Guillermo Ivan Pereira

Biography

Guillermo Ivan Pereira is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Sustainable Energy Innovation at the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, The University of Manchester. His work focuses on understanding firms’ responses and adaptation to the energy transition, considering the complexities of technological, public policy, and business model transformation and how these impact critical energy infrastructure and firms. Guillermo’s current project focuses on analyzing how European power utilities invest in sustainable energy innovations. Building on primary data from Mergers and Acquisitions, Joint Ventures, and Strategic Alliances he’s studying the strategies utilities implement to create and capture value from new technologies and services related to renewable electricity generation; smart electricity management; sustainable mobility; and emerging technologies, such as hydrogen and storage. Guillermo works at the intersection of public policy, technology, and firm’s adaptation to advance sustainable energy systems. He builds on methodologies and research designs that combine primary and secondary data to develop empirical evidence for policy design. Guillermo has developed large scale foresight analyses focusing on smart grids and electricity network infrastructure adaptation, through expert elicitation for policy alternatives generation and evaluation. He has also designed multi-stakeholder workshops to identify trends, challenges, and opportunities from a transition to smart grids, and surveys to assess technological and strategic capabilities of European utilities. Some of his recent projects include: a study of electric vehicle public charging infrastructure support policies in the U.S., Europe, and China; an assessment of distributed solar generation support policies in France, Portugal, and the U.S.; research on utilities and renewable energy cooperatives transition to new business models in Portugal and Germany: the evaluation policy alternatives and adaptation capabilities in European utilities; and an evaluation of energy efficiency job creation potential. Guillermo completed his Ph.D. in Sustainable Energy Systems at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and the MIT Portugal Program. Guillermo developed research at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Boston University; and the Electricity Sector Research Group, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Previously he worked on the Product and Innovation departments of ISA, Intelligent Sensing Anywhere and Virtual Power Solutions, where he contributed to energy efficiency projects.