Weerawat Chantanakome

Capt. Dr. Weerawat Chantanakome is the Former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Brunei National Energy Research Institute (BNERI) established in 2011 – a policy research think-tank for Brunei’s Energy Sector under His Majesty the Sultan’s Mandate and the Ministry of Energy of Brunei Darussalam.  He was a former Councilor to the Ministry of Energy, Thailand; a former Senior Team Leader of the Asia-Pacific Energy Research Centre (APERC) in Tokyo and a former Executive Director of the ASEAN Centre for Energy (ACE) seconded by Thai Government based in Jakarta.

Dr. Weerawat has over 25 years of experience in energy and environmental sector locally and internationally in program development and implementation including serving the Department of Energy Defense of the Royal Thai Armed Forces. His roles include a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a lead drafting committee of the ASEAN Plan of Action for Energy Cooperation (APAEC) 2010-2015 (on Oil & Gas, Renewable Energy and Alternative energies, Energy efficiency, and Power), Senate Working Group Committee for Science, Technology and Energy of the Thai PARLIAMENT, Research Director of TDRI, a former Advisory Board of the Asia-Pacific Energy Research Centre and a former Executive Director of the Federation of Thai Industry.  On the academic record, he was a Dean of Engineering Faculty & Vice Chancellor of the North Eastern University of Management and Technology, as well as Lecturer at Graduate School of Energy and Environment, Faculty of Economics, Chulalongkorn University in Thailand.

Dr. Weerawat was with the World Bank/ESMAP as Program Director for energy and environment in Kathmandu, Ministry of Industry of His Majesty Government of Nepal.  In 2014, he was appointed as Associate Professor at the Institute of Policy Studies (IPS) of the University Brunei Darussalam (UBD).

Since 2014. Dr. Weerawat is the Chairman of the East Asia Summit (EAS) Energy Research Institute Network (ERIN) consisting of 16 Energy Research Institutes (ASEAN+6).

Dr. Weerawat holds M.S. (Industrial Engineering) from the Ohio University, U.S.A. and a D.E.A. (Energy Policy) from the Institute Francaise du Petrole (IFP), the University of Paris 2, France (CROUS Scholarship); and a Ph.D. (Energy Policy) from the University of Waterloo, Canada (CIDA Scholarship).