I’m Mike Shepherd, Low Carbon Business Solutions Development Lead, and my role involves seeking opportunities to win orders in the low carbon energy arena. Historically, our opportunities have come from hydrocarbons and biomethane, and what I’m focusing on are industries and companies who are seeking to reduce their carbon footprint with practical solutions. For example: putting a carbon capture plant on a steel mill, a refinery, a gas power plant or a cement manufacturing plant. Equally, we’re engaging with industries generating and supplying low carbon fuel, such as hydrogen or sustainable air fuel. These capital-intensive projects provide us with opportunities to supply our analyser and metering solutions.
Overall the UK is in a good position to develop these solutions, particularly in the carbon capture field. Our unique geology provides the opportunity to use existing empty gas wells or unused subsea saline reservoirs and fill these with captured CO2 which can be stored thousands of feet underground. The UK has recently made significant investments in these projects and is committed to storing hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 in the future, which Bilfinger nZero can support.
The UK is also an energy dependent economy and there is an immense and urgent challenge to find a commercially viable energy source that doesn’t pollute. One possible solution is producing hydrogen and using it instead of natural gas. When hydrogen is burnt it produces no CO2 as a pollutant, just heat which is a good way to abate CO2 emissions, however hydrogen doesn’t have the energy density of hydrocarbons. One popular idea was to try and replace the domestic gas supply in our homes with hydrogen, but there are a number of significant challenges in doing that, which nZero has been at the forefront of discovering and solving.
nZero has also been exploring opportunities with our existing and new customers to install analyser systems to measure emitted CO2 , or equally the hydrogen they may be producing or using. There are also opportunities for Bilfinger nZero to manufacture metering skids or pressure reduction skids and the digital controls systems that go with them, thereby providing new solutions to the more traditional option of natural gas.
My own background is very international. I was born in Zimbabwe and moved to the Middle East in 2001 and lived in Dubai until 2014, working in the oil and gas sector, managing projects and eventually running an oil and gas metering company. I then moved to the UK and ran a similar UK based company for a while before moving into the business development side for that Group. I joined the (now) Bilfinger nZero business in 2023 as part of the business development team. I have a Master’s degree in Irrigation Engineering, which although has nothing to do with oil and gas, it shares incredibly similar engineering principles and uses equipment like flow meters, valves, instrumentation and flow computers and is all about moving liquids around. It’s a very similar skill set to the oil and gas industry; the only difference is water doesn’t go bang when there is a spark around!
The energy landscape is changing. We’re using our familiar engineering solutions for a different market which has fresh challenges to overcome. New challenges are always enjoyable!
Previously, I was providing oil and gas metering systems to international energy companies around the world and here my role is finding sustainable solutions for the UK energy industry. We are experts at providing measurement and analytical solutions for the natural gas coming into an industrial plant and now also for the CO2 coming out, which means we can support customers at both ends of the energy cycle. On the hydrogen side, there are good opportunities to lead the way in decarbonising the energy market and we’re well-positioned within the UK energy market to support customers using or producing the gas wherever their businesses may be focused.
Excessive CO2 emissions are a primary cause of climate change, and carbon capture allows commercial operators to do something about this and significantly reduce their own production levels of CO2, which helps combat climate change. Being involved in that technology and helping future generations is exciting and important; if we can secure a future to mitigate CO2 emissions, whilst supporting cleaner energy usage, it’s a good place to be.
Yes definitely. There’s been a trend that engineering is dirty and grubby and it’s got a big black mark against it, and that’s not fair. Engineering at Bilfinger nZero is different: it is a hugely rewarding career where you can change things and make a difference. The corner stone of any country’s success is its ability to innovate and change the world, and we can do that at Bilfinger nZero.
I think the Values – we have them on the wall in all our offices – provide guidance and inspiration. It’s always good to work for a company with values that align with one’s own. The Bilfinger nZero Values help give us all direction as to where our impact is and where and how you can align yourself with them, and it’s a great match when they all align.
I think the team in Bilfinger nZero is actually a special group of very skilled individuals who when combined have a pretty unique skillset. As a systems integrator we can take a set of specifications from an engineering company’s brief and using all sorts of skill sets, convert that into a highly bespoke, complicated engineered solution. If we can continue to do that without losing that uniqueness, there’s a real opportunity for our business to continue to grow, helped by our agility and flexibility. We have a huge opportunity as a systems integrator to use these skills both in the UK and across Europe, using Bilfinger’s European presence.
Equally the Middle East remains very active in the energy market, and as long as the strategy takes us in these directions, we have a very strong future. I’d love to be involved in the growth of this adventure. I’ve grown several companies and my greatest satisfaction is seeing a company prosper and helping the people grow and develop with it. It’s tremendously rewarding part of being involved in any business. If I can help Bilfinger nZero grow from a national company to have a more international presence, that’s something I’d love to do. Now we are part of the wider Bilfinger group, which has a much longer and broader strategic view than we probably had before, I hope that these additional opportunities are open to all of us should we want to take them.
Helix Business Park,
Newbridge Road,
Ellesmere Port, CH65 4LR
Bilfinger nZero, now part of Bilfinger UK Limited
