It’s not as simple as it sounds. Nuclear FOAKs are great examples of everything that could go wrong with a FOAK. One glaring issue in nuclear FOAKs was the complexity of project management. In many cases, contracts with equipment suppliers were overly complex, and decision-making was fragmented across multiple bodies. In any project, FOAKs included, the decision-making process is the Achilles heel. So, how do you simplify it? Set your FOAK goals There are a few things to consider. First and foremost, write out the goals that you want to achieve with your FOAK. These should be very specific, like a particular date of the launch, zero accidents during construction, etc. Don’t limit yourself only to the construction part of the project. You are not in the real estate business, so encompass the end goals like less than 5% scrap rate or specific productivity in the first year. These goals will set a framework for your team's cooperation and will enable them to track their progress. Map your FOAK Second, sit down with your team and a piece of paper, write “FOAK” in the middle, and then write every concept that you can think of that a FOAK is comprised of. For example, a lithium-ion battery FOAK would consist, among others, of factory building, foundation, equipment, safety procedures, safety equipment, workers, training for workers, overseas instructors, visas for overseas instructors, translation for equipment manuals, cash in sufficient amounts, permits, etc. This brainstorm will give you a cloud of concepts, that constitute a FOAK. This is an important exercise to do, as it lets you form a checklist of critical obstacles on your FOAK path. Northvolt for example, simply forgot about the need for visas for Chinese workers and about the need for proper translation of equipment manuals to English. FOAK management structure Third, after forming this checklist, draw up a FOAK project management structure, that can take care of all of the items on the checklist. Each FOAK project management structure will be different, so I won’t give any specific recommendations here. However, there are a few principles you need to follow. If you have completed your demo project,  then your team knows a lot of details about what would it take to build 10x. Ask it to step back, and look at the project from a troubleshooting point of view. When something went wrong during the demo project, who spotted it? What did you do to quickly solve the issue? How many people did you need to consult? Who made the final decision? Use your own experience, analyze it, and codify it. Formulate it in a project management structure. Try to avoid functional silos. These have a nasty tendency of becoming trenches, from which one part of your team throws shit at another. Instead, organize cross-functional teams focused on achieving specific goals. Make sure that the team has all the necessary skills. Oftentimes, one person would work across several teams, like an IT specialist or a lawyer. That’s ok, as long as you monitor their workload, so it doesn’t become excessive and one of your team's efforts would suffer. The team lead should have all the authority he or she needs to execute and achieve the team’s goals. They should not be coming to your door to ask for permission. They should not be organizing a meeting to get something done. They should be able to do it straight away.  Now, you will design your own reporting, communication, and conflict resolution systems. Eliminate gatekeepers The biggest mistake a founder can make at this point is to become a gatekeeper and a go-to problem solver. This will result in you becoming the sole decision maker, with a line of visitors outside of your office, eager to hear your judgment. In the end, the project will stall, as your decision-making ability will be the chokepoint. Avoiding this trap is hard, after all, you are the top authority and decision-maker. To avoid this,  whenever someone came to me and tried to make me solve a problem, I’ve always referred my teammates to the goals of the project and then asked them, in return, how would they solve this particular problem and achieve the goals? In 90% of the cases, people came up with a good enough answer and went back to working on the project. Streamline reporting Fourth, establish clear and regular reporting mechanisms and a conflict resolution system. In our wind turbine project, we had over twelve teams, working on everything from construction, to procurement, to staff training to cybersecurity. Each team had a standardized reporting template, consisting of three PowerPoint slides. The first one would list tasks, set to the team two weeks ago, and would display its progress in their achievement. It would also show how the team fares against the plan. The second would suggest the tasks for the next two-week interval. The third slide would flag important issues where the team needed help. This slide’s purpose was to keep teams from hushing up problems. It was made clear that there would be no punishment for bringing up issues on the third slide. Oftentimes, this leads to several teams coming together to hash out a solution. We kept a special project management task force of four people, whose job was to complete these slides for each team, thus on one hand taking off the burden of reporting from them, and on the other hand, making sure that reporting was on time. This team also moderated all of the conflict resolution meetings and formulated the final decisions. It did not have authority apart from information collection and reporting but was instrumental in getting everyone on the same page. Finally, remember that as a founder, your main function during the FOAK will be… reporting to your investors. You will be spending an enormous amount of time preparing reports, delivering them in the board rooms, and negotiating with investors one-on-one. Investors have a nasty habit of dropping on you with a report request right when you are in the middle of putting out a fire. So you’ll need to have that presentation deck at the ready, with all the latest figures and progress reports. To do that, you will need rock-solid data and a firm grasp of what is going on in your project at the moment. This is where your reporting system will come to your rescue.

