I used to think that US sanctions were reserved for criminals, dictators and Russians. Well, a few months ago, an ICC judge authorised an investigation into alleged war crimes by US personnel in Afghanistan. Then she was sanctioned. Her bank access was frozen. Amazon and Microsoft shut down her accounts. She was treated like an international criminal. If that wasn’t a wake-up call for all working with the USA, this January should have been. With Trump openly threatening tarif

After 9 days of the free trial of 2026, can someone please tell me how to cancel the subscription? This week was entertaining: suddenly everyone became a geopolitics expert.
 Mostly AI / data / everything-cool profiles explaining global affairs — often from countries that haven’t had a serious geopolitical shock in 50 years. Fun. Briefly. My own introduction to geopolitics was less theoretical.
In 2014, I was CIO for five power plants in Russia. One ran on a Siemens turbine d

This year ended very differently from how it started. The biggest thing was moving from Turkey to France, following the centuries-old and well-established tradition of Russian emigration. Not for lifestyle reasons alone, but because I wanted to be closer to where real FOAK (first-of-a-kind) execution is happening — in a region that still combines two things I value deeply: personal freedom and a serious attempt at climate transition. Professionally, three things defined my ye

How BP and Shell abandoned their green ambitions

Nothing tests a founder’s sanity like having too many “very interested” customers. It’s like speed dating with homework. A few days ago, I spoke with an early-stage founder whose product was attracting a lot of interest. On paper, it looked like a dream: inbound requests from consumer electronics, defence, industrial automation, and even a few overseas corporates. In reality, it was a trap. The team had five people, no sales function, and most of their time was devoted to dev

Why Tesla Pivots to Korea from China?

Is it easy to set up as a sole entrepreneur in France?

Why AI power demand won't materialise at the scale imagined.

Adaptation and mitigation are often viewed as competing for capital. In fact, they are not.

Three things could be done to improve Europe's competitiveness. Only one can be done fast.

The military has always been the earliest adopter of new tech. Dirk Singer noted that today it’s also one of the biggest investors in e-fuels — not for climate goals, but for energy security. Like solar panels in the 1990s, disruption often starts on the battlefield.

I’ve seen this before—in Russia. Decisions made not for policy, not for strategy, but for unchecked power. Now I see this playing out in...

Airbus showed Europe can beat giants like Boeing through distributed collaboration. Could batteries follow the same path—moving from vertically integrated gigafactories to networks of “partners in success”?

I stumbled across Martin Gallardo’s post and decided that it would be worthwhile to rewrite my comment into a full post. The consulting...

Crossing one valley of death is hard enough for any startup. For aviation startups, there are three!

A surprising revival of boring business amid the tech hype

Climate VC funding fell more than 3x from its peak in 2021

Michael Liebreich’s recent provocation on the Pragmatic Climate Reset raises many important points. One that stood out to me is that the climate movement has lost credibility by clinging to maximalist narratives while failing to deliver practical benefits. This inspired me to reflect on my own journey — ten years in climate tech yet still facing the gap between professional work and personal choices.

Cleantech startups usually sell to mature industries, and these don't like new stuff. How can founders overcome change inertia? Ports, especially municipally owned ones, are notorious for resisting any change to how they operate. Here is a story from Polina Vasilenko on how to sell floating solar to municipal ports.

Latest data on clean energy VC investments. Are we seen new bubble emerging?