This summer, our BIP and BIP.Verco teams worked with MSc students from Imperial College London on two consulting projects.

The first team assessed the feasibility of artificial salt caverns for industrial-scale hydrogen storage, one of the toughest unsolved problems in the energy transition: how to store huge volumes of renewable-driven hydrogen cheaply, safely and at scale.

The students benchmarked 17 competing storage technologies across 36 metrics, built a dynamic CAPEX/OPEX and levelised-cost model, and developed a bankable business case complete with revenue modelling. Their conclusion: that salt caverns lead on cost and round-trip efficiency above a critical volume threshold, though the right fit still depends on end use, location and supply chain has been distilled into a repeatable, four-stage go-to-market advisory offering we can now take to clients.

The second team, working with BIP.Verco, built an AI-powered rapid decarbonisation cost tool. The brief: modernise our existing modelling logic into a scalable, AI-enabled tool that consolidates proprietary and external cost data into a high-trust database covering Scope 1 and 2 emissions across Real Estate and Manufacturing.

The result gives clients everything from rapid M&A ballpark estimates through to granular five-year capital plans, with NPV, payback and multiple decarbonisation pathways costed side by side, turning what used to be a slow, manual exercise into something clients can act on quickly and with confidence.

Both projects are a strong reminder of why our academic partnerships matter. They keep us plugged into cutting-edge thinking, give us early access to exceptional talent, and let us pressure-test new offerings before they ever reach a client conversation.

If you'd like to hear more about either project or get involved in future academic partnership work, reach out Jake.salt@bip-group.com