Overheating is a major issue in batteries. The global battery market is evolving fast, and looks to be overheating too: 🔹  Demand is surging , with EV sales up 25% in 2024, pushing battery demand past 1 TWh . 🔹  Prices are dropping , with lithium-ion battery pack costs falling below $100/kWh, a key milestone for EV affordability. 🔹  Manufacturing capacity is exploding , hitting 3 TWh globally - but here’s the catch: only one-third of that capacity is actually being used . Most of this excess capacity is in China , which dominates battery production. Meanwhile, the US and EU are scrambling to build their own factories , despite shaky demand. And IEA predicts that production capacity could triple in the next five years . 📉 Even if demand also triples , that will just triple the amount of idle capacity . So what happens next? 🚨  Prediction: A Chinese battery bloodbath . Overcapacity in the industry will force bankruptcies and trigger industry consolidation  over the next five years. If the US and EU erect more trade barriers , or if China itself restricts technology exports —both of which are already happening—things could get even more brutal. China might still have the tech and scale advantage , but a lot of companies won’t survive this wave. The real question: Can the US and EU take advantage of the coming shake up in the battery industry?  What do you think? Will China flood the world with cheap batteries, or will geopolitics reshape the industry? Share of manufacturing capacity by battery producer's domicile, 2024-2030. Source: IEA #battery #lithiumion #iea #energytransition #ev #forecast

After solar and wind , the next big climate technology to scale is heat pumps . They’re already gaining traction, but unlike solar panels , it looks like their cost won’t drop dramatically with manufacturing scale. Instead, their adoption will be driven by the spark spread —the difference between electricity and gas prices . Research by Rob Wilkinson  highlights this dynamic across Europe: In the Netherlands , where the spark spread is low, payback times for heat pumps are under 3 years —making them an easy sell. In the UK , with higher spark spreads, the payback period stretches to 7.5+ years —a hard sell for most households. In Hungary , where gas prices are extremely low, payback hits 47 years —effectively killing adoption. Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/estimation-costs-payback-retrofitting-heat-pump-uk-rob-wilkinson-9fb6e From my experience, anything over a 3-year payback struggles to gain traction  in residential markets. That means if we want heat pumps to scale as fast as solar, governments and utilities will need to narrow the spark spread. The question is how?   Lowering electricity prices is out of question for the moment, heat pumps already enjoy significant subsidies. Should there be higher gas taxes? Could be, to stimulate customers to move away from gas, as Europe depends on it either from Russia (which has fallen dramatically in recent years), or from LNG imports.  So, how do we bring down payback times and make heat pumps the next big climate success story? Thoughts? 🔥💡

In 2020, I was scrambling to get chips for our battery modules . Lead times had jumped from 2-3 months to over 9 months . Chipmakers prioritized gaming consoles and automotive giants, leaving cleantech startups like ours at the back of the line. That experience taught me just how fragile and unpredictable supply chains can be —and how they can make or break a scale-up. I was reminded of this while listening to The Green Blueprint  podcast episode, How Supply Chain Chaos Sank SunFolding . SunFolding, a solar tracker startup founded in 2012, shut down in 2023 —not because of tech failure, but because supply chain disruptions proved too much to handle. Three Hard Lessons from SunFolding’s Collapse: 1️⃣  When key inputs surge in price, your business model may not survive. SunFolding used U.S. steel  for its trackers to save on logistics costs. But as Chinese steel stayed cheap, U.S. steel prices tripled . That forced them to rebuild their supply chain—too little, too late. 2️⃣  A supply chain built for one scale might not work for the next. SunFolding hired a COO  when it landed its first utility-scale solar project. But the supply chain was already locked in, and not up to the task . Scaling up requires designing for supply chain resilience from day one . 3️⃣  You are not your supplier’s priority. In 2023, an earthquake in Turkey  disrupted a key material supplier to DuPont , which made SunFolding’s specialized polymer. DuPont refocused on serving its largest customers (automotive) , leaving SunFolding without a critical component. The Big Takeaway: Your supply chain is as critical as your technology . It needs to be flexible, scalable, and protected against shocks . If you’re building a cleantech scale-up, don’t just ask, Can we manufacture this at scale?  Ask, Can we still manufacture this if the supply chain shifts under us? If you’ve had to navigate supply chain chaos while scaling up, I’d love to hear your experiences. What lessons have you learned? #scaleup #cleantech #lessonslearned #supplychain #supplychaindisruption

