Trillions of dollars are being deployed globally to finance the energy transition — spanning mature technologies such as wind and solar, and rapidly scaling or first-of-a-kind systems including carbon capture and storage, batteries, hydrogen, critical minerals, green metals, low-carbon fuels, and sustainable aviation fuel.

While the financial and commercial sophistication behind these investments is exceptionally high, many of the professionals underwriting, advising on, or approving capital do not have an engineering background. This creates a structural gap: critical technical, operability, and safety risks are often interpreted through second-hand summaries rather than first-hand engineering judgement.

Engineering for the Energy Transition is a half-day, engineer-led executive immersion designed specifically for finance, investment, and advisory leaders. Its purpose is not to teach engineering, but to equip participants with practical engineering lenses and decision tools that improve judgement, challenge optimistic assumptions, and support more informed investment decisions.

Delivered by Dr Mark McBride-Wright, MBE, FIChemE, FEI, a chartered safety engineer with extensive experience across industry, academia, and executive advisory work, the session blends plain-English engineering insight with real project experience to help participants better understand how energy-transition technologies actually behave in the real world.

At the core of the programme is a structured framework for analysing energy-transition projects, which participants can apply immediately to live deals and investment discussions.

This framework helps leaders assess projects across four critical dimensions:

• Technical reality – how the system actually works, where complexity sits, and what is genuinely proven versus assumed
• Scale-up and operability – what changes as technologies move from pilot to commercial operation, and where execution risk typically emerges
• Safety and human factors – early indicators of organisational maturity, system resilience, and latent risk
• Decision-critical assumptions – which assumptions matter most to investment outcomes, and which deserve greater challenge