Post-FOAK Is the New FOAK: A Strategic Review of the OCED’s First-of-a-Kind Project Playbook

When the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) speaks, I listen.

Their November 2024 publication, “Learning from Case Studies: Financing and Development Approaches from Recent First-of-a-Kind Projects,” is possibly the most comprehensive collection of real-world examples for getting cleantech from the lab to steel-in-the-ground scale. If you’re in the weeds of building a FOAK (First-of-a-Kind) project, or advising someone who is, this report deserves a place on your desk.

Here's what stood out to me:

🧠 The Core Insight: FOAK ≠ Bankable

FOAKs aren’t bankable. That’s not a bug, it’s the nature of the beast. OCED hammers this home: the projects that succeeded didn’t tick every “project finance” box. They were financeable, not bankable. There’s a difference.

These companies hustled capital from wherever they could: corporate equity, strategic investors, customer prepayments, even construction loans backed by custom insurance packages. It’s less textbook project finance, more Frankenstein capital stack. And that’s okay.

Key quote: “All case studies diverged significantly from the model of fully wrapped EPCs and long-term, fixed-price offtakes.”

🔧 Build Fast, Integrate Yourself

Forget handing everything to a global EPC. These teams sliced and diced their scope, acted as project integrators, and built fast, often starting procurement before designs were finalized or financing was secured. Risky? Yes. But speed matters, especially to your investors. In the case of JR Energy Solution, which I am familiar with, they ditched the EPC and built their half-a-giga factory in just nine months.

From my own FOAK work, this rings true: speed eats perfection for breakfast.

📉 Tech Risk Isn’t the Only Risk

Most of us FOAK-heads focus on TRL (Technology Readiness Level). This report gives equal billing to ARL - Adoption Readiness Level - which includes things like demand certainty, workforce availability, permitting complexity, and capital flow speed.

Below is the one table that maps out ARL in detail. I’m still thinking whether it is a good framework to use, as it seemed to be a little overcomplicated. It is worth examining, though.

Source: OCED

🔁 Refine, Repeat, Refuel

Many case studies follow a pattern I call: Pilot → Early Demo → Refinance → Deploy.

Companies like Solugen, Via Separations, and Twelve used early demos to de-risk tech and off-take, then refinanced or raised project equity later. It’s the FOAK lifecycle in practice.

💸 Equity Is Expensive. But Sometimes, It's the Only Way.

The report doesn’t sugarcoat it: in early demos, project debt is rare. Equity is king. Some raised super-rounds, some blended grants, customer finance, and concessional capital. Government grants helped, but often came with tradeoffs - longer lead times, complex compliance.

As a FOAK advisor, I’ve seen the same: grants are gold, but sometimes they slow you down when you need to move fast.

💼 My Take

What makes this report valuable isn’t just the case studies - it’s the distillation of real tactics: how companies actually moved from demo to deployment, who they hired, how they managed contractors, and what kinds of financial gymnastics were required.

The report doesn’t claim to offer a universal playbook, but it does deliver a strong foundation to build your own.

If you’re working on a FOAK project - hydrogen, CCS, SAF, batteries, you name it - this is essential reading.

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📘 Want to go deeper into FOAK strategy?

Explore my curated FOAK blog series with frameworks, real-life cases, and step-by-step planning: https://www.askerov.pro/foak-scaleup-and-cleantech-blog/categories/scale-up

Let’s stop building just “firsts.” Let’s build the first of many. Here is the link to the full OCED report: https://www.energy.gov/sites/default/files/2024-11/FOAK%20Financing%20and%20Development%20Approaches_112024_vf.pdf