March brought a mix of real construction milestones, big financing closes, and the usual parade of announcements that may or may not lead anywhere. Let's sort the signal from the noise.  The Good News Stegra  (H2 Green Steel) delivered the headline of the month:  all electrolyser modules are now installed  at their 740 MW green hydrogen plant in Boden, Sweden. That's a real, physical milestone on what is arguably the most important green steel FOAK in the world. The financial

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

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.

Without clean electrons there are no clean fuels

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.

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

Scaling a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate venture isn’t about ideas. It’s about execution infrastructure. And that infrastructure begins with people

They IPO’d before raising VC. Here’s why that was genius. ATOME Energy didn’t follow the usual startup playbook. No pre-seed. No seed. No “100-slide deck for Sand Hill Road.” Instead, they went public. Early. That’s not just bold - it’s strategic. 💡 Why? Because in capital-intensive, FOAK-scale cleantech, your biggest bottleneck isn’t idea validation. It’s credibility. To secure $400M in project finance, off-take agreements, and long-term power deals in emerging markets… You

Hear Olivier Mussat, the CEO and founder of ATOME, about the role of fertilizers.

Airbus just quietly moved the launch of its hydrogen-powered plane from 2035 to 2045. In corporate speak, that’s not a delay—it’s a polite way of pulling the plug without admitting failure. After €1.7B spent, even Airbus is starting to realize that hydrogen aviation may be a science project, not a business. I called this a year ago, when Universal Hydrogen filed for bankruptcy after burning through $100M. That was a 20-minute or $100M crash course in hydrogen physics. Airbus

Green hydrogen was supposed to be the next big thing—but where’s the business case?

Review of Breakthrough Energy and Cleantech for Europe report on the state of European manufacturing competitiveness

Hydrogen is like real estate, there are three main criteria for project success: location, location, and location.

The Fourth Energy Transition looks certain to be accomplished by the end of this decade.