< Overview
Institutional De-Risking
Helping novel decarbonization efforts survive institutional scrutiny—and keep moving.
What this is
Decarbonization efforts often stall not because the idea is unsound, but because institutions cannot yet see or bound the risk.
Classification societies, insurers, regulators, and financiers each assess risk through different lenses. When a project is novel, those lenses don’t naturally align—and hesitation becomes the default.
This work focuses on helping teams navigate that institutional landscape, making uncertainty explicit, assumptions legible, and decisions defensible.
The institutional challenge
For first-of-a-kind or early-stage decarbonization efforts, risk is rarely absent—but it is often poorly articulated.
Common patterns include:
• Technical concepts advancing faster than institutional comfort
• Safety and operational logic that exists, but is not clearly framed
• Misalignment between class, insurance, regulatory, and commercial perspectives
• Decisions delayed because no one wants to be the first to say “yes”
In these situations, uncertainty tends to expand, rather than narrow, unless it is actively managed.
How I engage
Institutional de-risking is most effective when it starts early.
I typically work:
Embedded with the project team
In active dialogue with class, insurers, regulators, and other institutional actors
Focused on surfacing assumptions before they become blockers
Engagements may be short and targeted or longer and more deeply embedded, depending on how central institutional alignment is to the effort.
What I typically help with
This work often includes:
Framing safety and operational concepts in institutionally legible ways
Helping teams prepare for early engagement with class and insurers
Identifying where different institutions are reacting to different risks
Supporting alignment across safety, regulatory, and commercial perspectives
Translating uncertainty into bounded questions that can be evaluated
The objective is not to eliminate uncertainty, but to prevent it from stalling progress.
What this is not
To be clear, this role is not:
Acting as class, flag, insurer, or regulator
Providing formal approvals or certifications
Pushing institutions toward predetermined outcomes
Replacing technical or legal authority
My role sits between institutions and project teams, helping each side understand what the other is actually reacting to.
What success looks like
When institutional de-risking is working well:
Institutions remain engaged rather than disengaging
Risk is discussed in concrete terms rather than general discomfort
Teams understand what must change to move forward
Decisions happen earlier and with greater confidence
Sometimes the result is approval. Sometimes it is a clearer pause. Both outcomes reduce wasted effort and enable better next steps.
When this is a good fit
This type of support is most valuable when:
A project involves novel fuels, technologies, or operating concepts
Institutional hesitation is slowing or complicating progress
Multiple decision-makers need to be aligned
You want someone embedded with the team, helping navigate institutional dynamics
It is less useful when institutional engagement is already routine or when decisions are made entirely outside the project team.
Interested in navigating institutional risk more effectively?
If you’re working on a decarbonization effort that is encountering institutional hesitation or uncertainty, I’m happy to explore whether this type of support could be helpful.