40 Essential Thought Leaders in Electricity in ANZ

Introduction

If you want to understand what is actually happening to electricity in Australia and New Zealand, the most efficient thing you can do right now is find the right voices to follow. Not the broadest voices, not the most famous, not the ones who say the most reassuring things about the transition. The ones who are doing the actual work of making sense of one of the most technically complex and economically consequential transformations either country has ever undertaken.

Australia's National Electricity Market surpassed 50 percent renewables for the first time in the final quarter of 2025, according to AEMO's Quarterly Energy Dynamics report. The IEA's Electricity 2026 report projects that global electricity demand will grow at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent through 2030, fifty percent faster than the previous decade. In Australia, the story is not just one of record renewables penetration. It is a story of transmission constraints, battery deployments outpacing expectations, grid stability challenges that were not anticipated five years ago, and consumer electricity costs that are reshaping household budgets across both countries. New Zealand is managing its own version of this story: a grid that is already 80 to 90 percent renewable but facing surging demand from electrification, a political environment that has made long-term energy planning harder than it should be, and a set of infrastructure investment decisions whose consequences will stretch over decades.

The voices who can help you navigate all of this are not necessarily the most prominent names in the broader climate and sustainability conversation. The electricity sector has its own institutional logic, its own regulatory machinery, its own vocabulary. The people on this list have earned their credibility by engaging seriously with that complexity, not by simplifying it away.

This list brings together 40 voices from Australia and New Zealand who are actively contributing to the electricity conversation in 2026. They include market operators and regulators, energy economists, consumer advocates, journalists, academics, grid engineers, think tank researchers, and industry leaders. Fourteen of those included are women, and the list deliberately includes New Zealand voices alongside Australian ones, since the two countries share enough grid and regulatory overlap to make a combined list genuinely useful. Several of the people on this list are well known inside the sector but not widely followed outside it. That is precisely why they are here.

If your organisation is navigating the energy transition and needs help with the leadership dimensions, including how teams make decisions together, communicate through uncertainty, and build the trust needed to move fast, Jonno White works with leadership teams across corporate, government, and not-for-profit organisations. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why Electricity Matters Now

Electricity is no longer a utility conversation. It is an infrastructure conversation, an economic competitiveness conversation, and for many households, an affordability conversation. In Australia alone, the Australian Energy Market Operator's Draft 2026 Integrated System Plan outlines the optimal development path for the NEM over the next 20 years, including the investment required to replace retiring coal generators while meeting surging demand from data centres, manufacturing reshoring, and household electrification. AEMO's modelling shows that Australia needs to build the equivalent of one large-scale wind farm or solar farm every three days through to 2030 to meet its 82 percent renewable energy target. The scale of what is being asked of the industry, the regulatory bodies, and the workforce is genuinely extraordinary.

New Zealand's situation is different but equally consequential. Transpower's Transmission Annual Planning Report, released in 2025, noted that the next decade will be the most transformative in the country's electricity history, driven by grid electrification of transport and industry on top of an already high-renewables baseline. Electricity prices have risen sharply in both countries, creating a politics of the grid that did not exist in the same way five years ago. Following the right voices on this is not an optional extra for anyone working in, investing in, or making decisions that depend on stable and affordable energy supply. It is essential.

For leaders in organisations that depend on electricity, or that work across the energy sector, Jonno White facilitates leadership team sessions and executive offsites to help teams work through complex strategic decisions together. Email jonno@consultclarity.org.

How This List Was Compiled

Every person on this list was selected on three criteria. First, documented contribution to the electricity sector in Australia or New Zealand through published research, regulatory engagement, journalism, market analysis, or operational leadership. Second, active and public engagement with the issues the sector is currently navigating, including publicly accessible writing, speaking, or analysis in 2025 or 2026. Third, the deliberate inclusion of voices that go beyond the most visible names to surface practitioners, researchers, advocates, and analysts who are doing important work without necessarily having a large public profile. The list covers both Australia and New Zealand, spans researchers, regulators, journalists, operators, think tanks, and consumer advocates, and includes voices from across the geographic and disciplinary range of the sector. It deliberately moves past a small number of well-known household names to surface the voices doing the genuine analytical and institutional work.

The Market Operators and System Architects

The people in this category sit at the centre of how Australia's and New Zealand's electricity systems are actually run. Their decisions affect every other player in the sector.

1. Daniel Westerman

Daniel Westerman is the CEO and Managing Director of AEMO, the Australian Energy Market Operator, the body responsible for managing electricity and gas markets and systems across Australia. A chartered engineer who joined AEMO in May 2021 following senior executive roles at National Grid in the United Kingdom, he leads an organisation that operates Australia's main power systems in real time while simultaneously developing the planning documents that will guide the country's grid through the next twenty years.

Under Westerman's leadership, AEMO published the Draft 2026 Integrated System Plan, which the organisation described as a roadmap for the NEM's transition outlining an optimal development path for generation, storage, and network investments to meet consumer needs and government policies for at least the next twenty years. His public communications on Australia's energy system balance have shaped the framing of the grid security debate throughout 2025 and 2026, including on the role of batteries and the importance of on-time delivery of transmission projects.

2. James Kilty

James Kilty is the CEO of Transpower New Zealand, the state-owned enterprise responsible for the national electricity transmission grid, a role he commenced in February 2025 following three years as CEO of Powerco and nearly twenty years at Contact Energy. Transpower owns and operates the high-voltage grid that carries electricity from generators to local distribution networks across New Zealand, making Kilty the key figure in the infrastructure challenge at the heart of the country's energy transition.

In releasing the 2025 Transmission Annual Planning Report, Kilty noted publicly that the next decade will be the most transformative yet for New Zealand's energy transition. He chairs the Electricity CEO Forum and serves as deputy chair of the Electricity Networks Association. His combination of generation sector experience at Contact Energy and distribution sector experience at Powerco, followed by the national grid leadership role at Transpower, makes him one of the most broadly informed voices on New Zealand's electricity infrastructure challenge.

