London, 30th August, 2024 – We are pleased to announce that Volker Beckers, Reactive Technologies Chairman, has been appointed as an honorary Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE). This honour has been conferred upon him by His Majesty The King, on the advice of the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, in recognition of his outstanding services to Nuclear Energy.
Volker Beckers has built a distinguished career spanning over 30 years in the energy industry, where he has held prominent leadership roles across both the private and public sectors. His expertise and dedication have been instrumental in advancing nuclear and renewable energy initiatives both within the UK and internationally.
From serving as the Group CEO of RWE Npower plc to his role as Group CFO, Volker’s leadership has consistently driven innovation and growth in the energy sector. His extensive involvement in various industry bodies, such as the CBI President’s Committee and the German-British Chamber of Industry & Commerce, highlights his influential role in shaping policies and strategies beyond energy.
Currently, Volker holds several key positions as Non-Executive Chairman for companies in the public and private sector including Reactive Technologies Ltd. He also contributes his expertise as Co-Chair of the PwC UK Advisory Council and serves on advisory boards at prestigious institutions like the Energy Economic Institute (ewi) at the University of Cologne and is a guest lecturer at Imperial Colleague, London.
Beyond his professional achievements, Volker is actively engaged in charitable endeavours, both through his family trust and direct involvement as Trustee.
The entire team at Reactive Technologies congratulates Volker on receiving this well-deserved recognition and expresses our deep appreciation for his ongoing leadership and commitment to innovation in the energy sector.
Reactive Technologies is a grid resilience technology company helping grid operators, electric utilities, and regulators transition to net zero and ensure resilient, renewable grids. Reactive’s products, including the first-of-its-kind GridMetrix® technology, bringing unprecedented transparency to grid operations by measuring grid inertia and other functions with 95% accuracy–a vast improvement over the projections and estimates they are replacing. Reactive has worked with some of the most advanced electric utilities in the world and consistently delivers accurate grid data that informs better planning, full utilization of electricity supplies, and cost savings while enabling an accelerated transition to clean energy. Reactive is backed by several of the world’s leading climate tech venture and management firms, including BGF, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Eaton, Toshiba, and Accenture Ventures. Reactive Technologies is a 2023 Financial Times Energy Tech Champion and a COP28 Energy Transition Changemaker Award winner.
Reactive Technologies (Reactive) is a new generation energy technology company founded in 2010 by Dr Heikki Huomo and Marc Borrett who spotted a gap in the market for an advanced communications technology in the energy market which will accelerate the transition to a lower carbon energy system by empowering all system players to become active participants.
Reactive has considerable experience in the energy sector, demonstrated through collaboration on innovation projects with National Grid ESO in the UK such as project Samuel (the world first in communicating with assets via the electricity grid) and project SIM (the world first in inertia measurement), utilising its deep telecommunication engineering and analytics heritage. The company now works with transmission system operators, distribution system operators and energy traders around the world including Germany, Taiwan, the USA, Saudi Arabia and Australia.
Innovation runs deep at Reactive, with a dedicated R&D team in Finland comprised of ex Nokia software fellows and a dedicated commercial team of energy experts in London. This merging of telecoms and energy means Reactive’s approach to solving energy system challenges is unique, implementing technology previously used exclusively in telecoms and now for the first time in the energy sector to resolve the energy industry’s greatest challenges.
