MHI Vestas’ Kavafyan named new WindEurope chair

MHI Vestas CEO Philippe Kavafyan has been elected as WindEurope’s new chairman.

Kavafyan will replace Vattenfall’s vice president for wind, Gunnar Groebler, and will serve an 18-month term.

The new WindEurope chair is an engineer by background, and has been CEO of MHI Vestas Offshore Wind since 2018. Before that, he worked as director of offshore wind for French nuclear fuel company Orano, and also held positions at EDF, GE and Adwen.

Kavafyan said: “The European wind industry shall play a central role to address two major challenges we are facing: the economic crisis caused by the Covid-19 health crisis, and a fair transition to a sustainable energy system.”

WindEurope’ s board of directors has also appointed EDF Renewables’ executive vice-president for France, Nicolas Couderc, as its new vice-chair.

Couderc has been EDF Renewables’ executive vice-president for France since 2016.

He began his career as a university lecturer, then worked as a market economist and later head of strategy and mergers and acquisitions at EDF Renewables.