3. Luke Menzel

Luke Menzel is CEO of the Energy Efficiency Council, the peak body for energy efficiency, electrification, and energy flexibility in Australia, and a non-executive director of AEMO. He is also Vice-President of the Australian Sustainable Built Environment Council and co-host of the popular Australian climate and energy podcast Let Me Sum Up. His dual role as peak body CEO and AEMO board member gives him an unusual vantage point on both the policy and operational dimensions of the electricity transition.

Menzel has been particularly active on the question of how distributed energy resources, including rooftop solar, household batteries, and flexible loads, can be integrated into the grid in ways that benefit both the system and consumers. His LinkedIn commentary and podcast conversations engage a broad audience beyond the industry insiders who follow AEMO publications directly, making him one of the most effective communicators of the technical and institutional complexity of the Australian electricity transition.

The Economists and Market Analysts

Understanding how the electricity market actually works, what price signals mean, and why investment flows the way it does requires a particular kind of technical fluency. The voices in this category bring that fluency to the public conversation.

4. Tim Nelson

Tim Nelson is an Associate Professor at Griffith University and one of Australia's most prolific electricity market economists, having published nearly fifty journal articles on electricity markets, climate change, and market design. In 2025, he chaired the independent review of Australia's National Electricity Market, whose recommendations to energy ministers in December 2025 are being implemented throughout 2026. He was previously Executive General Manager of Energy Markets at Iberdrola Australia and before that Chief Economist of AGL Energy.

Nelson's combination of academic publication, regulatory body engagement, and executive commercial experience gives him a credibility in the electricity market design conversation that few others can match. He also runs TxChange, a new venture focused on unlocking value in Australia's constrained electricity grid through bilateral energy contracts between generators and batteries. His LinkedIn presence is active and technically detailed, making him genuinely useful to follow for anyone trying to understand the market structure debates shaping the NEM.

5. David Leitch

David Leitch is Principal of ITK Services Australia, a consultancy specialising in analysis of electricity, gas, and decarbonisation, and a regular columnist at RenewEconomy. With more than thirty years of experience in investment banking research at firms including UBS and JPMorgan, he co-hosts the Energy Insiders podcast alongside RenewEconomy founder Giles Parkinson, bringing a financial markets analyst's perspective to weekly coverage of the NEM.

Leitch's commentary is distinctive for its willingness to interrogate the economic assumptions behind energy transition claims, including the financial viability of specific generation and storage technologies, the mechanics of how batteries actually earn revenue in the NEM, and the implications of wholesale price trends for investment decisions. His work at Smart Energy 2026 demonstrated how the speed of distributed energy resource deployment has outpaced what most market models anticipated.

6. Tristan Edis

Tristan Edis is Director and Principal of Green Energy Markets, an independent research and analysis firm based in Melbourne. He has been working on commercial analysis of energy and carbon markets since 2000 and is one of Australia's most technically credible independent voices on the economics of the electricity transition, with a particular focus on battery economics, solar penetration, and the mechanics of the NEM.

Edis has been among the most active LinkedIn commentators on Australian electricity market data in 2025 and 2026, including analysis of how the Cheaper Home Batteries Program has transformed the household storage market and how utility-scale BESS costs compare across geographies. His presentation at Smart Energy 2026 showed that Australian households have been installing more battery capacity every week than the entire Hornsdale Big Battery since September 2025, and this data point became widely circulated across the energy sector.

7. Kobad Bhavnagri

Kobad Bhavnagri is Executive General Manager and Head of Australia at BloombergNEF, where he leads the organisation's economic analysis of the energy transition in the Asia-Pacific region. He has authored more than one hundred publications spanning energy policy, economics, finance, and technology since joining Bloomberg, and previously worked as an engineer, management consultant, and analyst across energy and finance. He is a regular contributor to the Climate Council and has advised Australian government bodies on energy economics.

Bhavnagri's work for BloombergNEF has been particularly influential in shaping how Australian policymakers and investors understand the long-term economics of different electricity generation and storage technologies, and the implications of global trade and supply chain dynamics for Australia's energy transition. His public commentary combines the rigour of BNEF's data infrastructure with a willingness to engage accessibly with the policy questions that market analysis raises.

The Journalists and Communicators

The public understanding of electricity in Australia and New Zealand runs largely through a small number of journalists who have dedicated their careers to translating the sector's complexity for a broader audience. These voices do not just report. They shape the conversation.

8. Giles Parkinson

Giles Parkinson is the founder and editor-in-chief of RenewEconomy, Australia's most important independent news source dedicated to renewable energy and the electricity transition, which he established more than a decade ago after thirty years as a journalist including serving as Business Editor and Deputy Editor of the Australian Financial Review. He is the co-host of the weekly Energy Insiders podcast alongside David Leitch, which covers the NEM, electricity politics, and the energy transition with a depth of market knowledge that is unusual in any podcast format.

Parkinson was inducted into the Smart Energy Council Solar Hall of Fame in 2022 in recognition of his contribution to shaping the public understanding of Australia's electricity transition. His coverage of grid events in the Australian market, his interviews with AEMO and AEMC figures, and his willingness to interrogate the policy environment around coal closures and transmission builds have made RenewEconomy the publication of record for Australia's energy sector.

9. Sophie Vorrath

Sophie Vorrath is Editor of RenewEconomy and Editor of its sister publication One Step Off The Grid, which focuses on household solar and storage for consumers. She is also co-host of the Solar Insiders podcast. Having written about clean energy for more than a decade, her coverage spans regulatory policy, household distributed energy resources, grid-scale storage, and the political economy of the electricity transition, with particular expertise on the consumer and distribution network dimensions that are often underrepresented in sector coverage.

Vorrath's work in 2025 and 2026 has been particularly significant in tracking the extraordinary growth of Australia's household battery sector following the Cheaper Home Batteries Program, documenting both the scale of the deployment and the grid integration questions it raises. Her regular coverage of the AER's Default Market Offer determinations and the state-by-state policy environment gives her writing a practical usefulness for industry participants who need to track regulatory developments across multiple jurisdictions.

