South Pole Q&A: The Demand for Energy Transition Consulting

In 2026, businesses are navigating a labyrinth of challenges when it comes to energy and sustainability. They have to deal with tightening regulations, volatile geopolitics and scrutiny from investors, all while trying to keep the lights on.

Charting a route through this complexity requires not only ambition, but specialist guidance.

That is where firms like South Pole come in, helping organisations translate climate commitments into workable, science-based strategies.

Energy Digital sat down with Rob Ellinson, Senior Managing Consultant and Sector Lead at South Pole, to discuss what companies are grappling with as they build transition plans, how energy security is reshaping priorities and why the cost of inaction is becoming impossible to ignore.

Please introduce yourself and tell us about your role at South Pole.

I’m Rob Ellinson, a Senior Managing Consultant leading South Pole’s energy sector practice. I work with energy and utilities companies to help them understand and manage climate risks, strengthen resilience, and develop credible climate transition plans.

On top of coordinating the expertise of our energy and topic specialists, the majority of my day is spent supporting organisations as they navigate the opportunities and challenges of the energy transition.

In practice, that means helping clients assess the impacts of physical and transition risks, integrate climate considerations into their investment and business planning, develop science-based decarbonisation strategies, meet regulatory and stakeholder expectations, and build the business case for long-term value and competitiveness.

For readers unfamiliar with South Pole, can you explain the kind of work the firm does?

South Pole helps organisations turn climate and sustainability ambitions into real-world action. We work across three core areas:

1. Environmental Certificates – connecting clients with high-impact climate and nature projects that deliver measurable environmental benefits
2. Climate Consulting – helping organisations develop and implement sustainability strategies that prepare their businesses for a low-carbon future
3. Project Finance – supporting project developers with the funding needed to scale decarbonisation and climate solutions

For me, two things set South Pole apart. The first is our blend of capabilities. We provide strategic advice rooted in deep and broad technical expertise across sustainability, combined with a 20+ year history in carbon asset development and delivery. While many firms specialise in either consulting or carbon asset development, we do both, which means we can support clients through the entire journey.

The second is that we're a deeply human organisation. Particularly on the strategy and climate advisory side, we know real change comes from embedding strategies across an organisation. That's why we pair our technical expertise with engagement strategies that bring people along.

South Pole works with some of the world's biggest brands. What are these companies looking for when they come to you?

The honest answer is nuanced, because where companies are when they first come to us varies enormously.

That said, there's a clear common theme across Europe at the moment. The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) is now in effect and the Science Based Targets initiative has launched its V2 framework. We’re seeing a decisive shift from targets and roadmaps towards implementation where organisations are increasingly expected to lay out a credible climate transition plan.

A lot of our work right now revolves around helping companies make sure those plans meet the requirements of their key stakeholders: most commonly the regulatory requirements, but also, just as importantly, that they are investor-focused and provide decision-useful information on decarbonisation plans and financing strategies. 

A great example of that is our work with Snam, Europe’s largest regulated midstream gas operator. We helped them develop their first Transition Plan Roadmap in October 2024, ensuring compliance with CSRD, the Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) framework and the Taskforce for Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) while embedding decarbonisation and nature-related targets across defined time horizons to 2050.

Ultimately, what unites our clients is that they want a credible, practical route to deliver on their ambition, not just a target.

How are national and international regulations impacting companies' transition plans?

Regulation is becoming one of the biggest drivers of low-carbon transition in the energy sector. Frameworks such as the EU's CSRD and the UK's Sustainability Reporting Standards are increasing scrutiny on how companies plan, finance and deliver their transition strategies.

At the same time, energy companies are operating in a complex environment where national priorities – energy security, affordability and economic growth – do not always align neatly with Paris-aligned decarbonisation pathways. This can create tension between meeting near-term energy demand and investing for a lower-carbon future.

At the end of the day, regulation is raising the bar from setting targets to proving credible pathways for achieving them – something investors, customers and policymakers increasingly expect. 

Energy security and energy sovereignty have become huge talking points in 2026. What are businesses' main concerns right now?

Energy security and energy sovereignty have become top priorities for governments, and recent geopolitical tensions have only reinforced that trend.

Events in the Middle East and other global disruptions have highlighted the risks of relying on imported fossil fuels and exposed companies to energy price volatility.

As a result, the energy transition is increasingly being viewed not just as a climate objective, but as a business resilience and competitiveness issue. Companies are looking to strengthen energy independence while balancing the energy trilemma of security, affordability and sustainability.

While short-term measures such as LNG imports can help stabilise supply, they do not address longer-term exposure to geopolitical and market shocks. That's why we're continuing to see strong investment in domestic renewables, electrification, energy storage and grid infrastructure.

What are the risks and opportunities of the push towards greater energy security?

What's been really interesting is that the emerging picture of what greater energy security looks like. The strategy to get there is essentially the same strategy needed to meet the Paris objectives.

This means rapidly reducing reliance on volatile global fuel prices while accelerating and scaling domestic energy, whether from renewables, other low-carbon sources, or any supply that doesn't depend on international fuel markets. 

Transitioning legacy fossil-based infrastructure to a low-carbon network carries a significant cost that can't be wished away. Here in the UK, we're living it, with some of the highest energy costs anywhere in the world.

We now have a choice: to shoulder more of that cost ourselves or hand it over to future generations who inherit larger energy bills and a more challenging starting point to address the cost.

That's why the single largest risk sits at government level – they need to fund the transition without simply passing the cost to consumers.

In your eyes, how much of a financial risk is failing to prepare for climate change?

It’s a huge financial risk, and it’s already happening. Across the energy sector, extreme weather, such as rising temperatures, floods and droughts are affecting asset performance, infrastructure reliability and revenues today, not just in the future. Many companies are still planning based on historical climate assumptions that are no longer fit for purpose.

We're seeing a growing divide between organisations that are proactively modelling climate risk and those that are relying on outdated resilience assumptions. Increasingly, climate adaptation is becoming just as financially material as emissions reduction, particularly for long-lived energy infrastructure. Investors, lenders and regulators are paying closer attention to whether a company's resilience planning matches its disclosed climate risks.

Ultimately, the cost of failing to adapt doesn't disappear. The cost is passed through to customers, governments or shareholders. Over the next decade, energy companies that fail to integrate physical climate risk into planning are likely to face challenges around reliability, competitiveness and long-term value creation.

At South Pole, we help organisations navigate both the risks and opportunities of the energy transition. From assessing physical and transition risks to integrating climate considerations into investment and business planning, we help clients make practical, science-based decisions that strengthen resilience, support decarbonisation goals and build long-term business value.