Advances in Microgrid Technologies and Strategies

Alexander Ochs
Managing Director, SD Strategies
Chair, LEDS GP Energy Working Group

As Senior Director of Climate and Energy at the Worldwatch Institute, a leading international sustainability think tank headquartered in Washington DC, Alexander Ochs heads a growing team of researchers and is a member of the Institute's management team. In 2016, Alexander founded and since then acts as Managing Director of SD Strategies, a consultancy firm based in Berlin, Germany, advising both governments and non-governmental decision-makers on issues at the intersection of economic and social development, energy and the environment. Alexander is also the Chair of the Energy Working Group of the Low Emissions Development Global Partnership (LEDS-GP), President of the Forum for Atlantic Climate and Energy Talks (FACET) and a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University.

Alexander serves on a number of international advisory boards. In 2011, he received the Sustainable Future Award of the Austrian Academic Forum for Foreign Affairs. In 2012, he served on a High-level Commission evaluating the French National Research Agency. In 2015, he was appointed Senior Advisor to UNEP's One Gigaton Coalition. In 2017, Alexander was asked to join the Clean Energy Solution Center's Roster of Experts.

Alexander Ochs studied at the Universities of Cologne and Munich where he graduated with a Magister Artium in political science, philosophy and literature. He held senior research and/or teaching positions at the Center for Clean Air Policy, Princeton University, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), George Washington University, City University of New York, as well as Freie and Humboldt universities in Berlin. At SWP, he founded the International Network to Advance Climate Talks (INTACT). A co-editor of three books and author of numerous academic reports and articles, director of two documentary films, and frequent contributor to public media, Alexander was a member of various delegations to the UN climate negotiations, an Aspen Institute Young Leader and an elected member of tt-30.

Over the last twenty years, Alexander has been engaged on climate and energy issues in all major world regions. In 2010, he developed a methodology to design development pathways that are economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable and can be applied by jurisdictions at any level from the local to the global. These Sustainable Energy Roadmaps have since been applied successfully in three countries as well as two world regions, with several new geographic areas upcoming. In 2015, he developed a methodology for the design and implementation of Communities of Practices in the enegy sector. Three such CoPs are currently underway: Bioelectricity (Latin America & Caribbean), Mini Grids (Africa), and Renewables Grid Integration (South-East Asia).