10. Rachel Williamson

Rachel Williamson is a senior journalist at RenewEconomy, where she covers storage, transmission, and policy across the Australian electricity sector. Her work focuses on the technical and commercial dimensions of the battery storage buildout, transmission project delivery, and the regulatory processes that govern how new assets connect to the NEM. Her detailed coverage of BESS projects from development approval through to commissioning has built a strong readership among battery storage developers and investors.

Williamson is an active presence on LinkedIn, where she regularly shares coverage of specific BESS projects and regulatory decisions. Her combination of technical depth and readable prose makes her one of the more useful voices for industry participants who want to follow the storage market without relying solely on paywalled trade publications. Her RenewEconomy bylines through May 2026 confirm her continued active coverage of the sector.

The Think Tanks and Researchers

Several organisations sit at the intersection of research and advocacy on electricity in Australia and New Zealand, and the individuals leading and contributing to those organisations are among the most valuable voices for understanding what the evidence actually says about the transition.

11. Tim Buckley

Tim Buckley is Director of Climate Energy Finance, the Sydney-based think tank he founded after leaving the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, where he had served as Director of Energy Finance Studies for Australasia and South Asia. He spent seventeen years at Citigroup as Managing Director and Head of Equity Research before moving into energy think tank work. His focus is on the financial flows reshaping Australia's and India's electricity systems and the stranded asset risk in the coal sector.

Buckley was cited in reporting on AEMO's Q1 2025 data as noting that the NEM's record high variable renewable energy penetration of 43 percent was driving lower average wholesale prices, while highlighting the record 51 gigawatts of new wind, solar, and battery proposals moving through the approvals process. His analysis for Climate Energy Finance, and his regular commentary in RenewEconomy and other Australian publications, have made him a key reference point for financial market participants tracking Australia's electricity transition.

12. Anna Skarbek AM

Anna Skarbek AM is CEO of Climateworks Centre, the non-profit organisation within Monash University's Sustainable Development Institute that develops independent, evidence-based analysis to assist the transition to net zero emissions across Australia, Southeast Asia, and the Pacific. She has led Climateworks since its creation in 2009, having previously served as a senior policy advisor to the Victorian Deputy Premier and as a Macquarie Bank investment banker in the energy and utilities team. In 2025, she was made a Member of the Order of Australia for significant service to conservation and the environment.

Skarbek has been appointed to the board of Australia's Net Zero Economy Authority and is a director of the Centre for New Energy Technologies. Climateworks has been particularly active in 2025 and 2026 on the industrial decarbonisation challenge in Queensland, with research into the electrification potential of Gladstone's industrial precinct. Her Energy Insiders podcast appearances and regular public commentary make her one of the most credible voices on how Australia's electricity transition connects to its broader decarbonisation task.

13. Johanna Bowyer

Johanna Bowyer is an Electricity Analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, where she focuses on Australia's electricity market. Her analysis of AEMO's Quarterly Energy Dynamics reports has been widely cited in energy media, including in coverage of Australia's record renewable penetration in 2025. She is an active LinkedIn presence, regularly sharing analysis of NEM data and renewable energy deployment trends with a readership that spans industry participants, investors, and policy observers.

Bowyer was quoted in coverage of AEMO's Q1 2025 data as observing that renewables were taking a larger share of the national electricity market while coal output decreased. Her work for IEEFA provides accessible quantitative analysis of the NEM that is genuinely useful for market participants, investors, and policy observers who want to track the transition without having to read the underlying AEMO datasets directly. She represents a younger generation of IEEFA analysts who are building public profiles alongside the organisation's senior figures.

14. Professor Iain MacGill

Iain MacGill is a Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications at UNSW Sydney, and Joint Director (Engineering) of the Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets. He has been studying and writing about Australian electricity markets for more than two decades, with a focus on market design, distributed energy, and the policy frameworks needed to manage the transition to a high-renewables system. He is the responsible Australian expert on the IEA's PV Power Systems Task 14 on high PV penetrations in the electricity grid.

MacGill is one of the most consistent academic voices on the structural challenges of the NEM, including the implications of high renewable penetration for wholesale market design and the adequacy of current regulatory frameworks. His peer-reviewed publications through 2025 and 2026 address fundamental questions about energy storage market design, the role of distributed energy systems in Australia's grid architecture, and the policy frameworks needed to facilitate renewable energy integration at scale.

The Peak Bodies and Advocacy Leaders

Australia's electricity sector is shaped by a set of peak bodies, regulators, and advocacy organisations whose public communications set the terms of the policy debate. The individuals leading these organisations are among the most influential voices in the sector.

15. Jackie Trad

Jackie Trad became CEO of the Clean Energy Council, Australia's peak body for renewable energy retailers and generators, in August 2025, succeeding Kane Thornton who had led the organisation for fifteen years. She was previously Deputy Premier and Treasurer of Queensland from 2015 to 2020 and brings more than thirty years of experience in public policy, government, and membership-based organisations to the role. At All Energy Australia 2025, on her ninth day in the role, she declared that the energy transition is not a pipe dream, noting that renewables had supplied over half of all electricity in the NEM for the first time in Q4 2025.

Trad's background in Queensland government, where she was involved in establishing the publicly-owned CleanCo Energy in 2018, gives her credibility with state government interlocutors that is essential for a national peak body navigating the different policy environments across Australian jurisdictions. Her public communications since taking the role have been focused on accelerating investment signals and ensuring the transition benefits consumers as well as industry participants.

16. Darren Miller

Darren Miller has been CEO of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency since 2018, with his third three-year term commencing in August 2024. Under his leadership, ARENA has overseen significant growth in funding commitments, including $540 million committed to 60 projects in a single financial year. ARENA's role as a public agency providing financial assistance for the research and deployment of renewable energy technologies puts Miller at the centre of the decisions about which technologies get investment support during the transition.

Miller's public communications emphasise the importance of extending the electricity transition beyond the obvious technologies into the harder-to-decarbonise sectors of the economy. His LinkedIn presence is active and focused on ARENA project outcomes, making him useful to follow for anyone tracking what the public sector is actually funding in Australia's energy technology landscape, from long-duration storage to industrial electrification.

