Renewable Energy Commercial Analyst
Hello, first post so I hope I'm doing it right.
I'm currently graduating with my masters in finance/investing. I have an offer for a role in a small energy company (roughly 50 people, including engineers and technicians) as a commercial analyst. I am currently getting interest from other areas so I'm not exactly stuck at the moment.
The job itself is part of a very small team, just me and my manager. My tasks would include a wide range of activities. These include market research for trading energy, a lot of financial modelling for future company projects/internal investment (as the company is growing fast), monitoring performance metrics and external trips to meet potential clients at conferences (so sales).
At first glance it feels like fp&a but I think the role is quite unique in its scope. Does the fact it covers a lot of different areas mean I would have the opportunity to advance into a variety of roles in the next steps of my career, or would I essentially become a jack of all trades, but master of none and not be desirable if looking to move in the future?
I appreciate any insight anyone can provide! Sorry if something like this has come up before but I couldn't really find anything in my search.
I started my career at a small renewable energy company as a "Financial Analyst" and did a lot of business development as well as internal controllership stuff. I was basically an "everything analyst." after a year a leveraged having renewable energy on my resume and applied to positions for renewable energy groups within larger banks. I eventually landed a role at a bank that has a group that does tax equity financing for renewable energy projects. The Inflation Reduction Act also had a lot of guidance in it regarding tax credits and transferability for renewable energy credits so i believe it will continue to be a hot industry for another ten years or so
Thinking of doing the same thing, how are the hours within the tax equity group at the bank? Is the work interesting? A lot of modelling?
any updates?
I work in a very similar position that you described, but at a much larger company. It’s definitely something that can get you great experience.
Recruiters reach out pretty frequently for renewable investment, business development roles, strategy roles, etc. along with traditional IB.
If the team is active and the analysis you do helps you grow, it could be a great position to figure out what you actually want to do. My initial goal was so the job for 1.5-2 years and dip to a more traditional M&A/IB-type job at the end but I quickly realized that the work-life balance is awesome and there’s huge opportunity to make money while still having a life in different corporate roles that my current job sets me up for.
would love to know what your day-to-day is?
Kind of a cliche “no two days are the same”
But I can walk through an example time when we’re busy, it’s pretty unstructured days given our projects. Deadlines usually spread out on projects so most things are at different stages.
Like if we have an M&A opportunity, a capital project being looked at, etc. sometimes I spend the morning checking the dataroom to see what’s been uploaded and see how the info impacts the model I have and make sure our internal SME’s in the know have access to it or any questions that I’ll add to our diligence list.
Probably update the model given new info, make a new sensitivity or something, etc.
Then update deck as needed and give a quick run-through of updates with my boss of the model and deck.
Then I’d check with our project engineers to see if they need anything on the capital project or any new estimates they have on their project and whatnot and adjust the model accordingly and talk them through results.
It’s a rather chill job unless there’s like 6 projects I’m working on and 3 of them have deadlines to leadership in the same week or two week period. It’s key to understand when leadership meets, when capital project submissions are due, etc. most I’ve worked in a week is probably like 8am-10/11pm M-Th, fridays are usually pretty chill but if we’re doing something important it’ll just be a normal day where I log off at 5. But most weeks I’m out of the office by 5 and I don’t even have email/teams on my phone.
Definitely a job where there’s a lot of exposure to leadership, for better or worse. And there’s a lot of exposure to other teams. Like I frequently talk to our environmental team, tax, accounting, FP&A, strategy, engineering teams, etc.
did you end up taking the role?
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