WE ARE ON THE
BRINK OF A NEW
ENERGY SYSTEM -
A MOMENTOUS
TRANSFORMATION

Atanu Mukherjee is the CEO of Dastur Energy. Dastur Energy works with the energy, industrial and commodity sectors globally in areas related to energy strategy, technology, engineering, economics, and finance. Atanu works with enterprises, governments and international institutions on energy transition, industrial transformation & industrial decarbonisation, and climate engineering. In the recent past, he has also been working with the US Department of Energy, the US National Carbon Capture Center, Government of India, G20 Presidency and other governmental institutions on energy innovation, policy, economics, and technology directions for transitioning to low-carbon fuels, clean power, clean chemicals, clean cement, and clean steel. His firm also advises enterprises, private equity firms and investors on project development, project engineering, project finance, asset revitalization, M&As and investment strategies for metals, mining, energy and commodity related businesses.

Prior to working in the energy sector, Atanu was in senior leadership positions at Microsoft Corporation in Redmond, WA and Digital Equipment Corporation in Boston, MA.

Atanu holds a joint graduate degree in Engineering and Management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s School of Engineering and The MIT Sloan School of Management and is a graduate fellow at Stanford University in Energy & Chemical Engineering. He was a Research Fellow at MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where his team’s pioneering research laid the groundwork for powering core components of today’s internet infrastructure. He has over 50 publications in energy, materials, economics, and computer science and holds multiple patents. He was elected to the World’s Who’s Who in Science and Engineering in 2012.

Atanu is an avid golfer, a pianist and a private pilot and shares his time between Austin, TX and India.

With experience in technology, investment management and consulting, Abhijit Sarkar oversees Dastur Energy’s North America business and relationships with clients, partners, and funding institutions, as well as the delivery of major projects on a worldwide basis, consulting at the highest levels with companies, financial institutions, investors and policy makers on strategy and policy. In recent years, his team has delivered  pioneering clean energy projects in the Middle East, India and North America relating to carbon capture, hydrogen, methanol and other value-added chemicals. These include the first petcoke gasification project in the public sector in India, the first carbon capture project at an integrated steel plant in North America, and the first large-scale coal/pet coke gasification to produce low-cost CO₂ in the Middle East.  According to Abhijit, “Transitioning to cleaner energy and decarbonization are core issues faced by leaders of industrial business today as they grow their businesses.  Dastur Energy’s expertise in a wide range of commercially available clean technologies, and project experiences enable us to support such leaders in devising strategies to drive capital and operating expense efficient transitions.”

Abhijit has dual BS degrees in Computer Science & Economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Abhijit is based out of Cambridge, MA and has interests in long distance cycling, running, craft beers and experiencing new cultures.

Jerry A. Hausman is the John and Jennie S. MacDonald Professor of Economics at MIT in Cambridge, MA. He is the Director of the MIT Telecommunications Economics Research Program. Professor Hausman received the John Bates Clark Award from the American Economic Association in 1985 for the most outstanding contributions to economics by an economist under 40 years of age. He also received the Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society. Professor Hausman brings deep domain knowledge and expertise in policy and economics and plays a mentoring role in shaping Dastur’s decarbonization solutions and offerings for governments and institutions. Professor Hausman’s research areas include the effects of taxation on the economy, the economics of aging, and energy and environmental economics.

Kenneth B. Medlock III, Ph.D., is the James A. Baker, III, and Susan G. Baker Fellow in Energy and Resource Economics at the Baker Institute and the senior director of the Center for Energy Studies. He is also the director of the Masters of Energy Economics program and holds adjunct professor appointments in the Department of Economics, and the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University. Medlock has served as an advisor to the U.S. Department of Energy and the California Energy Commission in their respective energy modeling efforts. Medlock also served as vice president for conferences for the United States Association for Energy Economics (USAEE), and as vice president for academic affairs.

Medlock has published numerous scholarly articles on natural gas markets, electricity markets, energy commodity price relationships, transportation, national oil company behavior, economic development and energy demand, energy use and the environment, and various energy transition topics ranging from engineered and nature-based carbon capture to hydrogen to the economic drivers of technology adoption. Dr. Medlock has been a key contributor to the seminal report on CCUS Policy Framework and Deployment Mechanism in India, published by Dastur with the NITI Aayog, the apex policy thinkthank of the Government of India, especially in the area of CCUS business model design and formulation. He has also testified in Capitol Hill on U.S. energy exports and electricity market evolution, and  is a regular speaker on global and domestic energy issues and has spoken at OPEC.

Medlock received his Ph.D. in economics from Rice University in May 2000.

Susan D. Hovorka is a Senior Research Scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology, Jackson School of Geosciences, at The University of Texas at Austin. She has worked on diverse topics related to CO₂ transportation, permanent sequestration and and reservoir characterization. Her current research focuses on the assessment of the effectiveness of subsurface geologic sequestration of CO₂ as a mechanism for reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions. Dr. Hovorka is the principal investigator of the Gulf Coast Carbon Center, an industry/academic partnership working on economically viable approaches to the geologic sequestration of CO₂. She is the project lead for the “Early” test of the Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) which has monitored the injection of 3 million tons of CO₂ at Denbury’s Cranfield Field. She has led a research team in the completion of the two-phase Frio Pilot, a first US field test of storage of CO₂ in brine-filled sandstones.

Dr. Hovorka has been instrumental in identifying and analyzing CO₂ sequestration options in many of the CCUS projects designed and architected by Dastur Energy and has also been an important contributor to the CCUS Policy Framework and Deployment Mechanism in India report published by Dastur.

Dr. Hovorka has earned her BA in geology from Earlham College and an MA and Ph.D. from the University of Texas.

Through his 30+ years of hands-on experience, Phil has acquired unparalleled expertise in the areas of gasification and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) projects. He has been involved in various emerging, newly commercialized and developing gasification and power generation technologies, where he has worked in areas of project management, business and commercial development, due diligence and technology transfer.

Phil serves as the gasification expert in the gasification feasibility and engineering studies undertaken by Dastur for clients across North America, the Middle East and India. Phil has previously worked for Brown & Root, Power Systems Engineering Inc. (PSE), Destec, Dynegy, Global Energy Inc., ConocoPhillips, Phillips 66 Company and CB&I. He was the Chairman of the Gasification Technologies Council and served on its Executive Committee for an extended period of time. He also served on the Coal Utilization Research Council Technical Committee and the National Coal Council.

Phil holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Terre Haute, Indiana, USA.