Investing in Renewables: The Green Finance Opportunity Speakers

Alasdair Campbell

Director, InfraRed Capital

Alasdair is responsible for the renewable energy infrastructure portfolio at InfraRed. As part of his role, he also leads on development, repowering and construction initiatives across renewables technologies and serves as a non-executive director on the boards of several InfraRed investments.
Before joining InfraRed in 2021, Alasdair worked at several market leading renewable energy companies running multi-disciplined teams covering briefs including investment decisions, commercial negotiations, Joint Ventures and M&A.

Fraser Dobbie

Chief Financial Officer, North Star

Fraser Dobbie is the CFO at North Star, the Aberdeen based UK market leading provider of offshore support vessels to the Energy industry.

North Star was established over 137 years ago, and has seen various stages of market transition, including its recent growth in the offshore wind Service Operations Vessel (SOVs) market. Today, North Star owns 48 vessels, including 7 SOVs, all of which have been ordered since 2021. This growth has required considerable investment, North Star’s capital commitment to the offshore wind industry already sits at more than £350 million, with ambitious plans to grow its offshore wind SOV fleet to over 40 vessels by 2040.

Fraser joined North Star in 2021 to focus on offshore wind market penetration. Since joining the company he has overseen the raise of over £250 million of debt facilities, as well as the sale of the company to Partners Group from its previous owner Basalt Infrastructure Partners.

Fraser’s background is in corporate finance, having spent 10 years as an M&A adviser to the international Energy Services sector, he is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland.

Clare Foster

Partner and Head of Clean Energy, Shepherd and Wedderburn

Clare Foster is Head of Clean Energy at law firm Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP and as a banking partner, she also leads the firm’s project finance practice. Clare is a dual qualified project finance lawyer and has been involved in the energy sector since the early renewable projects of the late 1990s. Clare advises clients on UK projects spanning the energy sector, including offshore (fixed, floating and tidal), onshore (wind, solar and battery storage), biomass, hydro, energy efficiency and other decarbonisation projects, and leads the team on most clean energy transactions. She leads the Edinburgh Climate Compact and was a director on the Board of RenewableUK from 2019-2022.

Claire Mack

Chief Executive, Scottish Renewables

Claire has been Chief Executive of Scottish Renewables, the representative voice of Scotland’s renewable energy industry, since October 2017. She is responsible for leading the organisation’s work to grow Scotland’s renewables sector and sustain its position at the forefront of the global clean energy industry.

Claire is a member of the First Minister’s Energy Advisory Board and is co-chair of the Renewable Energy Strategic Leadership Group. She is also co-chair of the Scottish Government Marine Energy Industry Group.

Claire is a member of SSEN’s Network for Net Zero Stakeholder Group and a member of the Centre for Work-Based Learning in Scotland Advisory Group.

Claire was awarded the University of Strathclyde’s STELAR award for executive leadership within the industry in 2021 and is also an honorary fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society.

Andy McAllister

Assistant Director - Advisory Corporate Finance, Deloitte

Andy is part of Deloitte’s Government and Infrastructure Team, having previously been part of the inaugural investment team of the Scottish National Investment Bank. He specialises in unlocking private finance for the energy transition, delivering policy-aligned investment, and setting up new public sector investment bodies. He has been engaged across government advising on how its interventions can best create a strong investment environment.

Eddie McAvinchey

Banking & Investments – Scotland, UK Infrastructure Bank

Eddie joined UK Infrastructure Bank in February 2024 to act as the bank’s representative in Scotland. Prior to this he had been Executive Director for Sustainable Investment at the Scottish National Investment Bank. His career spans investment banking, commercial banking and corporate law. The UKIB has been capitalised to £22bn by HM Treasury, across equity, debt and guarantees. In his role at UKIB, Eddie will liaise across the Scottish market to identify private and public sector situations where the UKIB can provide investment and lending to situations aligned with two core UKIB objectives: Net Zero and Regional & Local Economic Growth. UKIB’s strategy focuses on a number of sectors which are of relevance to Scotland’s net zero opportunity, including offshore wind, ports and the OSW supply chain; hydrogen & CCUS; zero emission transport; heat networks; and energy storage.

Lara McGrath

Export Finance Manager, UK Export Finance

Lara McGrath is the Export Finance Manager for Highlands, Islands, Aberdeenshire & Tayside, and the Clean Growth Export Development Manager for UK Export Finance (UKEF), the world’s first export credit agency. Her role is to support UKEF’s mission to ensure that no viable UK export fails for lack of finance or insurance from the private sector, doing that sustainably and at no net cost to the taxpayer.

Before joining UKEF in July 2022, Lara worked for the Ministry of Defence as a Codification Export Sales Manager. She has extensive experience helping SMEs and corporate businesses by supporting them on their growth journey.

Sarah-Jane McArthur

Partner, Brodies

Sarah-Jane is an energy and projects lawyer with diverse experience across several sectors. In the energy sector, Sarah-Jane’s primary focus is on renewables and she has contributed to the successful delivery of many projects including: district heating, energy from waste, windfarms (both on and offshore), hydroelectricity and tidal power.

