Today is the first monthly check-in on the 23 FOAK climate tech projects I said I’d track publicly in 2026! FOAKs get talked about more and more, which is definitely a good thing! I’m following up on the developments of the largest and most interesting FOAK projects in climate tech. I first go over the good news, then the bad, and you’ll get an updated table at the end! The good news (actual execution happened) H2 Green Steel (now Stegra) signed a long-term supply agreement

My friend Jean Gravellier once drove me around the Dunkirk area. I’ve seen the ArcelorMittal steel plant, the nuclear power station, and locations for future battery gigafactories. “Why there?” I thought. So many polluting industries, all in one place? There are many reasons, but one is permitting - businesses with a higher environmental footprint go where it is easier to get approval from local governments. There is a reason that many battery companies in Europe are in Hunga

“Things that people assume are going to be easier are often way harder than they think.” If there was one quote about #FOAK, this would probably be it. And it doesn’t matter what you are building - an #SMR or a FOAK chemical plant. The assumptions you make about some steps being easy always come back and kick your ass. The quote comes from Kairos Power CEO Mike Laufer, in a podcast episode of The Green Blueprint. Mike and his team are currently building Hermes-2 - a 50 MW SMR

This week, I was drafting a report for six months of my work for an early-stage energy and AI startup, so I thought, why not share what I can? So here it goes. The value from advisors to startups is usually customer or investor connections, and some PR representation. I can deliver very little of those. So why get one if he can’t deliver the usual advisor value? Let’s see what I did: • Stress-tested the core business logic across multiple markets and rollout scenarios, finall

Once or twice a year, if you stay long enough in climate and battery scale-ups, you encounter a technology that politely asks you to forget thermodynamics, manufacturing constraints, and twenty years of painful industrial learning. Like a lot of other things, this year’s entry arrived early. The battery world is currently excited about Donut Lab solid state battery. Let’s outline the plausible range of outcomes: 1 Worst case: it’s a scam. Svolt has already called it out (yo

Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street treats recruitment as an execution discipline rather than an exercise in intuition. The core argument is simple and uncomfortable: most hiring failures are not caused by a lack of talent in the market, but by sloppy decision-making. Interviews reward confidence, charm, and familiarity. Real performance, however, shows up later — in execution, judgment under pressure, and consistency over time. The book proposes a s

Europe spends a lot of time talking about battery gigafactories. We discuss cell chemistries, subsidy schemes, factory locations, and how many gigawatts of capacity will be built by when. All of that matters. But a part of the battery value chain rarely makes it into these conversations, even though it has a disproportionate impact on cost, risk, and credibility. Battery chemicals. Not cells or packs, but the solvents, electrolytes, and precursors that sit upstream of every c

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

A downloadable 5-step framework for finding clients for your FOAK startup

How frameworks help to avoid hype traps.

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

I’ve put together a list of 23 FOAK climate tech projects that are supposed to prove something in 2026 — not in decks, not in announcements, but in steel, concrete, electrons, molecules, and regulatory filings.

An intro to short fantasy novella.

Without clean electrons there are no clean fuels

Chinese EV Exports rose despite tariffs.

What scrapping the Europe's EV target really mean

Every time someone says software-defined vehicle, I imagine driving 250 km/h on the Autobahn and seeing: “System has unexpectedly crashed. Reboot in progress.” That thought led me to dig into SDVs, money, and who actually benefits.

How BP and Shell abandoned their green ambitions

This is a review of key successful and key failed FOAKs in 2025

Getting public funds for FOAK in Europe is so hard that companies prefer to change location.