Cyberpunk has always been my favorite sci-fi genre. Dystopian worlds ruled by transnational corporations, extreme inequality, corrupt governments, ecological collapse, biased media, constant surveillance, and omnipresent AI. Sound familiar? I used to think cyberpunk was fiction. Now, I’m not so sure. But the most cyberpunk  thing I’ve read this year wasn’t a Cyberpunk 2077 fan-fiction—it was a non-fiction book by Nobel Prize winning MIT economists Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, “Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity.” Technology Doesn’t Automatically Mean Progress We like to believe that technological innovation means growth in prosperity. The book argues otherwise. The authors provide compelling evidence across over a thousand years of human history that the so-called “productivity bandwagon”, meaning that technological progress always improves everyone’s prosperity, is not always the case. Unless actively directed towards augmenting the skills of workers  or creating new tasks , technology tends to increase inequality, worsen labor conditions, and eliminate jobs. The scary part is that this is not an accident—it’s a choice. And history shows that unless workers, consumers, and governments push back , innovation naturally benefits those who control it, not society as a whole. The book lists many examples, but I’ve singled out two that hit me particularly.  1️⃣  Automation is not always good.  We’ve seen this before - machines displacing low-skilled workers without creating meaningful alternatives. But what’s worse is “so-so automation” —technology that replaces workers but doesn’t improve products, efficiency, or customer experience. Think: AI chatbots, self-checkout kiosks, or automated call centers displace workers without offering any alternative for them. These “so-so automations” also do not bring any measurable improvements for customers. Just think of the last time you’ve tried to solve your issues via a chatbot! 2️⃣  Worker surveillance and control.  From Amazon warehouses tracking every movement of their staff to AI-driven productivity scoring, we are seeing technology used not to enhance productivity, but to squeeze every last drop of effort from workers. It’s not progress—it’s coercion.   I don’t see how this helps to bring prosperity for the society and economy as a whole.  Tech Tycoons and the Monopoly on Progress The key argument of the book is that tech billionaires don’t just build companies - they shape narratives. The most powerful one? All technology is good and inevitable, and they alone know what’s best for society.  It’s the ultimate power move: convince the world that questioning their monopoly over innovation is anti-progress. And the result? Skyrocketing inequality in the West, monopolies locking out competitors, and the erosion of workers’ rights - all under the banner of “progress.” We are living in Cyberpunk dystopia The book got me reflecting on the political and technological narratives, pursued by different countries.    The U.S. under its new leadership, with tech-bros in charge, and inequality at all-time highs, seems determined to run straight into a dystopian future. China, with its social credit system, Great Firewall, and AI-powered authoritarianism, is already there. These two different ways of adapting the same technology - social media and AI, demonstrate quite clearly that there is nothing inevitable in the technological progress.  Meanwhile, Europe is often criticized for over-regulation, carbon taxes, and trying to break up Big Tech monopolies. But after reading this book, you might start seeing Europe differently. It seems to be   the only major power actually paying attention to inequality, freedom, and the human cost of innovation. An unexpected ray of hope Towards the end of the book, the authors make a surprising example of how pushback by society and governments can alter the path of technological development - climate change. There was nothing inevitable about the development of climate technologies like solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. Instead, it was scientific research, grassroots climate activists and politicians, that formed the awareness of the problem, convinced the society that the threat is real, and then pushed for developing climate technologies.  There was and still is widespread opposition to the climate change narrative, but it won enough support to develop new technologies at scale. These technologies created whole new industries and benefited workers across all income and education levels. At the same time, they delivering the lowest cost energy at zero health risk.  But the climate change problem has an advantage over automation and AI. It is easy to measure its scope - the amount of CO2 equivalent emitted or reduced, the healthcare spending on treating climate and pollution-related health problems, and the insurance costs of increased  The choice we make The timing could not have been better. At least for me. Reading the book just right after Trump became the US president and Musk leveraging X to spread his vision of what is right, gave it a feel not of a social science book, but rather a chronicle. It is a “must-read“ for everyone, even if you are not an economist or consider yourself outside of politics. Because “Power and Progress” poses one of the most critical questions of our time: Will we shape technology, or will the few tech-titans of technology shape us? We can make a choice, or the choice will be made for us.

