We make a difference

sbh4 is an inde­pen­dent advi­so­ry firm focused on decar­bon­i­sa­tion and defos­sil­i­sa­tion through e-fuels, e-fer­til­iz­ers, bio­fu­els, SAF, CCTUS, GHG emis­sions reduc­tion, and the emerg­ing hydro­gen econ­o­my.

Tes­ti­mo­ni­als

Technologies for the future

We pro­vide ‘net-zero’ advi­so­ry ser­vices relat­ed to strat­e­gy, tech­nol­o­gy, and project devel­op­ment. The scope, bud­get and timescale of each engage­ment is cus­tomised to your require­ments. Much of our work is per­form­ing due dili­gence on behalf of investors. These engage­ments are gen­er­al­ly on fixed time­lines and with clear­ly defined deliv­er­ables.

We also take long-term ‘oper­at­ing part­ner’ engage­ments in sup­port of oper­at­ing com­pa­nies seek­ing to decar­bonise, star­tups look­ing to grow and project devel­op­ers who are keen to pre­pare the most investable clean ener­gy projects with the best returns. In these cas­es, the nature of our sup­port can evolve flex­i­bly through the engage­ment.

Changing times

In the past decade, hydro­gen has grown from an indus­tri­al gas to being hyped as the “sil­ver bul­let” for the ener­gy tran­si­tion in the years 2020 to 2023. Green, blue, turquoise and a whole rain­bow of colours emerged. Mid decade, expec­ta­tions for hydro­gen are now much more real­is­tic. Through this cycle, my con­sult­ing engage­ments with hydro­gen start­ed out edu­cat­ing investors and star­tups to the broad hydro­gen mar­ket and key tech­nolo­gies in the val­ue chain. Then, there was a peak of activ­i­ty sup­port­ing investors with due dili­gence into hydro­gen projects and tech­nolo­gies.

At this high-point of inter­est in hydro­gen, project devel­op­ers sought my sup­port to opti­mise their hydro­gen and hydro­gen deriv­a­tive project busi­ness cas­es for bank­a­bil­i­ty. Indus­tri­al emit­ters were keen to under­stand if hydro­gen would play a role in their path to net-zero emis­sions or whether alter­na­tive levers such as bio­fu­els and CO2 cap­ture would be more viable.

As real­ism entered the world of hydro­gen, it became clear that green hydro­gen would need to be con­vert­ed to green ammo­nia, e-methanol and SAF to enable trans­porta­tion. And, blue and turquoise hydro­gen became returned to favour as the com­par­a­tive­ly high cost of green hydro­gen in many loca­tions became evi­dent.

A sim­i­lar tran­si­tion can be mapped out for CO2 as it has pro­gressed from clas­si­cal sources and estab­lished com­mer­cial appli­ca­tions to DAC and bio­genic CO2 sources and emerg­ing appli­ca­tions for CDR and elec­tro­fu­els.

Now, it is star­tups in the decar­bon­i­sa­tion tech­nol­o­gy space who are most strong­ly pulling for my sup­port. The investors are more cau­tious.  It is a buyer’s mar­ket, no longer a seller’s mar­ket where investors were queu­ing up to get involved. The busi­ness plans that star­tups are propos­ing need to be stronger and root­ed in ear­ly com­mer­cial trac­tion. The pitch decks and sell-side infor­ma­tion need to high­light gen­uine dif­fer­en­tia­tors. Go to mar­ket must be more focused.

Yes, chang­ing times, and a chang­ing focus for con­sult­ing engage­ments at sbh4. These tran­si­tions are the essence of the flex­i­ble approach that sbh4 is able to bring to con­sult­ing – built on a diverse range of busi­ness expe­ri­ence and indus­try exper­tise, com­bined with the agili­ty of being a sole-oper­a­tor.

Our mission at sbh4

Our mis­sion at sbh4 is to find the right solu­tion to the prob­lem. In our goal of sup­port­ing plan­e­tary health, we will con­sid­er the options and rec­om­mend the most appro­pri­ate strate­gic con­cept and tech­nol­o­gy mix. Beyond cli­mate-tech, clean ener­gy projects, and sup­port­ing the pur­suit of net-zero oper­a­tions, our con­sult­ing ser­vices are offered in the areas of indus­tri­al gas­es, gas analy­sers for process automa­tion and gas detec­tion.

renewable power

Publications, graphics & videos

More than 30 years of experience

The founder of sbh4 is Stephen B. Har­ri­son. His expe­ri­ence with hydro­gen, CO2 and oth­er gas­es extends over more than 30 years. Of those, 16 were with BOC Gas­es in the UK and The BOC Group inter­na­tion­al­ly. He also worked as a senior glob­al exec­u­tive for Linde Gas in Munich for 10 years.

Through Stephen’s involve­ment in indus­tri­al gas­es, he has a deep expo­sure to a diverse range of prod­ucts, includ­ing hydro­gen, car­bon diox­ide, air gas­es and heli­um. Med­ical gas­es, fuel gas­es, weld­ing gas­es, bev­er­age dis­pense gas­es, spe­cial­ty gas­es and refrig­er­ant F-gas­es were also in his busi­ness port­fo­lios at BOC and Linde for many years. Equip­ment, such as two prod­uct ranges of PEM elec­trol­y­sers for hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, high puri­ty gas con­trol equip­ment and gas cylin­ders of all sizes and types were inte­gral to the busi­ness­es that he led.

