Tara Schmidt has recently joined Lloyds Bank as Sustainability & ESG Finance Director, where she will be helping to finance the UK’s net zero ambitions. With more than 20 years of energy industry experience, Tara brings a wealth of expertise in global energy and infrastructure markets, climate-related financial risk, and sustainable development. Tara’s role is to advise senior executives on the key risks and opportunities emerging from the low-carbon transition and climate change, to assess and address the potential financial impacts on their portfolios over the coming decades.

For over a decade, Tara has assisted corporate development teams in some of the world’s largest companies and financial institutions in climate-related strategic planning, business development and market analysis. Prior to joining Lloyds Banking Group, she was Vice President of Strategic Planning at the global engineering and consulting company Wood plc where she was responsible for supporting the company and its clients in shaping and implementing their low-carbon transition strategies.

Tara previously worked for the sustainability consultancy ERM, in building out their client service offering on low-carbon transition in conjunction with the G20 Financial Stability Board’s Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). At the leading market analyst firm Wood Mackenzie, she managed Global Energy Trends research overseeing a team of global energy market analysts. Her analysis on disruptive low-carbon technologies, global carbon policy, and the water-energy nexus has been quoted in Forbes, the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal among others.

In her 20 years in the industry, Tara has worked across the energy value chain: from renewable power generation to fossil fuel extraction. She began her career as a petroleum engineer working for BP and Shell, and later moved into management consulting with Accenture. She has consulted for the Shell Foundation on energy access, built out Accenture’s charitable partnership with the Princes’ Trust for youth employment in the UK and internationally, and developed Wood Mackenzie’s global CSR programme.

Tara has a broad knowledge of global markets, with hands-on work experience in Australia, France, Indonesia, Kuwait, Malaysia, the Netherlands, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, the UK and USA. She has an MBA in International Business from the London Business School and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Texas A&M University.

David Johnston is Managing Director and Head of Energy & Commodities at Lloyd’s Bank. David has structuring, arranging and financing natural resources and energy projects for the past two decades throughout Australia, Asia, America, Africa and Europe. He joined Lloyds in 2020 and has previously worked with ANZ & HBOS in Sydney and CBA in Sydney, Brisbane & London. He is a long stadnign member of the Scottish Energy Forum.

The Energy & Commodities team at Lloyds Bank has a specialist remit offering all the banks’ corporate, structured and commodity finance requirements for participants in the energy and extractive industries.

On a global setting, clients include integrated energy, integrated mining, and commodity traders with regional focus on refineries, energy services and exploration & production (E&P). With a long history supporting North Sea E&P clients Lloyds supports clients with their initiatives through this decade of transition.

This includes revolving facilities, working capital, vanilla and structured trade, term facilities, renewable & project finance and reserve-based lending. In addition, we are the conduit for financial risk management through LBCM in the form of interest rate, FX and commodity risk management enhanced by our capital markets debt advisory team with capability in the UK & USA.