FOAK Climate Tech Monthly — May 2026

May was a month of shovels both hitting the ground and being laid to rest, restructuring, and hydrogen projects demonstrating how initial market positioning determines whether you get an FID or get fired. Also, some familiar names are stumbling in familiar ways.

The Good News

Kairos Power Hermes 2 broke ground in Oak Ridge in late April/early May, making it the second advanced reactor under construction in the US alongside TerraPower. The project aims to power Google data centres, although, by the time Hermes 2 is completed, I guess that the data centre in question will be running on solar/wind/batteries for some time. Still, two advanced reactor groundbreakings in a single month — America's nuclear dry spell is officially over. Now comes the hard part: actually building them on schedule.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems (SPARC) installed a 106,000-pound (53-ton) vacuum vessel segment and announced that the reactor is at 75% completion in Devens, Massachusetts. They also filed the first-ever US grid interconnection request for a fusion plant with PJM. Both milestones are impressive in their own right. It is worth remembering, though, that SPARC is a pilot project, whose sole aim is to demonstrate that a fusion reactor can produce more energy than it consumes.

Stegra (formerly H2 Green Steel) unlocked access to €1.5 billion in previously frozen credit lines after meeting delayed milestones with creditors. For the fifth month in a row, since I started monitoring FOAKs, Stegra is fighting for survival. What disappoints me here is that a green steel project, which is, strictly speaking, not a huge necessity now, manages to secure the necessary funding, while Morrow, which worked hard towards EU energy sovereignty, failed to bridge the funding gap.

Brevik CCS continues to operate and is delivering real low-carbon cement. Heidelberg Materials used evoZero carbon-captured cement from Brevik for a road project in Redbridge, UK. A FOAK-producing product that gets used in real infrastructure — that's the whole point.

ATOME Villeta selected Sungrow Hydrogen to supply 110 MW of electrolysis for its green fertiliser project in Paraguay and secured a $95M loan backed by Dutch development bank FMO. ATOME looks set to start construction and remains one of the few hydrogen projects done right.

The Bad News and Warning Signs

BP is selling its stake in Net Zero Teesside and the Northern Endurance Partnership. Let's not sugarcoat it: the company that was supposed to anchor UK CCS is walking away to refocus on oil and gas. NZT isn't dead, yet. Construction is reportedly starting, but losing your lead equity partner mid-launch is not a confidence signal.

ZeroAvia lost its founder and CEO Val Miftakhov, following earlier staff cuts in both the US and UK. Securing extra funding at the beginning of the year didn't seem to help. ZeroAvia is following fast down the same flight path as Universal Hydrogen, which, I'd say, is the only flight path available to hydrogen aviation.

Climeworks Mammoth is recovering from earlier setbacks and talking about cost reductions, but a WSJ report notes that engineered carbon removal costs are actually going up, not down. The whole thesis depends on a learning curve. I mean, learning that DAC eventually is as futile as hydrogen aviation.

The Noise

NEOM Green Hydrogen got another round of breathless coverage about its $8.4B mega-plant, but rumours surfaced that all construction on the project has been halted until 2030.

Key Takeaways

• Two advanced nuclear reactors broke ground in the US in the same month. That hasn't happened in decades. Execution from here will determine whether this is a renaissance or just a photo op. My bet is on the latter.

• Hydrogen souffle (hat nod to Michael Liebreich) continues to deflate amid ZeroAvia travails.

• BP exiting NZT is a warning for every FOAK that depends on a major corporate anchor. Strategy pivots at HQ can orphan a project overnight.

Next month: SPARC should be approaching final assembly milestones; we'll be watching whether Stegra actually accelerates construction now that the money is flowing, and whether ZeroAvia announce a pivot away from hydrogen now that the CEO is gone. Stay tuned.