17. Andrew Richards

Andrew Richards has been CEO of the Energy Users Association of Australia for more than nine years. The EUAA is the peak national body representing Australian commercial and industrial electricity and gas users, including a broad cross-section of retail, manufacturing, mining, materials, and food processing industries. His advocacy focuses on the interests of large electricity consumers who are often underrepresented in the policy debate relative to generators and retailers.

Richards has been a consistent voice on the cost implications of the electricity transition for commercial and industrial users, including through his involvement in the Post 2025 Market Design Advisory Group, the Energy Sector Plan Advisory Group, and the Federal Government Energy Industry Roundtable. His perspective is particularly useful for understanding the business case for and against specific market design choices, since his members bear the direct cost consequences of those choices.

18. Gavin Dufty

Gavin Dufty is National Director Energy Policy and Research at St Vincent de Paul Society Australia, where he has spent decades tracking the household affordability implications of electricity tariff changes across New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the ACT. He is a Board member of Energy Consumers Australia and a representative on numerous regulatory and policy advisory committees including AEMC, AEMO, AER, and retailer customer consultative groups.

Dufty's contribution to the electricity conversation is distinctive because it centres the question that is most consequential for the households least able to absorb rising costs: who pays when electricity prices go up, and who gets left behind when the transition creates winners and losers? His podcast appearances and conference commentary on the just transition make him an essential voice for anyone serious about the equity dimensions of the NEM reform agenda.

The Regulatory and Policy Architects

The rules that govern Australia's and New Zealand's electricity systems are made and enforced by a set of regulatory bodies whose senior figures shape the sector's trajectory more than almost anyone else. These are the voices translating policy into the structures within which the market actually operates.

19. Anna Collyer

Anna Collyer has been Chair of the Australian Energy Market Commission since 2020. The AEMC is the expert energy policy adviser to Australian governments, responsible for making and revising the energy rules and providing policy advice. Under her leadership, the AEMC has overseen significant rule change processes relating to consumer energy resources, distributed energy integration, and the transition to a high-renewables grid.

Collyer's public speeches and regulatory consultations are among the most important primary sources for understanding how the institutional framework governing Australia's electricity market is evolving. The AEMC's April 2026 Data Power lecture series demonstrates the organisation's commitment to engaging the public on the regulatory dimensions of the transition in accessible terms, reaching audiences that do not typically engage with formal regulatory documents.

20. Brendan French

Dr Brendan French became CEO of Energy Consumers Australia in 2024. ECA is the independent advocate for household and small business electricity and gas consumers in Australia's National Energy Market. A consumer protection and dispute resolution expert, he previously served as the Commonwealth Bank's Executive General Manager Customer and Community Advocacy and as Deputy Ombudsman at the Energy and Water Ombudsman NSW.

French's appointment brought a consumer protection lens to the NEM that had previously been underrepresented at the leadership level. His contributions at major industry events, including the AEC Conference 2026, have been notable for framing the electricity transition primarily in terms of the outcomes it delivers for households rather than for industry participants. His work on vulnerable consumer protections and the design of the default market offer regime has shaped the retail electricity policy conversation throughout 2025 and 2026.

21. Matt Garbutt

Matt Garbutt became CEO of the Australian Energy Regulator on 13 November 2025, having been Acting CEO since August 2025 and having joined the AER in February 2024 as Executive General Manager of Compliance, Enforcement, and Surveillance. He previously served as Executive Director of the Energy Sector Reform Division for the Victorian Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, and holds a PhD in Physics and a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Melbourne.

The AER's role in setting revenue allowances for network businesses and enforcing the energy rules makes it one of the most consequential institutions in determining what electricity costs Australian consumers. Garbutt's leadership of the AER comes at a moment when network revenues are rising to fund the grid upgrades required for the transition, making the regulator's approach to revenue determinations and the Default Market Offer central to the affordability question that has become the most politically sensitive dimension of the electricity transition.

22. Louisa Kinnear

Louisa Kinnear became CEO of the Australian Energy Council in September 2024, following her role as CEO of Jacana Energy, the largest energy retailer in the Northern Territory. She has held senior roles at Synergy, Western Power, and Water Corporation and has spent fifteen years helping governments, businesses, and customers navigate the renewable energy transition across multiple Australian jurisdictions.

Kinnear's leadership of the AEC, the peak body for energy retailers and generators, comes at a moment when the retail electricity sector faces the most complex set of structural changes in its history. Her role hosting the AEC's inaugural Energy2050 Conference in June 2026 signals the organisation's commitment to engaging the industry in a forward-looking conversation about what the sector needs to look like to serve customers well in a high-renewables, high-DER environment.

The Engineers and Technical Practitioners

Some of the most important voices on electricity are the people who have spent their careers inside the technical architecture of the system. Their perspective on what is actually feasible, what the operational constraints are, and where the engineering challenges lie cannot be replicated by analysis alone.

23. Paul Simshauser AM

Paul Simshauser AM became CEO of Iberdrola Australia in early 2026, having previously served as CEO of Powerlink Queensland from 2020 to 2025, and before that as Director-General of the Queensland Department of Energy and Water Supply and Chief Economist of AGL Energy. He is a Professor of Economics at Griffith University's Centre for Applied Energy Economics and Policy Research and one of Australia's most prolific published energy economists, focusing on renewable electricity, energy hardship, and climate policy.

Simshauser's dual standing as both a practising CEO and a peer-reviewed academic gives him a credibility across both the commercial and analytical dimensions of the electricity conversation that is rare. His September 2025 keynote at the IEEE PES AUPEC conference addressed the grid stability and investment challenges of Queensland's coal phase-out, and his subsequent move to Iberdrola Australia positions him as one of the most consequential industry leaders in Australia's renewable energy development pipeline for the remainder of the decade.

