Emin Askerov
Cleantech FOAK Advisor

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

Two different points of view on climate investment. Both wrong.

Why pay more to achieve less? Really, why? Yet, you see this everywhere in climatetech. How come? A reduction in man-made CO2 emissions measures the success of all climate technologies. But many of them require two other climate technologies as inputs - wind and solar energy. Green hydrogen, SAF, and e-fuels all require huge amounts of clean energy. To reduce emissions using these technologies, you first have to build a wind or solar power plant, then add the costs of these t

The humble transformer is at the heart of the electric grid. And for decades, it’s been a tailor-made marvel. Engineers loved the craft, utilities loved the high price that they passed on to consumers, and factories loved having “just the right” unit. But times changed, and the transformer industry didn’t. Until now. Meet One Power, a U.S. company taking the most boring, glacial, and conservative part of the grid… and flipping it on its head. Not by reinventing the tech, but

Don’t play with the government. That’s a rule my father taught me. He built his business in the 90s and early 2000s in Russia. He knew first hand that the government will screw you over faster than your private sector partner and in worse ways. For a long time, I thought that this rule applied only to authoritarian states like Russia, where the law is weak. The current passing of the “Big Beautiful Bill” in the US now shows that it is true for the West as well. The Inflation

We don’t have a cleantech innovation problem — we have a FOAK execution problem. Over the past year, I’ve been building something I wish I had when I started scaling my first climate tech venture: a practical, experience-based framework for getting First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) projects off the ground. In my latest article, I’ve pulled together my 50+ posts into a structured overview that maps the FOAK journey—from the moment you decide to leave the lab to the day your NOAKs are r

Two things I got wrong about Saudi Arabia BESS market

In any type of off-take, price will be the central point of negotiations. There are many pricing options available - fixed, floating, pass-through, CAPEX-based, return-based, etc. But before we go into the nitty-gritty of price structuring, let’s get the basics right. Going into the pricing negotiations, your objective is to keep the FOAK project profitable! There are a few challenges to that.  First, your FOAK is about building something solid, so you will be spending a lot

Insights on the US climate policy from DC insiders and my thoughts on why this strangely resembles Russia.

The last weekend of 2024 long-read on AI and Energy

Why should you avoid Green Premium and look for 10x value?

Crypto's Energy Hunger: Problem or Opportunity?

$𝟭𝟮 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻/𝘆𝗲𝗮𝗿? $𝟯 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻? 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗮𝗯𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 $𝟭 𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗘𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗴𝘆 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘁ion

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