Associate - Project Finance and Economics

Carbon Trust
London or Edinburgh - United Kingdom
S: Commensurate with experience

Contract Term: Permanent
Location: London or Edinburgh, with travel across the UK; some international travel also possible
Closing date: 6/10/2018
Salary: Commensurate with experience

About the role:
The successful candidate will work collaboratively with colleagues across the Carbon Trust Group, on wide-ranging consultancy activities providing financial and economic analysis and strategic advice to help public and private sector customers to develop and implement robust projects - which enable them to become more energy efficient and adopt low carbon energy systems (including district heating and decentralised renewable generation), reducing their environmental impact and achieving positive financial and socio-economic outcomes.

This will involve direct engagement with clients on project delivery work, supporting business development and the writing of bids and proposals, working independently, where appropriate, potentially including travel for client engagements across the UK and, occasionally, overseas.

About us
The Carbon Trust's mission is to accelerate the move to a sustainable, low carbon economy. We are independent experts on carbon reduction and resource efficiency, who reinvest surpluses from group commercial activities into our mission.

The Carbon Trust provides innovative advice to governments and businesses around the world to support the global transition to a low carbon economy. We work closely with decision makers and implementers in key institutions in the UK and across multiple emerging and developing countries on low-carbon finance, carbon reduction programmes, policy and technology.

Main duties and responsibilities:
• Working with colleagues across the Carbon Trust Group to advise clients on the financing of energy infrastructure investments across grant, equity and debt financing, including supporting senior project finance and economic specialists.
• Working with Government and public sector clients to understand their financing requirements and developing financial business cases, which can be presented to public sector clients.
• Building and quality assuring complex financial and economic models for multi-stakeholder energy investments, such as heat networks.
• Supporting Carbon Trust business development activities and the pursuit of our mission, including contributing to the development of tender specifications for specialist consultancy services.
• Supporting new proposition development activities, including, for example, around the topics of green finance, new business models for emerging low carbon technologies, and socio-economic appraisal of investment projects.

Key skills we are looking for:
• Demonstrable experience with discounted cash flow modelling in Excel, such as to the FAST standard.
• Experience with the structuring of energy investments across grant, equity and debt financing.
• Highly numerate with excellent MS Excel modelling skills, ideally with VBA experience.
• Understanding of the fundamentals of developing and presenting a financial business case for investment in decarbonisation projects.
• Experience with public sector financing requirements and presenting financial business cases to public sector clients.
• Experience with quality assurance of complex MS Excel models.
• Experience and/or understanding of socio-economic modelling.
• Organised and efficient with good project delivery skills.
• Some experience in the low carbon or clean energy sector, and in particular: district heating, renewable energy and energy efficiency or related areas.
• Experience in client management, applying a high standard of interpersonal and influencing skills.
• Excellent communication skills (written and oral). Technical report writing and the ability to present technical information in a clear and concise format, accessible and understandable for non-specialists.
• Problem solving and identification / specification of solutions.
• Ability to work effectively on multiple concurrent projects in a complex team environment and to take initiative and deliver projects independently when required.

Qualifications and experience:
• Degree calibre – qualified in a relevant financial or economics field (essential).
• Some experience of working as a consultant in project finance and/or as an economist (essential), and ideally working within the low carbon/clean energy sector (desirable).
• Ability to build and manipulate complex financial models using MS Excel (essential)
• Ability to write technical reports in plain English (essential)
• Membership or Graduate Membership of a relevant professional institution(s) e.g. British Institute of Energy Economics (BIEE) or similar (desirable).
• Experience of, or significant insight in to, barriers and drivers affecting public and private sector bodies in tackling climate change (desirable).
• Insight into carbon and energy policy in the UK and internationally (desirable).

Understanding of and support for the Carbon Trust's mission is considered an essential pre-requisite for this role.

Salary & Benefits:
We offer a competitive salary and a performance based bonus. Our hours are 37.5 per week with 28 days paid holiday plus bank holidays and a generous pension scheme.

Our head office is in London, close to Blackfriars and Waterloo stations. We offer travel card loans, a cycle to work scheme, childcare vouchers, company away days and a 24-hour Employee Assistance Helpline.

Joining the Carbon Trust provides an opportunity to work alongside some of the leading practitioners in the low carbon arena so if you are excited by this opportunity and would like to join us please click the apply button.

We are an equal opportunities employer, value diversity in our workforce and make our decisions based on your skills and experience. We can only accept applications from those who can prove their eligibility to work in the UK. No agencies or publications.

Job summary