24. Josef Tadich

Josef Tadich is Regional Director for Tesla Energy in the Asia-Pacific, a role he has held since 2022, and an executive director of Tesla Motors Australia. He is a Chartered Professional Engineer and Fellow of the Electrical College of the Institute of Engineers Australia, having been named National Professional Electrical Engineer of the Year by Engineers Australia in 2021. He began his career as an engineering officer in the Royal Australian Navy and joined Tesla in 2015 to lead the APAC engineering team for residential and utility battery storage.

Tadich was appointed to the AEMO Board as a non-executive director in February 2026 for a four-year term. His combination of deep technical expertise in battery storage systems and APAC commercial leadership makes him one of the most informed voices on the practical engineering and commercial dimensions of Australia's battery storage buildout. His case study presentation at the AEC Conference 2026 on lessons from Tesla provided one of the most concrete accounts of how virtual power plant technology is being deployed at scale in Australia.

25. Renene Windsor

Renene Windsor is Industry Director for Transmission and Distribution at Aurecon, one of Australia's leading engineering consultancies. She has played key roles across major transmission programs including Project EnergyConnect, HumeLink, and Australia's first Renewable Energy Zones. Her work reflects the reality that transmission delivery at the scale Australia requires involves navigating multi-year, multi-stakeholder programs across planning approvals, land access, logistics, financing, and engineering simultaneously.

Windsor's experience across the full energy supply chain, from generation and storage through to transmission, distribution, and end use, gives her commentary on the infrastructure delivery challenge a practical credibility that is difficult to find in the regulatory or academic literature. Her contributions at industry events focus on what it actually takes to build the network infrastructure required to support the transition, which is a perspective often missing from discussions dominated by policy design rather than delivery.

The Academics Building the Evidence Base

Several university-based researchers are producing the work that the rest of the sector depends on to make evidence-based decisions about the electricity transition.

26. Lachlan Blackhall

Lachlan Blackhall is Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Innovation at the Australian National University, having previously founded and led the ANU's Battery Storage and Grid Integration Program from 2018 to February 2024. A Professor of Engineering with a PhD in engineering and applied mathematics, he is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Australia and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering, and was the co-founder and former CTO of Reposit Power, where he pioneered virtual power plant technology.

Blackhall's foundational work on battery storage integration, virtual power plants, and distributed energy resource control systems has shaped how Australian grid operators and technology developers approach the challenge of managing a power system with high levels of rooftop solar and distributed storage. His move into the DVC Research and Innovation role at ANU positions him to continue influencing the research agenda on electricity systems from a more senior institutional vantage point.

27. Renate Egan

Renate Egan is a Professor at the University of New South Wales and one of Australia's leading researchers on solar photovoltaic technology and the electricity sector implications of solar deployment. She was inducted into the Smart Energy Council Solar Hall of Fame in 2022 and is active in the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics. Her work sits at the intersection of photovoltaic technology development and the grid integration questions raised by Australia's extraordinary rooftop solar penetration.

Egan's research contribution is particularly relevant to the challenge of what happens when rooftop solar penetration exceeds the grid's immediate capacity to absorb it, a problem that has become acute in South Australia and is emerging across the NEM. Her academic publication record and public engagement at industry conferences make her a useful voice for anyone trying to understand the technical dimensions of solar integration that sit behind the headline deployment numbers.

28. Anna Collyer / Nicki Hutley [Nicki Hutley replaces duplicate]

28. Nicki Hutley

Nicki Hutley is a partner at Deloitte Access Economics and one of Australia's most prominent independent economists. She is a member of the Climate Council and has become one of the most active public communicators on the economic dimensions of Australia's energy and climate transition, making the economic case for decarbonisation accessible to a business and general audience through media appearances, conference keynotes, and publications.

Hutley's Climate Council work and her regular media appearances on the ABC and in major business publications have positioned her as a trusted voice on the economic risks and opportunities of the electricity transition for Australian businesses. Her emphasis on the cost of inaction as well as the cost of action provides a useful counterweight to analysis that focuses exclusively on the costs of the transition without accounting for the costs of delay. Her work reaches decision-makers in the business community who might not engage with the technical electricity literature directly.

New Zealand Voices

New Zealand's electricity system has its own distinctive character: a grid that is already highly renewable, a hydrology-dependent supply that creates seasonal vulnerability, a political environment that has made energy strategy difficult to develop, and a set of electricity companies whose market structure raises persistent questions about competitive outcomes for consumers.

29. James Kilty

(See entry 2 above. Kilty leads this category because his role at Transpower is the most consequential single role in New Zealand's electricity infrastructure. His leadership of the grid operator during the most transformative decade in the country's electricity history makes him the central figure in any ANZ electricity list.)

30. Vince Hawksworth

Vince Hawksworth served as CEO of Mercury Energy, one of New Zealand's major electricity generators and retailers, for a decade before announcing his retirement in mid-2024. During his tenure he led one of the country's largest electricity businesses through the energy transition, managing both generation asset investment decisions and retail market strategy at a moment when the New Zealand electricity market was under significant political and regulatory scrutiny over pricing and market competition.

Hawksworth's post-Mercury reflections on the New Zealand electricity market, shared in media interviews before his departure, offer a practitioner's account of the commercial dynamics that determine investment decisions in a small, hydro-dominated grid. His perspective on the tension between spot market exposure and long-term investment certainty, and on the relationship between New Zealand's electricity market structure and industrial competitiveness, remains relevant to the ongoing policy debate.

31. Ben Reid

Ben Reid is Managing Director of Meridian Energy, one of New Zealand's largest electricity generators and retailers, with a generation portfolio centred on hydroelectric and wind generation. Meridian has significant operations in both New Zealand and Australia and has been an active investor in renewable energy development in both markets. Reid's leadership of a major state-owned enterprise during a period of significant change in both the New Zealand and Australian electricity markets has made him a consequential figure in the commercial development of the regional electricity landscape.

Meridian's annual reports and Reid's public commentary at industry events have been informative on the investment outlook for New Zealand wind energy, the commercial rationale for cross-Tasman electricity market engagement, and the company's approach to the challenge of maintaining reliable supply from a hydro-heavy portfolio during dry years when lake levels fall and gas backup becomes necessary.

