Strategic communications counsel
for the energy and environmental transitions
We advise transition-facing leadership teams on communications, narrative, and stakeholder positioning - helping you communicate credibly when scrutiny is high, politics are volatile, and pragmatism is on the rise.
Trusted by leadership teams at
Across a range of industries and challenges, we advise leadership teams from major UK listed businesses, high-profile global NGOs, large private companies, and fast-growing scale-ups.
Working with
Sillion
We work with organisations where energy transition and sustainability are material to valuation, licence to operate, fundraising, regulatory standing, or community acceptance.
We operate as a high-end advisory practice, not an agency. We take on fewer, higher-stakes engagements where leadership judgement, narrative clarity, and credibility under scrutiny are decisive.
Where it helps, we collaborate with a small circle of senior specialists (for example, policy and regulation expertise) under the Sillion approach and standards - expanding range without diluting the model.
What we do
Retained Strategic Communications Counsel
Ongoing access to senior judgement, strategic perspective, and decision support. Advisory-led. Flexible. Non-operational.
Strategic Narrative & Positioning Project
A time-boxed, constructive assessment to surface structural issues in communications and enable leaders to fix them.
Comms Function &
Agency Diagnostic
A focused project to clarify, reset, or strengthen organisational narrative and positioning in the context of commercial reality, sustainability ambition, and market expectations.
Private Markets
Transactions
Investor-grade positioning for private PE exits – making your portfolio company look and sound like the investment case, and drive interest under diligence scrutiny.
When we’re right,
and when we’re not
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Renewables, grids, storage, electrification, hydrogen, carbon, critical minerals, circular economy, industrial decarbonisation, and nature-linked markets.
Asset Managers and Asset Owners – responsible investment and stewardship challenges and positioning, thematic investment, overall comms posture for global asset managers requiring regional nuance.
Growth-stage businesses and scale-ups with transition exposure and a complex stakeholder environment.
Boards, funds, and deal teams needing narrative and stakeholder counsel – especially around transactions or major announcements.
New energy or sustainability units inside larger organisations that need senior comms counsel without building a full internal function.
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Stakeholder considerations are material: customers, investors, regulators, NGOs, communities, employees.
A senior sponsor feels personal reputational risk, direct or indirect - CEO, Founder, ExCo, Chair, and occasionally Head of Comms/Sustainability at very large organisations.
Senior sponsor lacks native literacy in either communications or energy/sustainability.
There is no world-class senior counsel in-house - but there is a strong desire for a trusted external brain.
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You need high-volume content production, campaign delivery, or a staffed outsourced team.
You are running an RFP designed to compare agencies on deliverables, rather than to procure senior counsel.
You have no concerns about your positioning, narrative, comms function or advisers.
You want a partner to defend positions that cannot be evidenced, or to blur uncomfortable trade-offs.
Led by
Tom Rayner
Sillion is principal-led by Tom Rayner. Clients work directly with Tom for large strategic challenges, sense-checks, and decision support - with executional capacity brought in only where it improves outcomes.
Why we exist
For transition-facing companies, the external environment is structurally harder. Politics are more contested, scrutiny is sharper, and the gap between what is promised and what is provable is actively policed by regulators, investors, journalists, activists and competitors.
Many organisations have comms teams, policy people, technical specialists and investor relations - but the integrating function is missing: someone who can combine transition substance, stakeholder dynamics and reputational risk into clear leadership guidance. Sillion exists to provide that missing counsel.
What makes us different
Breadth across corporate and civil society environments: experience spanning major UK listed companies and high-profile global NGOs.
Range across the transition landscape: policy dependency, permitting and local consent, technology timelines, capex constraints, grid bottlenecks, supply-chain integrity, and the reputational volatility of contested projects.
A repeatable method for building leadership narratives and proof structures that are resilient under challenge.
How we work
Small, senior and decisive: we work through board/CEO counsel retainers and fixed-fee strategic projects. Engagements are principal-led, high-leverage rather than resource-heavy, with clear scopes and outcomes.
Where it strengthens outcomes, we collaborate with a small circle of senior specialists under the Sillion approach and standards - expanding range without diluting the principal-led model.
Get in touch
Please get in touch if you would like to know more about our offering.
We will be happy to discuss your context and whether our advisory approach is right for you.