Registration REQUIRED by 4pm on April 9, 2025 in order to attend this event.
Please join the Harriman Institute for a lecture by Louis Skyner. Moderated by Timothy Frye.
Any discussion of energy transition trends must be visualized in the form of a triangle in which the competing and often contradictory goals of energy security, minimizing climate impact and ensuring energy affordability are in tension. Each country, sector, and policy crystallize a set of trade-offs between different points on this triangle. To achieve net zero by 2050 unprecedented changes in industrial structures and infrastructure are needed. While energy efficiency is acceptable politically, it is a complex challenge that requires action in disparate areas, not least in consumer behavior. This presentation will address those challenges in the context of Uzbekistan, based on insights gained assisting development financial institutions, national governments, project sponsors and lenders on a variety of energy transition projects.
Louis Skyner has been a partner in the European energy practice of the law firm Dentons since May 2017. As part of his practice he has advised the sponsors, lenders and offtakers of non-conventional power projects on their structuring and financing. Louis has used this experience to provide advice to development banks and governments on the implementation of concession and public private partnership arrangements for energy and infrastructure projects, and the unbundling and the development of competitive power markets.
Over the past seven years he has spent much of his time in Uzbekistan, advising the government, development banks, foreign investors and domestic companies. This work has included advising: the Uzbek government on the structuring of a State – owned direct investment fund established to facilitate, structure, and co-finance investment projects; the World Bank and the Ministry of Energy on the liberalisation of the gas transportation system and market; the EBRD and the Ministry of Energy on the introduction of competitive tendering for wind power projects; a US-based fund on its role as manager of a number of State-owned assets marked for privatisation; and, the country’s largest retailer on an investment made by the EBRD, on financing provided by the IFC, and the country’s first major private placement.
Aside from his legal practice Louis has authored numerous articles on Eurasian energy market regulation, economics and politics, from 2005 to 2011 as an associate fellow at Chatham House in London, from 2012 to 2014 as adjunct professor of the New Economic School in Moscow, and from 2015 to 2016 as associate professor of the European University in St Petersburg. He served as chairman of the British Uzbek Society from October 2018 to October 2022, and co-founded the Europe Uzbekistan Association for Economic Cooperation in 2021.
