model for the oil and gas industry and the missing link to meeting or exceeding 2050 climate goals, Beard has been credited with catalyzing a wave of investment and engagement by oil and gas entities in the geothermal space, and with recruiting and mentoring hundreds of new voices into the geothermal industry. She gave a talk at SXSW in 2019 about the role of the oil and gas industry in building the future of geothermal energy, a TED talk on the same topic in 2021, and was featured in a Wired Magazine cover story in June of 2023.