Sarah-Jane’s expertise spans drafting and negotiating various contracts crucial for project development, including construction and operations agreements and sales/ customer agreements. She also manages due diligence for project finance transactions and advises on the sale and purchase of development and operating assets. Sarah-Jane has also advised on energy licensing and regulation and on various support mechanisms.

Vicky O’Connor

Senior Wind Development and Investment Professional, Independent

Vicky has worked in wind development and advisory for over 13 years across approximately 17GW of offshore and 12GW of onshore projects. Most recently she held the position of Director Offshore Wind Development, Europe at Northland Power, where she was Bid Director for the Scotwind leasing process, resulting in award of two northwest sites, one fixed, one floating, totalling 2.34GW.

Prior to development, Vicky worked in consultancy at K2 Management and SgurrEnergy (now Wood), focusing on commercial technical risk, supporting a variety of investors, lenders and developers, globally, across the full project lifecycle. Highlights included acting as Lenders’ Technical Advisor for the project financing of RWE’s Triton Knoll offshore wind farm (857 MW, approx. £1.75 billion debt, 15 lenders) and leading due diligence of large complex portfolio M&A processes.

Vicky’s key strength is in understanding the technical and commercial aspects of risk and opportunity from multiple perspectives – acting as a bridge or translator between technical and commercial parties, to facilitate engagement, address challenges and develop strategy.

Vicky holds a BSc(Hons) in Physics, BEng(Hons) in Sustainable Energy Engineering.

Tim Purton

Head of Finance for Investment, SSEN Transmission

Tim leads SSEN Transmission’s investment finance team, responsible for managing over £20bn of investment in critical network upgrades in the North of Scotland which are necessary to meet Scottish and UK Government net zero targets. With over 18 years financial experience, primarily within the SSE Group, Tim’s previous roles in Thermal Generation and Business Energy Supply include financial modelling, change management and project accounting. Tim’s career began at Edinburgh Council and he’s a Chartered Public Finance Accountant.

Iain Sinclair

Executive Director, Global Energy Group

Iain is Executive Director, Renewables & Energy Transition at Global Energy Group, leading the development and implementation of GEG's renewables business growth strategy. This includes large scale capital investment projects, port infrastructure development and floating offshore wind manufacturing opportunities. With over 20 years renewable energy supply chain experience, he is a Board Director at both Scottish Renewables and Renewable UK, sits on the Scottish Government’s Renewables Strategic Leadership Group, is a Deepwind Cluster board member and sits on SOWEC’s Supply Chain Steering Group. He is also Non Exec Director leading wave technology provider, Mocean Energy.

Andrew Smith

Partner, Greenbackers

Andrew co founded Greenbackers Investment Capital , and founded the Deja Blue consultancy and before that ran the £103m Renewable Energy Investment Fund by Scottish Investment Bank (SIB) and was Head of Investment for DP Energy.

At SIB Andrew invested into the marine energy sector, including ground-breaking, and still world leading, investments into wave and tidal businesses and projects. Andrew is intimately involved, on a daily basis, with the marine energy sector, including engagements with offshore wind, aquaculture and oil and gas as they seek to find ways of decarbonising and electrifying. The use cases of and for marine energy are part of Andrews daily work.

Greenbackers delivered the largest technology showcase at COP26 and are currently delivering their 2024 Program taking clean, climate technologies to investment hotspots around the world.
Andrew is a current board member of the UK Marine Energy Council a registered Expert with the European Commission, a member of the FTech2Zero working Group, a member of the expert panel advising the EU on its new Innovation Fund, a member of the United Nations' Sustainable Blue Finance Initiative of the World Ocean Council, an assessor for the Solar Impulse Foundation’s 1000 Solutions program and a Global Scot.

Jimmy Williamson

Executive Director – Sustainable Investment, The Scottish National Investment Bank

Jimmy joined the Bank in 2021, initially leading the Innovation investment team focusing on equity financed scale-ups before moving in 2023 to head up the Net Zero mission investment team, leading on Energy Transition, Alternative Fuels and ScotWind-related origination activities. He has over 25 years’ experience with major institutions originating and structuring complex growth financing solutions in different asset classes, including technology venture capital, sponsor-led leveraged finance, including 8 years leading on oil & gas service sector for sponsor-backed deals, gaining deep insight into energy service verticals. Prior to joining the Bank he was Commercial Director at a specialist energy and industrials strategic consultancy working with institutional investors and corporate clients to help develop and monetise energy transition strategies. He has led multiple investments in aggregate of over £200m for the Bank.

Iain Wintour

Partner, EY

Iain Wintour is a Partner at EY focussed on advising clients in the renewable energy sector. Iain is Chartered Accountant specialising in tax and has 20 years’ experience advising clients across the energy and infrastructure sectors. Iain has a particular focus on advising clients developing, financing or investing in renewable energy assets in the UK and internationally including providing tax advice, transaction support and helping clients obtain access to tax incentives. Iain is the EY Partner sponsor for the Scottish Business Climate Collaboration, a group of large Scottish businesses working together to accelerate progress to net zero.