Due diligence

I spe­cialise in tech­ni­cal, oper­a­tional and strate­gic due dili­gence for net-zero tech­nolo­gies and projects. Since I found­ed sbh4 in 2017, I have con­duct­ed due dili­gence for strate­gic and finan­cial investors on more than 30 cas­es.

 

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Due diligence case studies: dive deeper

CO2 man­age­ment address­es the core prob­lem of cli­mate change. Whilst there are many ener­gy alter­na­tives to fos­sil fuels, CO2 man­age­ment is the only way to mit­i­gate CO2 emis­sions from lega­cy plants and decar­bonise indus­tri­al process emis­sions from cement and steel. My expe­ri­ence with CO2 goes back to 1990 when I start­ed work­ing with indus­tri­al gas­es. Since found­ing sbh4, I have con­duct­ed due dili­gence on CO2 cap­ture tech­nolo­gies and projects, the use of CO2 for LDES, elec­tro­chem­i­cal CO2 reduc­tion tech­nol­o­gy to pro­duce e-fuels, an excep­tion­al­ly large twin-train CO2 liq­ue­fi­er, a CO2 cryo­genic stor­age tank man­u­fac­tur­er, and an enhanced weath­er­ing CO2 removals tech­nol­o­gy start­up.

CO2 liquefier

Elec­tri­fi­ca­tion of indus­tri­al process­es can ensure that renew­able pow­er is used to dis­place fos­sil fuels. Pow­er can also be used to build fuel and chem­i­cal mol­e­cules. Due dili­gence cas­es that I have worked on in this Pow­er to X are include three high pro­file e-SAF tech­nol­o­gy providers and project devel­op­ers. In this space, I have also eval­u­at­ed sev­er­al green ammo­nia cas­es.

The recent focus on hydro­gen pro­duc­tion, stor­age and dis­tri­b­u­tion has spurred a wave of inno­va­tion. Due dili­gence cas­es that I have worked on have includ­ed three turquoise hydro­gen tech­nol­o­gy providers and sys­tem oper­a­tors, two hydro­gen purifi­ca­tion tech­nol­o­gy providers and liq­uid and gaseous hydro­gen stor­age tech­nolo­gies. Addi­tion­al­ly, I have per­formed a com­plex due dili­gence of a green hydro­gen project which involved LCOH bench­mark­ing ver­sus com­pet­i­tive projects.

There has been intense inter­est in green hydro­gen since 2020. At Linde, I prod­uct man­aged two elec­trol­yser prod­uct ranges. I also run sev­er­al high-pro­file inter­na­tion­al mas­ter­class­es in this field. My exper­tise has been applied to due dili­gence cas­es into PEM elec­trol­yser crit­i­cal com­po­nents in sup­port of a USD1 bil­lion trans­ac­tion, eval­u­a­tion of an inno­v­a­tive alka­line elec­trol­yser tech­nol­o­gy for the lead investor, due dili­gence on a regen­er­a­tive sol­id oxide fuel cell / elec­trol­yser sys­tem for LDES and an SOEC/SOFC stack builder.

Pressurised-PEM-electrolysis-process

LDES will be crit­i­cal to bal­ance the grid and for mobil­i­ty. Lithi­um ion bat­ter­ies (LIBs) are also built into portable per­son­al elec­tron­ic devices such as phones and watch­es. Bat­tery recy­cling can recov­er valu­able graphite and met­als, in addi­tion to lithi­um. My exper­tise in tech­ni­cal due dili­gence and process engi­neer­ing was called upon to assess an LIB recy­cler for a strate­gic investor.

With more than 30 years of expe­ri­ence of gas analy­sis and process con­trol tech­nolo­gies, I have sup­port­ed four major due dili­gence cas­es for strate­gic investors wish­ing to invest in this space. This is a niche area where I can bring my due dili­gence process expe­ri­ence togeth­er with tech­no­log­i­cal and mar­ket insights to per­form the nec­es­sary assess­ments.

Con­sol­i­da­tion in the indus­tri­al gas­es sec­tor has pro­gres­sive­ly tak­en place over the past 20 years. On behalf of two bulge-brack­et PE firms, I sup­port­ed their broad­er due dili­gence assess­ments of M&A oppor­tu­ni­ties in this area. I have also sup­port­ed a major PE firm per­form due dili­gence on a fine chem­i­cals pro­duc­er who is active in the elec­tron­ic spe­cial­ty gas­es space.

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