32. Sarah Penney

Sarah Penney is General Manager for Energy at BusinessNZ, the major peak body for New Zealand business, where she represents the interests of large electricity users in the country's market and regulatory processes. Her advocacy focuses on the electricity cost and reliability implications of market design choices for commercial and industrial users, a constituency that is often underrepresented in policy debates dominated by the generator and retail sectors.

Penney's commentary on electricity pricing, market competition, and the investment pipeline for new generation has been a consistent presence in New Zealand energy media and at major sector events. Her perspective is particularly useful for understanding the demand side of the New Zealand electricity equation and the business investment decisions that depend on affordable and reliable electricity supply as the country electrifies more of its transport and industrial processes.

33. Sam Stubbs

Sam Stubbs is the founder and CEO of Simplicity, a New Zealand KiwiSaver and investment fund provider, and one of the country's most prominent advocates for using long-term institutional capital to fund the infrastructure and energy transition New Zealand needs. While not an electricity specialist in a technical sense, his work on how New Zealand's savings pool can be mobilised to fund electricity generation and grid infrastructure has made him one of the most interesting voices on the finance side of the New Zealand electricity conversation.

Stubbs has been publicly outspoken about the failure of New Zealand's energy strategy to provide the long-term investment certainty that institutional investors need to commit capital to electricity generation and grid infrastructure. His advocacy for a more strategic approach to infrastructure finance, and his specific public interventions on the electricity market's governance and investment shortcomings, have given him a profile on energy that few New Zealand financial sector voices achieve.

The Consumer Energy Technology Voices

The rapid deployment of rooftop solar, household batteries, electric vehicles, and virtual power plants has created a new layer of voices in the electricity conversation, focused on the consumer and technology dimensions of the transition.

34. John Grimes

John Grimes was CEO of the Smart Energy Council, Australia's peak body for solar and storage, for nearly two decades, retiring from the role in May 2026. During his tenure he was one of the most consistent and visible advocates for the household solar and storage industry in Australia, guiding the Smart Energy Council through the extraordinary growth of the rooftop solar sector and the more recent boom in household battery storage following the federal government's Cheaper Home Batteries Program.

Grimes's contribution to the electricity conversation has been particularly significant in keeping the consumer and household dimensions of the transition in the policy frame alongside the utility-scale and grid discussions that dominate most industry coverage. His Energy Insiders podcast appearances and industry event keynotes consistently foregrounded the perspective of households as active participants in the electricity system rather than passive consumers of decisions made elsewhere in the supply chain.

35. David McElrea

David McElrea became CEO of the Smart Energy Council in May 2026, succeeding John Grimes. He joined the organisation as Chief Advocacy Officer from July 2025 after serving as Deputy Chief of Staff to the Australian Minister for the Environment and Water. His background in government relations, climate policy, and environmental reform positions him to lead the Smart Energy Council's next phase of engagement with the policy environment around household energy resources.

McElrea's appointment at a moment when the Smart Energy Council is navigating the integration of millions of household solar and battery installations into a grid that was not designed for them represents one of the more consequential peak body leadership transitions of 2026. His prior policy experience will be essential as the industry seeks regulatory frameworks that allow distributed energy resources to participate meaningfully in wholesale and ancillary services markets alongside utility-scale generators and networks.

The Investors and Finance Voices

Electricity infrastructure requires patient capital at scale. The people who manage that capital and think about how it flows toward or away from the transition are an essential part of the conversation.

36. Michael Weaver

Michael Weaver is General Manager for Mid-Risk Assets and UK at Australian Retirement Trust, one of Australia's largest superannuation funds, where he leads teams managing infrastructure, real estate, and private credit portfolios totalling over $60 billion. He was previously Head of Private Markets at Sunsuper with responsibility across infrastructure, real estate, private equity, and private debt, and joined Australian Retirement Trust through the 2022 merger with QSuper.

Weaver's AEC Conference 2026 panel contribution on what the investment community needs from the energy policy environment to commit long-term capital to the electricity transition provided one of the most candid accounts of the gap between policy ambition and investment certainty that the sector currently faces. His perspective as a representative of the institutional capital that will ultimately fund much of the network and generation investment is essential for understanding why investment timelines and regulatory certainty matter so much.

37. Erin van Maanen

Erin van Maanen is Executive General Manager Strategy and Commercial at Hydro Tasmania, responsible for setting the company's strategic direction and growing portfolio value through project development, origination, portfolio optimisation, and energy trading. She has two decades of experience across large-scale energy project development, wholesale trading, corporate finance, and strategy, including prior work in wind development across Australia and Asia and renewable energy project advisory at Macquarie Capital in Hong Kong.

Van Maanen's work at Hydro Tasmania is particularly relevant at a moment when the company's storage assets are central to the NEM's reliability as coal generators retire. Hydro Tasmania's position as both a renewable generator and a critical firming resource gives her a distinctive vantage point on the investment and market design questions that determine whether the grid remains reliable through the coal transition. Her AEC Conference 2026 panel contribution demonstrated the commercial operator's perspective on dynamic market design.

38. Matt Kean

Matt Kean is Chair of the Climate Change Authority, having been appointed to the role by the Albanese government in 2024. He was previously the NSW Treasurer and Energy Minister, and during his time in that role was responsible for initiating the NSW Electricity Infrastructure Roadmap, the most ambitious state-level renewable energy framework in Australia's history. His move from state government to the national advisory body represents a significant transition from operational policymaking to independent advice.

Kean's public commentary, including his Energy Insiders podcast appearances in 2026 on Australia's 2035 emissions target, has maintained his status as one of Australia's most prominent political voices on the energy transition. His willingness to speak frankly about the gap between current policy settings and what is needed to meet Australia's climate commitments, doing so as chair of an independent statutory authority rather than as a politician constrained by party discipline, makes him a genuinely useful voice to follow.

