Industrial Decarbonisation Investment Adviser — Process Equipment

The mandate

The board repeatedly faces the same unresolved choice: how much capital should move now into electrified process heat, biogas, thermal storage, hydrogen-ready equipment and supplier conversion when power access, customer willingness to pay and technology maturity remain uneven? Plant proposals use incompatible baselines, while commercial teams cite customer decarbonisation requests without distinguishing contractual demand from exploratory interest.

The adviser will reserve two days each month for twelve months, combining a Stockholm committee session or plant review with one preparation and executive-challenge day. Quarterly Sustainability and Capital Committee attendance is included; planned travel rotates across four production sites, and a documented response to an urgent investment question is expected within three business days rather than continuous availability.

The appointment is fixed for twelve months and is not renewable under this mandate. At month twelve the committee will either close the advisory question or procure a newly scoped appointment through a fresh resolution; no implicit extension arises from an unapproved plant case, delayed grant or technology trial.

The adviser has no line authority and carries neither executive delivery responsibility nor statutory sustainability accountability. They may question evidence, recommend stage gates and request that management compare alternatives, but cannot approve capital, direct engineering teams, select vendors, certify emissions, negotiate customer premiums or represent the group to public authorities.

Two or three unrelated appointments may be held concurrently. A board role, paid technology endorsement, carried interest, vendor commission or material investment involving competing process-equipment manufacturers, shortlisted heat-system providers or a customer whose offtake supports a plant case must be disclosed; recusal or termination may follow where independence cannot be demonstrated.

Why the board wants this voice

Directors can interrogate financial return and engineering feasibility separately, but the room lacks experience connecting industrial abatement, operating reliability and customer monetisation. Management’s enthusiasm differs by plant and technology sponsor, making portfolio comparison vulnerable to confident advocacy. The board wants someone who has commissioned and stopped real projects, not a commentator whose expertise ends at target setting.

What you will own

• Test each plant baseline for boundary, production normalisation, energy source, embedded emissions, maintenance consequence and dependence on uncontracted renewable supply.
• Press investment sponsors to state which abatement is physically achieved, contractually attributable, customer-valued and robust to plausible power and carbon prices.
• Challenge technology-readiness claims using reference-plant uptime, integration risk, maintenance capability, equipment lead times and credible fallback operation.
• Shape a stage-gate framework that distinguishes no-regret efficiency, reversible trials, infrastructure-enabling spend and irreversible production-system conversion.
• Examine customer evidence for green premiums, preferred-supplier status or tender access and separate signed economics from strategic narrative.
• Moderate committee reviews of two competing plant pathways, recording conditional approval, dissent, missing evidence and the trigger that would halt further spend.
• Maintain an independent abatement-investment ledger linking tonnes, cash, reliability, subsidy dependence, optionality and unresolved assurance questions.

Candidate qualifications

• Governed industrial decarbonisation or energy transformation across multiple energy-intensive manufacturing sites with accountable capital decisions.
• Can evidence at least one low-carbon technology investment personally recommended and one personally stopped after operating evidence contradicted the sponsor case.
• Has evaluated electrified heat, renewable fuels, thermal storage or hydrogen in the context of production reliability rather than standalone technology performance.
• Connected product carbon evidence and customer procurement behaviour to an investment case without counting unsigned premium assumptions as revenue.
• Challenged lifecycle and Scope 3 claims with sufficient technical depth to identify boundary shifts, attribute conflicts or displaced emissions.
• Served a board or capital committee in an influence-only capacity with formal conflicts, recusals and recorded advice.

Non-negotiables

• Protects two days monthly, attends every scheduled committee meeting and can complete the stated European plant visits.
• Discloses vendor economics, speaking sponsorships, investments and advisory roles connected to industrial heat, fuels, equipment or carbon markets.
• Will not certify emissions, endorse a technology publicly or contact regulators on the company’s behalf.
• Has direct accountability for operating or governing industrial assets, beyond policy, reporting or sustainability-communications experience.

1. 49 words maximum. Name an industrial decarbonisation investment you stopped and the operating evidence that defeated its sponsor case.
2. 49 words maximum. Which current commercial interests, board roles or technology relationships require disclosure to this committee?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you test whether claimed customer demand supports a plant-level green premium rather than general interest?