Curriculum Vitae
Louise Bernard
Senior data scientist and economist specialising in randomised field trials and quasi-experimental causal inference.
Experience
Senior Data Scientist
Centre for Net Zero (Octopus Energy Group), London
- Lead trial design and analysis across flexibility, EV charging, and low-carbon technology programmes, in partnership with Octopus Energy teams who implement the trials.
- Co-author of a dynamic-pricing field experiment with ~110k EV charging users; findings informed Octopus Energy's launch of an equivalent product in the French market.
- Author CNZ policy briefs and technical reports targeted at UK system operators and regulators (NESO, Ofgem, DESNZ) on demand-side flexibility evidence.
Data Scientist
Centre for Net Zero (Octopus Energy Group), London
- Analysed the Demand Flexibility Service (implemented by Octopus Energy) — one of the largest domestic demand flexibility programmes to date — covering 2.6M customers and tens of millions of half-hourly smart meter observations.
- Designed and analysed quasi-experimental and randomised trials on heat pumps and time-of-use tariffs, using staggered-adoption difference-in-differences on multi-year half-hourly smart meter panels.
- Authored pre-analysis plan and power-calculation templates now used across the analyst team; built reusable R analysis pipelines for ongoing trial evaluations.
Consultant
World Bank — Global Facility for Disaster Reduction & Recovery (GFDRR), London
- Co-authored research on land scarcity, urbanisation, and flood risk using causal inference and spatial econometric methods on large geospatial and administrative datasets.
- Awarded the World Bank Sustainable Development Fellowship.
Selected working papers
Decarbonizing Heat: The Impact of Heat Pumps and a Time-of-Use Heat Pump Tariff on Energy Demand
with Andy Hackett, Robert D. Metcalfe, and Andrew Schein — NBER WP No. 33036 - resubmitted to American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
The Impact of Dynamic Prices on Electric Vehicle Public Charging Demand: Evidence from a Nationwide Natural Field Experiment
with Andy Hackett, Robert D. Metcalfe, Luca Panzone, and Andrew Schein — NBER WP No. 34600
Nowhere Else to Go? Urbanisation and Flood Risks in China: The Role of Land Scarcity
with Paolo Avner, Jun Rentschler, and Capucine Riom
The Impact of Floods on Retrospective Voting in England
with Allan Beltran and Karlygash Kuralbayeva
Teaching
Applied GIS — MSc level
Spatial Econometrics — MSc level
Applied Econometrics — Undergraduate
Education
Urban Economics
London School of Economics
Economics, Real Estate & Finance
London School of Economics
Master in Public Administration
London School of Economics
Political Science
Sciences Po Paris
Affiliations
Cabinet Office Evaluation & Trial Advice Panel (ETAP)
Member — providing technical advice on evaluation methods to UK government departments