This is another post in my series of posts on the tactics of scaling-up climatetech. Off-take contracts are often cited as a key to successfully raising funds for your First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) project.  Last week I shared a long post on the framework for setting a price for your off-take. This week, I go briefly into the key factors behind determining the term of your off-take.  Off-take agreements have two key timeframes: 1️⃣  How long until you start shipping?  (Term of Delivery) 2️⃣  How long will your customer keep buying?  (Total Off-Take Term) Getting both right is crucial for securing financing and ensuring your FOAK project doesn’t collapse under unrealistic commitments. 1️⃣  Term of Delivery: The Hardest Part Your delivery timeline depends entirely on how long it takes to build and commission your FOAK . And if there’s one thing we know, it’s this: FOAKs always take longer than expected . 🔹  Demos ≠ FOAKs  – You can reference your demo project timeline, but scaling up brings unpredictable construction and commissioning delays. 🔹  Expect Delays  – Even in mature industries, commissioning takes longer than planned. In FOAKs, double or triple your initial estimate  to be safe. 🔹  Negotiate Flexibility  – European battery makers have all missed their commissioning deadlines - by years. Your off-take must allow for delays  without breaching the contract. 2️⃣  Total Off-Take Term: How Long Will They Buy? This depends on market conditions, customer risk appetite, and regulatory involvement . ✅  Longer Off-Takes (10-20 years) 🔹  Regulated Markets  – If your product is tied to government-regulated services (electricity, heating, transport), long-term contracts are common (e.g., public-private partnerships). 🔹  Geographically Locked Services  – If you supply a single buyer in a fixed location (e.g., industrial heat), expect 10-20 year  agreements. ⚠️  Shorter Off-Takes (5-6 years max) 🔹  Commodities  – If you’re in clean cement, steel, or any actively traded material , long-term contracts are rare. Customers hedge their risks in the open market. 🔹  Still, Avoid 1-2 Year Deals  – These make it impossible to structure pricing that satisfies investors. You need an off-take term long enough to demonstrate a stable payback period . Key Takeaway Delivery timelines require flexibility —commissioning always takes longer than planned. Long-term off-takes (10-20 years) are possible in regulated or geographically fixed markets . Shorter off-takes (5-6 years) work for commodity-based industries, but anything shorter kills investor confidence . The term of the off-take is as much about securing your future cashflows as it is about the flexibility of your FOAK. Keep both goals in mind, and reach out if you are negotiating your off-take!

