I observe that execution of energy transition opportunities including solar and BESS, Low Carbon Liquid Fuels, Green Iron, and other similar energy transition plays have the same patterns showing up.

Projects are permitted, technically sound, sometimes fully designed, but they have slowed to a halt. Not because the resource isn’t there, and not because the market doesn’t want the output. They’re stuck between development approval and financial close. That gap is where most of the value, and most of the risk mitigation strategy, actually gets decided.

Three things routinely stall FID, whatever the sector:

1) Infrastructure and connection, supply chain sequencing, feedstock quality and assurance.

A grid connection queue for a battery project, a port or feedstock logistics chain for a fuels plant, feedstock grade and quality assurance for green iron. All different names but the same problem. Sequencing, staging, supply assurance and preserving optionality matter as much as the engineering.

2) Revenue and offtake structuring.

Simple, single-revenue projects are well understood by lenders. Blended structures stacked revenue streams, government incentives, multi-party offtake, technology licensing and the associated risk mitigation mechanisms aren’t. Turning that complexity into something an investment committee will underwrite takes real structuring work.

3) Capital structure and commercial governance.

Many of these projects are founded and have skills biased toward outstanding technical teams including engineers, scientists, feedstock and process specialists. Commercially focused team co-ordination to extract the required outcomes via negotiation are often missing or drawn away to apply their effort on technical and/or logistical outcomes.

These are execution problems. Someone has to own the sequencing, run the structuring, and sit across the table from counterparties and credit committees, week after week, until it closes.

That’s the gap I see most often across these sectors. Strong technical teams without the bandwidth, or the mandate, to run that process end to end. Less about more advice, more about someone taking executive ownership of getting the deal done.

It’s the gap my own background sits in. Years of executive management experience across capital-intensive infrastructure and technology businesses, including capital management and financial leadership through complex, multi-party commercial structures on major projects. That combination of capital discipline and executive ownership is what it takes to move a project through FID.

My current focus is providing that capability independently to help organisations resolve their FID progression issues and get stalled projects to close.

If you’re running a project that’s been sitting between development approval and FID longer than it should, I’d welcome the conversation.

View My Services https://derekthomson.com/

#EnergyTransition #ProjectFinance #FID #CleanEnergy #GreenIron #LowCarbonFuels