• CERAWEEK
  • March 10 - 14, 2025

Kevin Birn

S&P Global Commodity Insights

Head, Centre of Emissions Excellence

Kevin Birn leads the Centre of Emission Excellence within S&P Global Commodity Insights. The Centre is responsible for accelerating Commodity Insights emissions quantification capabilities by helping to identify and inform strategic priorities, ensuring consistency in emission estimation across business lines, and providing technical support and guidance to development of new models, methods and tools in the estimation of GHG emissions across energy value chains.  Kevin has over a decade of experience engaging in and advising governments, companies and industry on emission accounting estimation as well as decarbonization strategies.  He is also an established thought leader on the Canadian oil market and serves as the Chief Analyst for the Canadian Oil Market.  Kevin is currently a fellow at the Canadian Global Affair Institute, a member of the Outreach & Engagement Committee at Emissions Reduction Alberta, and a member of the executive committee with the Global Energy Show.  He holds an undergraduate degree in business and a graduate degree in economics from the University of Alberta.

Sessions With Kevin Birn

Tuesday, 19 March

Wednesday, 20 March

  • 07:15am - 08:20am (CST) / 20/mar/2024 12:15 pm - 20/mar/2024 01:20 pm

    Future of Canadian Oil and Gas: Carbon, costs, and exports

    Canada is the fourth largest producer of oil and gas globally, yet nearly all its production has remained landlocked.  Over the course of this year, Canada will see the completion of new major export infrastructure, some of which are over a decade in the making, come online and permit more meaningful volumes of Canadian oil and gas to reach global markets. At the same time governments and industry have committed to ambitious decarbonization targets. Can Canadian sector meet its emissions targets while growing export volume? What new infrastructure will be required, and can it be built in a timely manner? What is the role of government, and what are the key challenges facing the industry?

  • 12:00pm - 12:50pm (CST) / 20/mar/2024 05:00 pm - 20/mar/2024 05:50 pm

    Bringing Down Emissions in Supply Chains
    Energy Infrastructure/Supply Chains

    Improving the performance of supply chain delivery times, costs and carbon footprint is critical to all participants in the chain and to the ultimate customer. But to deliver on these improvements requires changes to hardware, facilities, operational practices and technologies used, as well as inventorizing and quantifying emissions from all partners activities and materials. What are some of the best practices and tools that enable efficient management of supply chain performance? How much room is there for further reduction in delivery times or emissions through the application of these practices?  

  • 03:30pm - 04:00pm (CST) / 20/mar/2024 08:30 pm - 20/mar/2024 09:00 pm

    Best Regulatory Practices for Reducing Methane Emissions
    Policy & Regulatory

    Reducing methane emissions and flaring in recent months has reached new levels of definition of regulations and standards, particularly in North America and Europe. At the same time, new technologies are enabling better data transparency and accuracy compared to past regulations. What are the best practices for matching regulations and standards with the tools available to Oil & Gas operators? How can industry and governments ensure such standards are sufficient to incentivize deployment of state-of-the-art measurement and mitigation solutions versus "good enough" methods for statutory reporting? How can standards be adopted in operating areas where best-in-class technologies may not be so easily deployed?  

  • 05:00pm - 05:40pm (CST) / 20/mar/2024 10:00 pm - 20/mar/2024 10:40 pm

    COP28 Oil & Gas Decarbonization Commitments
    Climate & Sustainability

    COP28 elevated ambitions to tackle emissions from the oil and gas sector.  This included heightened national ambition to tackle methane, financing for low-income economies, and improving monitoring and measurement. COP28 also saw the introduction of the Oil and Gas Decarbonization Charter looking to accelerate action at the corporate level on methane, flaring, and scope 1 and 2 emissions. What is the significance of these commitments? What actions are being taken? What measures are being taken to improve monitoring and measurement?  

Agenda