Batteries have brought me to Korea once again. The last time I was here was just before the COVID lockdown, and now, I’m back—this time in Eumseong, the heartland of Korea’s battery industry —at the factory of JR Energy Solution . I’ve mentioned JR in my posts before, and there’s an hour-long interview with its founder and CEO, Duke Oh , on my podcast . JR is my client, and I’m thrilled to be helping them scale! Who is JR Energy Solution? Founded in 2022 , JR Energy Solution is redefining lithium-ion battery manufacturing with a Manufacturing-as-a-Service (MaaS) model —think of it as the TSMC of batteries . The company specializes in manufacturing electrodes and pouch cells , serving two key types of clients: 👨🏻‍🔬  Battery startups  looking to scale beyond lab production 🏭  Established players  supplying niche customers A Walk Through the 500 MWh Factory Spending the morning on the production floor, I got a firsthand look at: 🧪  Multi-chemistry production —how JR keeps its equipment contamination-free while switching between different chemistries for various clients. ✅  Quality control —ensuring uniformity across batches and minimizing scrap. 🌏  Global shipping —specialized packing equipment that safely transports electrodes across the world. Beyond Manufacturing: A Bridge to Scale What makes JR unique isn’t just its ability to produce electrodes and cells—it’s how they help battery startups scale . The company connects its clients with Korean equipment and material suppliers  and provides hands-on training in electrode and cell manufacturing . In just one year of operation, JR has already attracted serious attention in Korea and the US . Visits such as this make it all the clearer that Korea is an untapped goldmine for battery scale-up expertise . If you’re a battery startup  looking to scale or an investor exploring cooperation with Korean companies for know-how transfer , let’s talk! 🇰🇷🤝🌍 #korea #batteries #lithiumion #gigafactory #scaleup #manufacturing #supplychain

There’s a lot of buzz around the Climate Bricks  framework—billed as the missing manual for scaling climate tech. If you’re raising funds, it’s a must-read. But if you think it’s a roadmap for scaling successfully? Think again. Here’s the hard truth: Climate Bricks is not about how  to scale; it’s about how  to raise money. That’s not a critique—VCs wrote it, and their job is to allocate capital. And they’ve done an impressive job, analyzing 3,000 companies and 12,000 data points to define seven “bricks” (business models) for scaling climate tech. It’s insightful for fundraising. But let me break down where its advice can steer you right—and where it might leave you stranded on the factory floor. What Is Climate Bricks? Climate Bricks identifies seven ways to scale climate businesses, from gigafactories to software. For each brick, they outline three things critical to show investors. These recommendations help you cross the valley of death  and secure funding. But here’s the rub: getting funded doesn’t mean you’ll succeed in scaling.  Once the money is in the bank, you’ll need to rethink the playbook. Let’s unpack the bricks—and their blind spots. 1. Gigascaling: Building Big, Fast Think batteries, EVs, or green steel. Climate Bricks’ advice: Show a roadmap to cost competitiveness. Build FOAK (first-of-a-kind) and scale rapidly. Secure take-or-pay agreements. What works:  Offtakes reassure investors. FOAK signals ambition. What doesn’t:  Execution matters more than roadmaps. And “Scale rapidly” ignores the value of starting small, mastering processes, and training your team. Just ask Northvolt. Their roadmap was impeccable. Execution? Not so much. Also, good luck securing take-or-pay agreements—customers prefer conditional offtakes and will out-negotiate you almost every time. 2. Green Deployment: Operating Assets Solar parks and wind farms fit here. Climate Bricks says: Build a scalable organization to out-execute peers. Ramp up value, sales, and assets. Deliver profitable unit economics. What works:  All of the above, but none really matters. What doesn’t:  Green deployment is a financial game.  The cost of capital is king. Unless your capital is dirt cheap, no amount of operational excellence will save you from someone with a 0.5% lower borrowing rate. 3. Asset-as-a-Service: Selling the Outcome Think heat-as-a-service or shared EV fleets. Climate Bricks recommends: Demonstrate product-market fit. Secure profitable unit economics. Scale rapidly with offtakes. What works:  Sure, you need product-market fit. What doesn’t:  Scaling rapidly while ballooning your balance sheet with assets is risky. Most asset-as-a-service businesses are capital businesses,  dependent on low borrowing costs. Scaling here is more about financial engineering. In operations, you need to make sure that your product works and doesn’t break. Faulty products mean services are delayed.  4. Product Disruption: Making Green Products Electric aircraft, hydrogen trucks, or green construction equipment. Climate Bricks advises: Build an IP moat. Show a prototype/demo. Establish partnerships. What works:  Partnerships are key. What doesn’t:  IP moats might wow investors, but they don’t run factories. Scaling products means getting your supply chain right, hiring skilled teams, and ensuring your shiny tech doesn’t break in the real world. 