Since 2017, Stephen has been run­ning the decar­bon­i­sa­tion, due dili­gence, coach­ing, strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tions and cli­mate-tech growth advi­so­ry ser­vices at sbh4. He brings his exper­tise in the hydro­gen, CO2 and indus­tri­al gas­es val­ue chains to his work. Addi­tion­al pil­lars of decar­bon­i­sa­tion where he advis­es are bio­fu­els, lithi­um ion bat­tery recy­cling, sus­tain­able ener­gy, and the elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of indus­tri­al process­es to avoid fos­sil fuel com­bus­tion.

Consulting Case Studies: taking a closer look

I have con­duct­ed more than 40 M&A and invest­ment due dili­gence engage­ments since 2017. These were a mix­ture of buy-side, sell-side, com­mer­cial, tech­ni­cal, oper­a­tions and EHS assign­ments. Pri­or to work­ing as a con­sul­tant, I was respon­si­ble for inte­grat­ing spe­cial­ty gas­es busi­ness­es acquired from Air­gas, Prax­air, Air Prod­ucts, Gaspro, AGA and BOC into The Linde Group. Hav­ing seen the M&A process from the out­side and the inside and the prepa­ra­tions and the post M&A inte­gra­tion I have a very round­ed and prag­mat­ic view of the full M&A process and its asso­ci­at­ed syn­er­gies, oppor­tu­ni­ties, and risks. In 2022 I was engaged by an investor to com­plete a buy-side tech­ni­cal and EHS due dili­gence of a green-field site inte­grat­ed hydro­gen, ammo­nia, CO2, heli­um, F-gas­es, spe­cial­ty gas­es and indus­tri­al gas­es facil­i­ty.

Pao­lo Fari­na, Con­sul­tant and Tech­ni­cal Gas Lead at Nex­ant, Sep­tem­ber 2020:

“Stephen was a fan­tas­tic project man­ag­er on a recent refrig­er­ant gas­es M&A project we under­took. His direct and hon­est man­age­ment phi­los­o­phy was refresh­ing and cer­tain­ly made a chal­leng­ing project excit­ing and enjoy­able”.

With a career span­ning 27 years in the Indus­tri­al Gas­es busi­ness, work­ing for BOC and Linde, I have an inti­mate knowl­edge of this indus­try. I was active in all major busi­ness areas: ton­nage pipeline sup­ply, bulk process gas­es and pack­aged cylin­der gas­es. Over that time, I spent 15 years in glob­al strate­gic lead­er­ship roles and was heav­i­ly involved in acquir­ing and inte­grat­ing busi­ness from Air Prod­ucts, Air­gas, AGA, Gaspro, Math­e­son, Prax­air and Spec­tra Gas­es. I have also worked close­ly with Air Liq­uide joint ven­ture com­pa­nies and com­pet­ed with Mess­er, Math­e­son Tri Gas and count­less oth­ers. So, I have an insight into almost every major indus­tri­al gas­es com­pa­ny oper­at­ing in the glob­al are­na today. For 18 years I was involved in Spe­cial­ty Gas­es com­mer­cial, busi­ness and sup­ply chain roles at a nation­al, region­al and glob­al lev­el. In the Spe­cial­ty Gas­es prod­uct group, my exper­tise is prob­a­bly unpar­al­leled in terms of breadth and depth of expo­sure. Many of my insights have been pub­lished in a diverse range of busi­ness and indus­try jour­nals world­wide.

Increas­ing­ly, busi­ness­es are com­ing to sbh4 to sup­port their decar­bon­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy. In Europe, each M&A trans­ac­tion must be accom­pa­nied by an ESG due dili­gence. So, com­pa­nies in PE own­er­ship are keen to demon­strate that they have a robust decar­bon­i­sa­tion action plan and are mak­ing progress towards it. They know that achiev­ing a good val­u­a­tion mul­ti­ple depends on their proven path­way to decar­bon­i­sa­tion. Our role ranges from decar­bon­i­sa­tion equip­ment tech­nol­o­gy selec­tion to bud­getary cost esti­mates for the required tran­si­tion to find­ing sources and sup­pli­ers for car­bon-neu­tral ener­gy vec­tors. Busi­ness oper­a­tions in emerg­ing mar­kets are also moti­vat­ed to decar­bonise due to pres­sure from inter­na­tion­al cus­tomers and the desire from pri­vate­ly owned busi­ness­es to sim­ply “do the right thing”.

Many new clean-tech star­tups are emerg­ing each week. Tak­ing a great tech­ni­cal idea to mar­ket can be a skill that is new to the start­up team. Rais­ing funds is also a chal­lenge that the start­up has not been pre­pared for in their PhD stud­ies. I have sup­port­ed clean­tech star­tups work­ing in the fields of direct air cap­ture of CO2 (DAC), elec­trol­yser crit­i­cal com­po­nents and lithi­um ion bat­tery recy­cling to nav­i­gate their way out of the lab­o­ra­to­ry and into the real world. The issues are often gain­ing a deep­er mar­ket under­stand­ing, prod­uct posi­tion­ing ver­sus peers or alter­na­tives and under­stand­ing key attrib­ut­es of the val­ue propo­si­tion. Com­mu­ni­ca­tion of their mag­ic mix and the nec­es­sary ‘asks’ to sup­port scale up is also essen­tial – to their poten­tial cus­tomers, strate­gic part­ners and investors. My posi­tion in the indus­try as a spec­i­fi­er of equip­ment for projects, con­duct­ing buy-side due dili­gence, and analysing mar­kets gives me a unique clus­ter of insights which I can use to sup­port star­tups climb the tech­ni­cal and com­mer­cial matu­ri­ty lad­ders suc­cess­ful­ly.