Webinar | Energy Markets Under Pressure: How Geopolitical Volatility is Redesigning the Clean Transition

Kevin Billings, OBE | Moderator

Kevin Billings is the founder and CEO of Legation Strategies, which provides advisory services in strategic positioning, mergers and acquisitions, and private equity within the energy, infrastructure, and national security sectors. He is a proven executive with extensive experience in the strategic management of defence, energy and industrial organizations in both the public and private sectors. He was appointed by President George W. Bush to serve as an Assistant Secretary of the United States Air Force where his responsibilities included the world-wide management and direction of the Air Force’s $38 billion installations, logistics, environment, and energy programs.

As part of his corporate experience, he co-led a multi-divisional acquisition project and secured $1.5 billion in financing from international participants, developed a successful acquisition plan for a $2 billion energy company, and created a multi-functional marketing and US government operations business model for a global aerospace and industrial company headquartered outside the United States.

Rebecca Harding, Ph.D

Dr. Rebecca Harding is CEO of the Centre for Economic Security and a leading authority on international trade and geoeconomics. She serves in strategic advisory roles including as Chief Economic Adviser to the Defence Security and Resilience Bank Development Group and Head of Investor Relations at Sovereign Resilience Finance.

Harding has built three data businesses in trade, sustainability, and economic security. Her career includes positions as Senior Research Fellow at the British Foreign Policy Group, Head of Corporate Research at Deloitte, and Senior Fellow at London Business School. She served as Chief Economist at UK Finance and has advised the UK’s Treasury Select Committee.

She authored “The World at Economic War: How to Rebuild Security in a Weaponized Global Economy” (2025), recommend edby the FT’s Martin Wolf as one of the top books of 2025, and co-authored several books on trade and geostrategy, including “The Weaponization of Trade: the Great Unbalancing of Politics and Economics” (2017).

Richard Wardlaw, CB, OBE

General Wardlaw gave over 33 years’ service in the Army, UK MOD and NATO.  His operational duties included tours to Northern Ireland, Bosnia, Iraq and Afghanistan.  Before retiring from the Army in late 2023, he was the UK’s first Chief of Defence Logistics and Support.

Arguably, though, General Wardlaw is best known for his commitment to making UK Defence greener. He challenged conventional thinking and highlighted opportunities for enhancing operational effectiveness through the use of sustainable technologies.  He was the architect of the large-scale deployment of solar farms across the British Army estate, and UK Defence’s Sustainable Support Strategy and UK Defence’s Operational Energy Strategy promoting the use of green technology and energy in the future force.

Since retiring from the Army, General Wardlaw has developed a portfolio of roles, including Senior Advisor roles across the nuclear and renewable energy sector, as an Associate Fellow to Oxford University and as Chair of the Centre for Economic Security. The latter focuses on promoting the levers and tools of the new economic statecraft required to underpin collective economic security and resilience in the face of significant geopolitical uncertainty and the supply chain disruptions created by both adversaries and climate change.

Tatiana Mitrova, Ph.D

Tatiana Mitrova is an internationally recognized expert on energy systems, geopolitics, and long-term transition risks. She is a Global Fellow at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and a Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of Energy Economics, Japan (IEEJ) and Visiting Professor at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po). She also serves as Director of the New Energy Advancement Hub (NEAH), where her work focuses on how large energy and industrial systems adapt under geopolitical, regulatory, and technological stress. With nearly three decades of experience, Tatiana has advised governments, international institutions, and boards of major energy companies on strategy, risk, and governance in highly uncertain environments.

Her research bridges geopolitics, energy markets, and institutional decision-making, with particular emphasis on structural constraints, resilience, and the evolving balance between petrostates and emerging electrostates.

Naomi Boness, Ph.D

Dr. Naomi Boness (Ph.D.) is the Managing Director of the Center for Fuels of the Future at Stanford University. Naomi is an experienced practitioner in the energy sector with a focus on using her background in geophysics and techno-economic modeling to develop technology solutions related to natural gas, hydrogen, and decarbonization in both the developed and the developing world. Prior to Stanford, she held a variety of technical and management positions at Chevron.

Naomi is passionate about connecting technology developers with industry to accelerate the deployment of new decarbonization technologies at scale. She serves as an independent Board Director for two public companies: Aemetis, a low carbon fuels company, and Babcock and Wilcox, a clean power production company. To advance energy access and develop clean affordable solutions in the developing world, Naomi serves on the Green Energy Technology Council for Larsen and Toubro, an Indian-based EPC, as well as being a board member/advisor to a portfolio of energy organizations and clean energy technology startups.

Dr. Boness holds a Ph.D. in geophysics from Stanford University, a M.Sc. in geological sciences from Indiana University and a B.Sc. in geophysics from the University of Leeds.