5. New Technologies: Science Projects Think breakthrough materials or carbon capture. Climate Bricks focuses on: Building an IP moat. Mapping cost competitiveness. Proving high technology readiness levels (TRL). What works:  IP to get anyone to take you seriously. What doesn’t:  Betting on markets that might never materialize (hello, CCS) is a gamble. Your tech needs to be 10x better  and have a viable market today—not someday. Public funding also helps more than anything.  6. Moonshots: Sci-Fi Stuff Fusion, quantum computing, or geoengineering. Climate Bricks suggests: Secure offtakes (wait, what?). Find government funding. Build a TRL pathway. What works:  Impact funds and government grants are your best bet here. What doesn’t:  Asking for offtakes at this stage is a stretch. Most customers won’t commit to something they’ve never seen work. Get an LOI, and focus on proving your concept first. 7. Companion Software: Code for Climate Apps or platforms that complement green tech. Climate Bricks emphasizes: Develop an MVP with tech advantages. Prove scalability with ARR and low churn. Target rapid growth. What works:  I’ve no idea. Software scales differently, and I’ve never done a software project. You’ll have to figure this out yourself) What Climate Bricks Gets Right If you’re fundraising, follow this manual to the letter. VCs wrote it. It’s tailored to what they want to see. Play their game to get their money. What Climate Bricks Misses Scaling isn’t just about impressing investors. It’s about execution.  None of Climate Bricks’ highlighted companies are proven scale-up successes. They’re fundraising successes. Northvolt raised billions but couldn’t deliver. Freyr hasn’t scaled yet. AtlasArgo isn’t even a builder—it’s a trader. ZeroAvia hasn’t passed certification yet.  What’s Next? Scaling climate tech is hard, and there’s no manual for it yet. But I’m writing one. It’s based on my experience and those founders, who succeeded in scaling multiple green tech companies—and learning from what worked (and what didn’t). Want to follow the journey? Check out my blog and podcast, where I’ll share insights for founders and operators trying to scale climate tech. And remember: the real test starts after  you’ve raised the money. #ClimateTech #ScaleUp #Fundraising #Cleantech #StartupLessons #ExecutionMatters

2024 was a brutal year for hardtech climate startups. Sixteen companies—many in the e-mobility space—failed, leaving behind a stark reminder: 𝗶𝘁’𝘀 𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗲𝗿 𝘁𝗼 𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗲 𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻 𝗶𝘁 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗳𝗮𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲. Two of the casualties, Northvolt and Arrival, are stories I’ve delved into in my previous posts. But the broader trend is clear: these startups managed to impress investors but couldn’t deliver on the factory floor. So, what went wrong? Scaling hardtech isn’t just about flashy pitches or big fundraising rounds. It’s about execution—turning concepts into real, tangible products. And that requires people who’ve been there, done that. The common thread among the 16 failures? A lack of operational expertise. If there’s one takeaway from these stories, it’s this: 𝗛𝗶𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗲-𝘂𝗽. Manufacturing isn’t forgiving. Processes need to be honed, supply chains secured, and quality controlled to the nth degree. It’s messy, expensive, and relentless. That’s why the right team—seasoned professionals who know how to take hardtech from lab to line—is critical. Scaling up is where dreams collide with reality. Investors might give you the runway, but without the right people to build and deliver, you’re not going anywhere. For the full list of 2024’s hardtech casualties, check out the article here: Sifted’s roundup of startups that went bust . 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗯𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰’𝘀 𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝘀𝗵𝗮𝗸𝗲𝘂𝗽? Drop your thoughts in the comments or shoot me a message. And as always, follow me for more no-nonsense takes on scaling cleantech! #ClimateTech #Hardtech #ScaleUp #LessonsLearned #Cleantech

De-icing a frozen water tower in the middle of nowhere is not on anyone’s job description. However, this is a reality that you can come up against when you are scaling up your climate tech and building your FOAK.  Most climate podcasts focus on finance, policy, or shiny new tech. But real stories of scaling climate hardware? Rare. That’s why The Green Blueprint episode, “𝗕𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗱’𝘀 𝗕𝗶𝗴𝗴𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗗𝗔𝗖 𝗙𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆,” caught my attention. Host Lara Pierpoint sits down with Dany Chan, COO of Climeworks, to dive deep into the gritty reality of scaling up their largest Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility. Whether you see DAC as the future of climate mitigation or just another distraction, this episode is packed with practical lessons for anyone building FOAK (or in this case, fourth-of-a-kind) climate infrastructure. Here’s what you’ll get in just 30 minutes: 💰 𝗙𝗢𝗔𝗞 𝗙𝗶𝗻𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴: