About

Team size: 30

Major legal advisers: Addleshaw Goddard, Clyde & Co, Linklaters

As environmental sustainability continues to creep up the agenda for GCs in many businesses, energy companies particularly face immense challenges – not least an oil and gas company like SGN. In response, the company has undertaken a huge project to decarbonise the energy it produces and repurpose the gas network in response to pressure from customers, regulators and the press.

As director for legal and compliance, Nicola Graham-Shand is at the forefront of helping SGN, which provides gas services to over 14 million people, navigate various restructuring arrangements as part of its decarbonisation. Furthermore, when the UK became the first major economy in the world to pass laws to end its contribution to global warming by 2050, time was effectively up on SGN’s current business model.

Comments Graham-Shand: ‘As a business we need to invest in decarbonisation to promote the long-term sustainability of the gas network. We had to have open conversations with the senior team about what that means in terms of legal and regulatory risk.’

Rising temperatures have been identified by the business as a major form of risk to environmental sustainability, while the plan is to turn more attention towards cleaner energy products like hydrogen and try to gain a competitive advantage by being the first mover on new services and products.

The legal team has been involved in bidding for government funding for green energy projects recently. ‘Decarbonisation has forced us to look at projects strategically rather than commercially. We wouldn’t traditionally have done projects like this, but we’ve had to step into this role as it is more about de-risking our future.’

Graham-Shand says the industry is likely to see further acceleration of decarbonisation and, as these projects continue to come in significant waves, they will become an increasingly larger part of the work for the legal function at SGN.

‘We canvassed views from government around the challenges of becoming net zero. We’ve had to think about how we can get fit. Ofgem will no doubt challenge us on some areas and the more we can upskill as a business, the better position we’ll be in.’