39. Frank Calabria

Frank Calabria has been CEO of Origin Energy since 2016 and is Chair of the Australian Energy Council. Origin is one of Australia's biggest energy retailers and generators, with a strategy centred on accelerating investment in renewable energy and storage, delivering customer solutions through its Loop virtual power plant platform, and managing the transition from the company's legacy coal and gas generation assets. His opening keynote at the AEC Conference 2026 focused on Origin's investment in new technologies and its approach to the energy transition.

Calabria's perspective as CEO of a major integrated energy company simultaneously managing a large coal generator, a renewable development pipeline, and a retail customer base of millions of Australian households gives him a commercially grounded view of the transition's complexity. His willingness to engage publicly with the tensions in Origin's own transition, including the extended life of the Eraring coal generator in New South Wales, makes him a more honest voice on the commercial realities of the transition than many industry participants.

40. Jessica Morris

Jessica Morris is Chief Customer and Strategy Officer at SA Power Networks, South Australia's electricity distribution network, with more than fifteen years of experience in the energy industry across strategic communications, community building, and stakeholder engagement. South Australia is the most advanced renewable electricity jurisdiction in Australia and arguably one of the most advanced in the world, with rooftop solar penetration exceeding fifty percent of households and instantaneous renewable generation regularly reaching into the high nineties.

Morris's work at SA Power Networks gives her an operational perspective on what it actually looks like to manage a distribution network at the frontier of the renewable energy transition. The challenges SA Power Networks faces, including managing two-way power flows, system strength, and consumer energy resource integration, are the challenges that every Australian distribution network will face within the next decade. Her AEC Conference 2026 contribution on the customer-centric energy system of the future drew directly on this distinctive operational experience.

Notable Voices We Almost Included

Several names would appear on most lists like this but were deliberately not included, either because their contribution is primarily global rather than ANZ-specific, or because editorial choices about depth and originality led in different directions. Brene Brown, Adam Grant, Simon Sinek, Patrick Lencioni, Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, and Susan Cain are foundational voices in leadership and organisational behaviour but are not electricity sector specialists, and their inclusion here would have displaced genuinely relevant voices.

Within the electricity sector itself, several prominent figures were considered carefully. Audrey Zibelman, the former AEMO CEO who did seminal work on grid modernisation and now advises globally through Alvarez and Marsal, was not included because her current practice is primarily US-focused. Colin Brooks at Energy Networks Australia was a strong candidate but the list was already well-supplied with peak body leaders. In New Zealand, the Electricity Authority's leadership was considered, but the Authority's statutory independence means its public commentary is necessarily constrained in ways that reduce its usefulness as a thought leadership voice. The forty people on this list represent the most coherent selection available after all of these editorial considerations.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

The first mistake people make when trying to understand Australia's and New Zealand's electricity sectors is conflating the broader clean energy or climate conversation with the specific electricity conversation. The electricity sector has its own regulatory architecture, its own market mechanics, and its own vocabulary. A commentator who is excellent on climate finance or corporate sustainability may have almost nothing useful to say about how a regional transmission organisation works or why the AEMC has recently proposed changes to distribution network planning. Read with discrimination. Notice when a voice is operating inside its genuine area of expertise versus when it is reaching beyond it.

The second mistake is treating the electricity transition as a purely technical or policy challenge without engaging with its economic and commercial dimensions. Australia's grid is a market, and the investment decisions that will determine whether the 82 percent renewable target is met by 2030 are commercial decisions made by private companies in response to market signals. Understanding the market design, the investment economics, and the incentive structures that shape those decisions is as important as understanding the technology. Voices like Tim Nelson, Tristan Edis, and David Leitch are valuable precisely because they combine technical knowledge with commercial and economic analysis.

The third mistake is reading only Australian sources and assuming the New Zealand electricity story is simply a smaller version of the Australian one. New Zealand's grid is fundamentally different: almost entirely renewable already, dominated by hydro rather than solar and wind, and facing a distinct set of investment and governance challenges. The voices in this list's New Zealand category are covering a genuinely different set of problems from their Australian counterparts, and the cross-Tasman comparison is often illuminating in both directions.

The fourth mistake is assuming that following thought leaders substitutes for engaging with primary sources. AEMO's Quarterly Energy Dynamics reports, the AEMC's rule change determinations, the AER's network revenue decisions, and Transpower's planning publications are the primary material. The voices on this list are, at their best, guides to that primary material and interpreters of what it means. Using them as a replacement for it will leave you with a curated summary of someone else's reading rather than an independent view.

The fifth mistake is ignoring the consumer and equity dimensions of the transition. The electricity system exists to serve households and businesses. The transition is succeeding or failing for individual Australians and New Zealanders through the cost of their electricity bills, the reliability of their supply, and the opportunities they do or do not have to participate in the new distributed energy economy. Voices like Gavin Dufty and Brendan French who represent consumer interests are not peripheral to the core electricity conversation. They are tracking the outcome that matters most.

Implementation Guide: Building Your Electricity Reading List

Building a useful reading and following list on Australian and New Zealand electricity begins with a single daily source and works outward from there. RenewEconomy is the obvious starting point for anyone who wants to track the Australian electricity transition through quality journalism. It is free, published daily, and covers the full range of NEM, storage, solar, policy, and political developments with a depth of market knowledge that no comparable publication matches. Add the Energy Insiders podcast for a weekly conversational treatment of the same landscape.

For New Zealand, the Spinoff's energy coverage and Newsroom's electricity reporting provide the most accessible journalism on the sector. The Electricity Authority's own publications, while technical, are the primary source for understanding how the market regulator is thinking about the major reform questions the sector faces. Transpower's annual and strategic planning reports are similarly essential for anyone tracking the infrastructure dimension of the New Zealand transition.

From there, identify two or three of the people on this list whose focus most directly intersects with your own interests and start following them on LinkedIn. The LinkedIn activity of people like Tim Nelson, Tristan Edis, and Kobad Bhavnagri is substantive and genuinely informative, covering NEM data, policy developments, and market analysis in a format that is faster to process than a full research report. Gavin Dufty's posts on the equity dimensions of tariff decisions and Anna Skarbek's commentary on net zero strategy offer a different but equally useful layer of analysis.

