CEO Today UK Awards 2021

73 CEO TODAY UNITED KINGDOM AWARDS 2021 Energy About Will Gardiner Will joined Drax in 2015 as CFO and was appointed as CEO in January 2018. He has a wealth of experience in finance and technology, having held CFO and divisional Finance Director roles at a number of major companies, including CSR plc (acquired by Qualcomm, Inc in 2015) and Sky. Will has a track record of creating value and building well-managed companies. He has been a key architect of our purpose and strategy, driving the sustainability agenda from the top, including Drax’s response to the climate change crisis, and ensuring that we are delivering for our stakeholders. He provides leadership of the executive team and takes responsibility for important external relationships and stakeholder management. Will is also a non-executive board member of the Sustainable Biomass Program. He has dual US-UK citizenship and has lived and worked in the UK since 1998. www.drax.com Gardiner Group CEO of Drax Firm Profile Drax Group is a UK-based renewable energy company engaged in renewable power generation, the production of sustainable biomass and the sale of renewable electricity to businesses. Drax operates a generation portfolio of sustainable biomass, hydro-electric and pumped hydro storage assets across four sites in England and Scotland. It is the UK’s largest source of renewable electricity. The company also operates a global bioenergy supply business with manufacturing facilities at 13 sites in the United States and Canada, producing compressed wood pellets for its own use and for customers in Europe and Asia. Enabling a zero carbon, lower cost energy future is Drax Group’s purpose and in 2019, it announced a world-leading ambition to be carbon negative by 2030, using Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) technology to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere at scale whilst delivering reliable renewable electricity. Our strategic aims To build a long-term future for sustainable biomass By expanding our sustainable bioenergy supply chain and reducing costs we are developing options for long-term biomass operations – renewable generation, negative carbon emissions, system support services and third party supply of biomass to international markets. To be the leading provider of power system stability Through a portfolio of flexible and renewable generation, and large industrial and commercial customer supply business, we will provide system support services to allow the power system to utilise intermittent renewable energy accelerating the UK’s decarbonisation en route to 2050. To give our customers control of their energy We provide our customers with renewable energy, and the opportunity to control and optimise energy use and cost, helping us support the energy system. Will