The US National Hydropower Association (NHA) has presented its 2026 Dr. Kenneth Henwood Award to Debbie Mursch and its Rising Star Award to Nicholas Brunt of Brookfield Renewable N.A. Both awards were announced at the association’s Clean Currents conference in Phoenix, Arizona.
The Henwood Award recognises long-standing leadership in hydropower. An engineer by training, Mursch has held senior strategy and business development roles at Alstom, Waukesha Electric Transformer and GE Vernova. She also served on NHA’s board, where she was an early advocate for the association to establish its own annual conference, which became Clean Currents.
NHA cited Mursch’s mentoring of women in hydropower alongside her wider industry work, including contributions to the US Department of Energy’s first Hydropower Market Report, the Hydropower Foundation and the Northwest Hydroelectric Association.
“Debbie Mursch remains a name that instantly commands respect and admiration in every corner of our industry,” said NHA president and chief executive Malcolm Woolf. “She hasn’t just worked in hydropower. She’s helped shape it, as a vanguard for women in the industry, a mentor for future generations, and in other countless roles.”
Brunt, a senior analyst in generation and optimisation at Brookfield Renewable N.A., received the third annual Rising Star Award for his work on hydropower operations and market participation.
Ahead of changes to Ontario’s electricity market, Brunt led a working group covering generation planning, IT and energy marketing. NHA said the preparation enabled Brookfield to bid nearly 900MW of hydropower generation into the revised market from its first day of operation, during the spring freshet.
Brunt also developed a portfolio analysis tool that models how hydropower, wind, solar and battery storage interact hour by hour. According to NHA, Brookfield has used it to demonstrate how reservoir hydropower can support variable renewable generation. His work on dispatch and generation planning has also focused on improving output from existing hydro assets.
“Nicholas represents the kind of collaborative leadership and innovative problem solving our industry needs as it navigates a rapidly changing energy market,” Woolf said.
