Jonathon “Peter” Findlay is a global energy executive, engineer, strategist, and corporate finance professional whose career has been built at the intersection of technology, economics, investment, and transformational leadership. With more than two decades of professional experience, Peter has worked across oil and gas, power and utilities, carbon management, energy transition, infrastructure, aerospace, and emerging technologies. His career has taken him from designing advanced gas-turbine technology to advising some of the world’s largest energy companies and investors and ultimately to leading global research on carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) and carbon management. Throughout that progression, a consistent theme has defined his work: applying rigorous analysis to complex problems and translating that insight into practical commercial decisions.
Peter currently serves as Director and Lead Analyst for CCUS and Carbon Management at Wood Mackenzie, where he is a senior subject-matter expert across CCUS, carbon dioxide removal, carbon markets, emissions, economics, policy, and related technologies. His leadership extends beyond analyzing an evolving industry; he has helped build capabilities that allow organizations to understand its commercial foundations. Beginning in 2022, Peter developed Wood Mackenzie’s CCUS valuation methodology and helped build its global valuation function from the ground up, ultimately expanding it to more than 240 valuation reports across approximately 20 countries. He also established carbon capture technology research capabilities and has directed work examining the technical and economic implications of emerging capture technologies, power generation, direct air capture, CO₂ transportation, project development, and carbon-management investment.
His work increasingly sits at the convergence of energy security, decarbonization, technology, and rapidly growing power demand. Peter has conducted extensive research into decarbonizing data centers, including the economics and technical viability of natural gas with carbon capture, nuclear energy, next-generation geothermal, renewables, battery storage, solid oxide fuel cells, and other potential pathways for providing reliable low-carbon power. His research reflects the type of decision-making challenge that has characterized his career: balancing cost, technological maturity, scalability, reliability, policy, environmental performance, and execution risk rather than viewing any one factor in isolation. His published Wood Mackenzie research, for example, examines the substantial new global data-center capacity anticipated by 2030 and evaluates the competing pathways available to meet near-continuous power requirements while addressing emissions.
Before assuming his current global research leadership responsibilities, Peter built a career in strategy consulting, corporate finance, transactions, and energy advisory. As a Partner with Criterium Group, he held P&L and management responsibility for a consulting team operating across Calgary and the United Kingdom while advising energy companies and emerging technology ventures. Earlier, at EY-Parthenon, he served as Vice President of Corporate Finance Strategy, leading teams evaluating major energy investments and transactions. At PwC, he specialized in financial decisions and analysis, working on power, infrastructure, upstream, LNG, petrochemical, and other projects and transactions. His experience included engagements with pension and sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms, investment banks, operators, and governments, giving him an unusually broad perspective on how technical assets, financial structures, policy frameworks, and strategic priorities interact.
Peter developed much of his strategic foundation during more than six years with A.T. Kearney, now Kearney, where he progressed from Associate to Manager within the Global Energy Practice. His work encompassed growth strategy, operational excellence, portfolio strategy, capital effectiveness, transaction analysis, and risk management for international oil companies, national oil companies, independent producers, midstream businesses, private equity investors, and other major organizations. His assignments ranged from assessing multibillion-dollar energy assets to supporting Saudi Aramco’s efforts to advance shale gas development through improvements to drilling and completion operations. These experiences sharpened his ability to move between the operational details of a business and the broader strategic and financial considerations facing senior executives.
The technical foundation beneath Peter’s commercial career began in aerospace. After graduate studies at McGill University, he worked in aerodynamic design and engineering at Pratt & Whitney, focusing on gas-turbine technology before moving into an operations engineering role involving global suppliers and critical quality issues. He holds two U.S. patents related to aerodynamic and energy-efficiency technologies. That engineering background continues to distinguish his approach to strategy and investment: he can examine not only whether a technology presents an attractive market opportunity, but also the technical assumptions, operating realities, scalability challenges, and economics underlying its commercial potential.
Peter has also established a significant voice within the international energy community. His research and thought leadership have addressed subjects including CCUS economics, direct air capture, CO₂ shipping, carbon capture technologies, power generation, Canadian oil sands, LNG, and energy-market development. He has presented or contributed content at OPEC technical meetings in Vienna, Oxford Institute for Energy Studies events, the Atlantic Council, IEAGHG, AAPG CCUS, the World Petroleum Congress, and Wood Mackenzie conferences. He conceptualized and leads Wood Mackenzie’s Global CCUS Executive Summit, bringing together senior leaders for focused discussions about the future of carbon management. His expertise has also been cited by publications including the Financial Times, The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, and Bloomberg.
