Topic: Energy

Carlos Pascual

Carlos Pascual, former senior US diplomat and previously the State Department’s top energy official, joined IHS Markit in January 2015 as Senior Vice President to focus on global energy issues and international affairs. As the former US Energy Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs at the State Department, Mr. Pascual established and directed the new Energy Resources Bureau and served as the Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State on energy issues. In that role, he was centrally involved in U.S. energy policy in the Middle East, China energy diversification, India energy security and natural gas in Europe.

Since joining IHS Markit, Mr. Pascual has led work on Mexico’s energy reforms and energy transition in Latin America. He is centrally involved in incorporating geopolitical risk into IHS market forecasts and working with corporate and government leaders to translate such risks into corporate and policy strategies. Mr. Pascual is a Vice-Chair of the CERAWeek global energy conference.

Mr. Pascual was previously US Ambassador to both Mexico and Ukraine and was Special Assistant to the US president for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia on the National Security Council. Mr. Pascual created the position of coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization in the State Department, establishing the first U.S. civilian response capacity to conflicts. He also was the State Department’s coordinator for US assistance to Europe and Eurasia and held leadership roles at the US Agency for International Development.

At the Brookings Institution, Mr. Pascual served as Vice President and Director of Foreign Policy Studies and launched the Brookings Energy Security Initiative. His book, Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats, won a 2009 award for the best political science book published by an independent publisher. Mr. Pascual taught and wrote on the geopolitics of energy as a fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy in the fall of 2014 and continues to serve as a non-resident fellow.

Mr. Pascual holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Stanford University and a Master of Public Policy degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Mohan Munasinghe

Mohan Munasinghe is a Sri Lankan physicist, academic and economist with a focus on energy, water resources, sustainable development and climate change.

As Vice-Chairman of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Professor Mohan Munasinghe shared the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace, for work on global warming and sustainable development. More recently, he received the 2021 Blue Planet Prize, also called the "Environmental Nobel Prize". The Heads of five countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, Dominican Republic, France, and Sri Lanka, have presented highest national awards to him.

Currently, he is Chairman of the Munasinghe Institue of Development, Colombo; Director-General of the Sustainable Consumption Institute (SCI) and Distinguished Professor at the University of Manchester; and Honorary Senior Advisor to the Sri Lanka Government.

Professor Munasinghe has earned post-graduate degrees in engineering, physics and development economics from Cambridge University (UK), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), and McGill University and Concordia University (Canada). During 35 years of distinguished public service, he has served as Senior Energy Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka, Advisor to the United States Presidents Council on Environmental Quality, and Senior Advisor to the World Bank.

He has taught as Visiting Professor at a number of universities world-wide, and has won many international prizes and medals for his research and its applications.

He has authored over 90 books and several hundred technical papers on the environment.

Professor Munasinghe has made numerous keynote speeches at gatherings ranging from high level international conferences to community meetings. He has organised and conducted international training seminars on climate change, sustainable development, environment, economics, energy, transport, water resources, and information technology, in various parts of the world, for thousands of senior officials and corporations.

He is a Fellow of several international Academies of Science, and serves on the editorial boards of a dozen academic journals.