Keynotes

The CWW2025 scientific and organizing committees are pleased to introduce the Opening ceremony Keynote Speaker : Dr. Rachel Asante-Owusu (IUCN).

Rachel Asante is Senior Programme Coordinator, Climate Change at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). A molecular biologist by training, Rachel has been with IUCN for over 14 years. Rachel works with major extractive companies on measuring and reducing their impacts on biodiversity and natural resource dependent communities. Rachel has been involved for several years, on behalf of IUCN, in the main collaborative programs dealing with biodiversity issues and wind energy (as well as other renewable energies). A key focus of her work is to contribute to an accelerated just transition while supporting measures to safeguard biodiversity and ecosystem services, and taking into account the consequences of climate change.

Rachel Asante’s work and expertise are perfectly aligned with the CWW 2025 main theme “Coexistence in a Changing World - Sharing Existing Knowledge, Challenges and Emerging Solutions”. Rachel will deliver a keynote address linking IUCN’s involvement in Wind and Biodiversity issues with some of the key topics and current trends in this theme.

IUCN is a membership union uniquely composed of both government and civil society organisations. It is a global authority on the status of the natural world and the measures needed to safeguard it.

Florence Simonet was appointed Managing Director of Vattenfall Eolien SAS in October 2023. She joined Vattenfall as Senior Consent & Market Development Manager in September 2020. In 2023, she was appointed Head of Consents, and in this role, she leads the teams involved in permitting issues at all stages of a project up to decommissioning for Vattenfall's offshore wind projects in the following countries: Finland, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and France. She performs her duties as Managing Director of the French subsidiary in parallel with her role as Head of Consents for the group. 

Florence Simonet has over 20 years of experience in the development, construction, and operation of onshore and offshore wind projects. An agronomist engineer in land use planning, she graduated from Agro Bio Tech in Gembloux at the University of Liège (Belgium). She began her career at RDE as Head of Environmental Impact Studies. In 2006, she joined EDPR where she held the position of Planning and Control Manager and then Head of Business Development. From 2014, Florence was appointed Director of Consents and Environment within the EDPR/Engie consortium, Les Eoliennes en Mer Services, winner of the offshore wind farm projects in Dieppe – Le Tréport (Seine-Maritime, 496MW) and the Îles d’Yeu and Noirmoutier (Vendée, 496MW). In this capacity, she notably obtained the administrative authorizations for the construction and operation of these 1 GW of offshore wind projects. Since joining Vattenfall in 2020, she has been actively involved in the group's offshore wind consenting strategy and its implementation in Europe. For France, she aims to develop new renewable activities for Vattenfall Eolien. 

Florence was elected in June 2024 as a member of the Board of Directors of France Renouvelables and appointed Vice-President of the Offshore and Environment Commissions.

Umberto Binetti is a marine scientist with an academic background in marine biology and oceanography. Since August 2023 he is the Marine Biodiversity Expert for RWE Offshore, part of the central Sustainability Team that support strategic decisions, pilot projects and coordination among the sustainability efforts of the RWE wind farms in different markets. In his role, Umberto is working to provide scientific support to projects, studies and collaborations around the topic of biodiversity in offshore wind farms. He is involved in the operationalisation of the concept of biodiversity positivity, the understanding of the long-term effects of wind farms such as the development of communities due to the reef effect, and the potential effects of decommissioning. He is also involved in international collaborations, such as the Task Forces of the OCEaN coalition on behalf of RWE.  

Umberto Binetti graduated in Marine Biology at the University of Pisa in Italy, before completing his PhD in Oceanography at the University of East Anglia in the UK in 2017. His post-academic career has developed around the analysis of the different types of impact that human activities have on nature and, in particular, biodiversity. He has carried out field work analysis for environmental impact assessments for oil and gas and aquaculture before moving to the analysis of litter and microplastics in the water. Thanks to this diverse experience, he has an interdisciplinary background including, among others, benthic and pelagic ecology, monitoring, invasive species, plastic pollution and offshore energy. Umberto worked for and with private sector, NGOs and Governmental agencies, and he has extensive experience in international work, having been deployed in all inhabited continents and having developed an extended network of regional contacts across the world.