This guide defines the role of a Senior Finance and Investment Officer in renewable energy and storage projects, setting out the skills, knowledge, and experience needed across the project lifecycle. It demonstrates how finance professionals support project development from initial concept through to operation, ensuring projects remain investable, affordable, compliant, and aligned with long-term value-for-money objectives:

• Provide strategic input at project inception by establishing financial baselines, assessing organisational capability, shaping investment opportunities, and aligning proposals with long-term financial and Net Zero objectives.
• Develop robust business cases through commercial model assessment, financial viability analysis, affordability testing, and evaluation of delivery options, ownership structures and funding approaches.
• Support investment-ready project design by translating technical decisions into financial impacts, evaluating feasibility studies, and ensuring projects meet investor expectations and Green Book requirements.
• Integrate financial and technical considerations by working with multidisciplinary teams to assess resource potential, site constraints, grid capacity, costs, risks, and expected project performance.
• Provide financial assurance during project development, reviewing assumptions as projects progress and ensuring affordability, value for money, and risk management remain robust.
• Support stakeholder engagement and decision-making by explaining financial risks, trade-offs, and opportunities to senior leaders, elected members, investors, and delivery partners.
• Lead underwriting and investment appraisal activities through detailed financial modelling, risk assessment, business case development, and preparation for procurement or investment decisions.
• Act as a critical friend during technical design, providing challenge and scrutiny to maintain financial discipline while balancing cost, risk, performance, and project scope.
• Oversee operational financial performance by monitoring revenues, costs, cash flow, compliance requirements, and long-term financial sustainability following project delivery.
• Support lifecycle and end-of-life planning through evaluation of repowering, reinvestment, decommissioning, and replacement options, ensuring future liabilities and opportunities are properly understood.
• Capture lessons learned and evaluate outcomes, using financial evidence to assess project performance, inform future investment decisions, and improve the delivery of renewable energy programmes.