His professional perspective is distinctly international. Peter’s experience and industry relationships span Canada and the United States as well as the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Japan, India, China, and South Africa. He has worked with supermajors, national oil companies, utilities, midstream and infrastructure businesses, technology developers, direct air capture companies, investors, financial institutions, and government organizations. This international exposure has given him an appreciation for the fact that energy and technology decisions cannot be separated from local economics, regulation, culture, capital markets, infrastructure, and public expectations. Fluent in English and French, Peter brings a global orientation to organizations navigating markets that increasingly cross geographic and industry boundaries.
Peter’s academic background similarly bridges engineering and business. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta and a Master of Science in Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering from McGill University, where his graduate work included computational fluid dynamics, advanced numerical methods, and gas-turbine applications. He later completed MBA studies through Warwick Business School, ESSEC Business School, and Mannheim Business School, concentrating on finance and corporate strategy. His academic accomplishments include recognition on the Warwick Business School Dean’s List, an NSERC graduate scholarship, and selection as one of the University of Alberta’s finalists for a Rhodes Scholarship. He is also a registered Professional Engineer in Alberta.
Beyond his corporate and research responsibilities, Peter has consistently invested his time and expertise in community and social-impact initiatives. For many years, he provided pro bono strategic support to AFRIpads, helping its directors develop an early-stage Ugandan enterprise focused on reusable menstrual products for women and girls in sub-Saharan Africa. He has also served as a mentor through Big Brothers Big Sisters and contributed to youth athletics through coaching and volunteer activities. His own background includes high-level competitive volleyball, including participation with Canada’s National Junior Volleyball Team and university athletics. These experiences reflect a leadership philosophy that extends beyond financial performance to mentorship, development, inclusion, and meaningful community impact.
Peter’s interest in board and advisory service represents a natural extension of his career. He is motivated by the opportunity to remain close to the commercial realities of how organizations are created, financed, scaled, and transformed while bringing an independent perspective to consequential decisions. He offers boards a combination of engineering literacy, financial discipline, strategy consulting experience, global market knowledge, energy expertise, and a network developed across industry, government, technology, and investment communities. Particularly within energy, oil and gas, power, technology, infrastructure, and decarbonization, he is positioned to help leadership teams evaluate emerging opportunities, challenge assumptions constructively, navigate uncertainty, allocate capital thoughtfully, and solve complex problems while pursuing positive outcomes for both the enterprise and the communities it serves.
Peter’s professional journey ultimately reflects a belief that complex challenges are best addressed by combining intellectual rigor with practical action. Whether evaluating a multibillion-dollar investment, assessing the commercial potential of a new technology, developing a global research capability, advising senior executives, or supporting an emerging social enterprise, he brings curiosity, analytical discipline, and an ability to connect technical detail with the larger strategic picture. For organizations confronting the intertwined challenges of growth, energy security, technological disruption, decarbonization, and capital allocation, Peter brings a perspective shaped not by a single discipline, but by a career spent connecting them.
Character:
Peter approaches leadership with intellectual curiosity, integrity, discipline, and a commitment to making a positive impact beyond traditional measures of business performance. His longstanding involvement in mentorship, community organizations, youth athletics, and social enterprise demonstrates a willingness to invest his experience in the development and well-being of others.
Knowledge:
Combining deep expertise in energy, CCUS, carbon management, power, corporate finance, engineering, investment, and emerging technologies with experience across multiple stages of the energy value chain. His technical education, professional engineering background, consulting career, research leadership, and global industry exposure allow him to examine complex business questions from technical, economic, financial, and commercial perspectives.
Strategic:
Peter has spent his career helping organizations make consequential decisions amid uncertainty, from transactions and capital allocation to technology commercialization, operating improvement, energy transition, and long-term growth. He is particularly adept at connecting detailed analysis with the broader competitive landscape so that executives and organizations can identify opportunities, understand risk, and translate strategy into action.
Communication:
He has communicated sophisticated technical and economic concepts to senior executives, investors, governments, industry specialists, and international audiences throughout his career. His extensive research authorship, conference participation, executive summit leadership, and media citations demonstrate an ability to make complicated issues understandable, relevant, and actionable.