Once you have established a reading rhythm, identify the primary sources behind the commentary you find most useful. AEMO's quarterly reports, the AEMC's rule change consultation papers, and the Clean Energy Regulator's quarterly carbon market reports are all publicly available and worth reading directly rather than only through the lens of commentary. The primary documents are denser than the commentary, but they contain the information that ultimately matters.

For organisations navigating the leadership and human dimensions of working through the electricity transition, including how leadership teams make decisions under uncertainty, communicate with multiple stakeholders, and maintain alignment when the environment is changing fast, Jonno White facilitates executive offsites and leadership team workshops that address exactly these challenges. Jonno works with organisations across the corporate, government, and not-for-profit sectors. Email jonno@consultclarity.org. International travel is often far more affordable than clients expect.

Frequently Asked Questions

How was this list compiled? Every person on this list was selected based on documented contribution to the electricity sector in Australia or New Zealand, active engagement with the issues the sector is navigating in 2025 and 2026, and a deliberate effort to surface voices doing important work beyond the most visible household names. The list spans researchers, regulators, journalists, engineers, consumer advocates, peak body leaders, and commercial operators across both countries.

Why does the list include New Zealand voices alongside Australian ones? The Australian and New Zealand electricity sectors have significant connections, including shared investment flows, comparable regulatory challenges around high renewable penetration, and a number of individuals and organisations that operate across both markets. A combined ANZ list is more useful than two separate national lists for most readers, since the cross-Tasman comparison illuminates each country's choices more clearly than looking at either in isolation.

Why does the list include journalists and communicators alongside technical experts? The electricity sector's public conversation is shaped by the journalists who cover it as much as by the experts who work in it. In a sector where primary sources are technical and dense, the quality of the journalism determines how well the broader business, policy, and public community understands what is happening. Giles Parkinson and RenewEconomy have been as consequential in shaping Australian energy policy as many of the regulatory and industry bodies the site covers.

Can I hire someone to facilitate leadership sessions or workshops for my team working in the electricity sector? Yes. Jonno White facilitates leadership team workshops, executive offsites, and keynote sessions for organisations across corporate, government, and not-for-profit contexts, including those in the electricity sector navigating significant industry change. Jonno's expertise is in the leadership and human dimensions of that challenge. To discuss a session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Why does the list land at 40 rather than 50? The list is ANZ-specific rather than global. After applying quality filters to ensure every entry has documented, active contribution to the electricity conversation in Australia or New Zealand in 2025 and 2026, the pool of voices meeting that standard at the required depth of engagement lands at 40. A list of 40 strong entries is better than a list of 50 with ten marginal ones.

How often should I update my electricity reading list? Review it every six to twelve months. The sector is changing fast enough that the most relevant voices on a specific question in 2025 may not be the most relevant in 2026, and new voices are entering the conversation regularly. The goal is a focused and useful set of sources rather than a comprehensive archive of everyone doing electricity work in Australia and New Zealand.

Final Thoughts

Australia and New Zealand are navigating one of the most complex infrastructure transformations in their histories. Renewables exceeded 50 percent of the NEM for the first time in Q4 2025. The grid needs investment at a scale and pace that the existing regulatory frameworks were not designed to facilitate. Household participation in the electricity system through rooftop solar, batteries, and electric vehicles is reshaping the distribution network in ways that require new technical and commercial approaches. Consumer electricity costs have become one of the most politically sensitive economic questions in both countries. And the data centre buildout is adding a new source of demand that most planning models are still catching up to.

The forty voices on this list are not the only people doing important work on these questions. But they are forty people whose thinking, reporting, analysis, and advocacy is genuinely useful for anyone trying to develop an informed view of what is happening to electricity in Australia and New Zealand in 2026. Following them, reading their work, and engaging with the primary sources they reference is one of the fastest ways to build the kind of electricity literacy that the current moment requires.

For leadership teams in the electricity sector or in industries that depend heavily on electricity, the challenge is not just understanding the technical and policy landscape. It is building the organisational capability to make good decisions in a fast-changing environment. Jonno White delivers keynotes, facilitates executive offsites, and runs team workshops for organisations navigating exactly this kind of industry transformation. Many organisations find that flying Jonno in costs less than engaging high-profile local providers, and whether virtual or in person, the starting point is jonno@consultclarity.org.

About the Author

Jonno White is a Certified Working Genius Facilitator, bestselling author, and leadership consultant who has worked with schools, corporates, and nonprofits around the world. His book Step Up or Step Out has sold over 10,000 copies globally, and his podcast The Leadership Conversations has featured 230+ episodes reaching listeners in 150+ countries. Jonno founded The 7 Questions Movement with 6,000+ participating leaders and achieved a 93.75% satisfaction rating for his Working Genius masterclass at the ASBA 2025 National Conference. Based in Brisbane, Australia, Jonno works globally and regularly travels for speaking and facilitation engagements. Organisations consistently find that international travel is far more affordable than expected.

To book Jonno for your next keynote, workshop, or facilitation session, email jonno@consultclarity.org.

Next Read: 35 Leading Thought Leaders in Electricity Globally

Electricity is the most underrated subject in modern life. The lights come on, the data centre hums, the heat pump runs, the train glides into the station, and almost no one thinks about why. Yet every major economic and political question of the next decade, from artificial intelligence to manufacturing reshoring to climate policy to the cost of living, runs through one shared bottleneck. The grid. According to the International Energy Agency, global electricity demand is forecast to grow at an average annual rate of 3.6 percent through 2030, fifty percent faster than the past decade and double the rate of overall energy demand.

This guide profiles 35 of the most credible, active, and genuinely valuable thought leaders working on electricity globally in 2026. These are the analysts, engineers, journalists, financiers, regulators, and academics whose work is genuinely shaping how the world thinks about power systems. The list spans the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, India, and beyond.

Keep reading: https://www.consultclarity.org/post/thought-leaders-electricity-globally