About this Event
The lecture will start with a description of aviation’s scale, global nature, energy and fuel requirements.
It will then proceed to discuss the following key matters:
Digital Engineering and digital twinning.
The balance of financial/economic and climate changing impacts.
Planning against a backdrop of perpetual change – climate/weather, geo-political, financial, & socio-economic.
Uncertainties/fragility of global supply chains,
Making credibly sustainable solutions, and resisting greenwashing,
Planet, People, Profit in that order,
Navigating hyper-complexity to integrate at scale.
Bio:Alex, a former RAF Fuels Subject Matter Expert, gained extensive leadership and energy systems experience from his military service. Notably he managed the fuel supply chain for the Falkland Islands and managed the country-wide fuel supply chain for all UK assets across Afghanistan, attracting a $1Bn budgetary responsibility. On returning to the UK, he became the lead Inspector and auditor for the Fuel and Gas Safety Regulator; responsible for licensing 200 military sites across the global Defence Estate.
Alex left the RAF with a Cranfield MBA and founded a telecoms infrastructure company and within a year he was headhunted to a competing startup which was yet to raise investment; 2 years later when he left, the company had raised £78m of investment and the team had grown to 60 people. This experience cemented his subsequent roles in rapidly scaling businesses.
From here he has been immersed in the start-up/scale-up community and has significant experience in a range of sectors and has worked in a wide range of capacities. He was recently head-hunted into a consultancy working to help the Ministry of Defence decarbonise, and it was there where he saw the opportunity to do something profoundly special for the aviation sector, using both his fuels subject matter expertise, coupled with his strong entrepreneurial background.
CirculAIRity was born on the premise of a long-term solution, to produce credibly sustainable and scalable SAF. The company is focussed on turning jet fuel exhaust gases back into jet fuel by using renewable power and high TRL equipment at scale.
Alex sits on two global fuel technical standard committees and helps steer the process in the adoption of SAF through contributing to international and national policy/legislation. He sits on the APPG for Aviation, the Defence Suppliers Forum and the NATO Industrial Advisory Group. He is a Chartered Fellow of both the CMI and the IOD. He is currently a NED and has been a NED to two other companies. He is a charity trustee, a volunteer consultant for The Cranfield Trust, and is the Diversity Ambassador for the IoD South West.
Event venue & nearby stays
Christopher Ingold Building, University College London Chemistry Department, London, United Kingdom
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