How to structure funding for large-scale climate projects  🧭 𝗦𝗶𝘁𝗲 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: What factors drive the right location decision  🛠️ 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗘𝗻𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 & 𝗘𝗣𝗖: how are they related and how much power can you cede to EPC  ⏳ 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗥𝗶𝘀𝗸: How to stay on track when tech challenges threaten deadlines  👨🏻‍💼 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲: Keeping motivation high when things don’t go as planned  ❄️ 𝗪𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗪𝗼𝗲𝘀: Unexpected challenges in extreme conditions  🧩 𝗠𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻: Help or hindrance in construction  📈 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗸𝗲𝘁 𝗘𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀: How they affect your NOAK If you’re scaling a climate startup or knee-deep in operations, this episode is worth every minute. Practical, honest, and full of insights from the frontlines of cleantech scale-ups. Listen, learn, and let me know what you think. And if you’re navigating your own scale-up journey—let’s connect and talk! Listen to the episode here . If you like it, make sure to check out my podcast WattsUpWithStartups on Spotify , or watch it here, on my website ! #ClimateTech #ScaleUp #DAC #Cleantech #Startups #GreenTech #EnergyTransition #FOAK

Another week, another report on EU cleantech and industrial competitiveness. This time, it’s the Cleantech Reality Check from Breakthrough Energy and Cleantech for Europe—a well-structured, concise, and data-packed assessment of where European manufacturing stands. Some solid points, some wishful thinking, and a few glaring omissions. What I Support 🔹 High energy costs are killing EU manufacturing. Europe’s industrial power prices are 2-3x higher than those in the U.S. and China. The report highlights this, but it stops short of prescribing solutions. If renewables are supposed to be cheaper than fossil fuels, why isn’t Europe proving it? 🔹 Prioritizing EU content. If you want local industry, you need policy-driven stimulus. Russia built a wind turbine manufacturing sector from scratch by tying local content requirements to lucrative tariffs. If Europe wants to scale clean manufacturing, it should set hard requirements and provide good stimuli. What I Don’t Support ❌ Electrolysers are not the key to EU manufacturing competitiveness. The EU has poured billions into hydrogen, hoping for an economy that still hasn’t materialized. This fixation is a dead end. Time to cut losses and focus on what actually works. ❌ Batteries: The demand illusion. The report claims there’s strong demand and offtakes for EU battery manufacturers. Reality check: There is no robust market outside of VW, Stellantis, and BMW—and these players are actively looking for (misguided) alternatives. What’s Missing? 🚗 Where are the EU’s pure-play EV manufacturers? The report acknowledges the lack of a vertically integrated European EV company but ignores the need to build one. 🤝 No mention of Asian partnerships. If Europe wants to scale battery manufacturing, it must collaborate with Korean and Japanese players. There’s no way around this, and yet the report sidesteps the issue entirely. Europe needs to make some hard decisions and reports like this help to fuel the discussion. Apart from batteries and electrolyzers, the report also considers the situation in steel manufacturing. I have no first-hand knowledge there, so would love to hear your thoughts! #europe #manufacturing #cleantech #competitiveness #policy

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 of cash before you can have cash rolling back to you, and you are negotiating a price before you even know the exact amount of cash you’ll need to burn. Even if you followed all the steps and had your pilot and demo projects lined up perfectly, you still won’t know how much will your FOAK cost you.  If you think that your FOAK will be on a budget, think again. When you last did any renovations to your house, were you on a budget? I thought so. No way that’s going to happen. Suez Canal was two times over budget. Flamanville nuclear power plant was four times the initial cost. The excellent research by Bent Flyvbjerg showed that cost overruns are common across industries.   Source: How Big Things Get Done. The surprising factors behind every successful project, from home renovations to space exploration. Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner. 2023 The data is clear. Most projects are at least 30% over budget. Many are 50%+. Keep in mind that most of them are not FOAK types. Nuclear energy and the Olympic games would be closer to what we are looking for. So we are in for 2-3 times over our initial budget. And we haven’t yet started talking about our operational costs.  After Northvolt completed its first lithium-ion cell gigafactory in Sweden in 2021, it filed for bankruptcy in 2024, having spent only three years in operations. The chief reason for closing was the inability to get the so-called scrap rate, the ratio of bad output to good output, to manageable levels. By 2024 it was losing over 10 million euros a day! While you don’t know your CAPEX costs, you sure as hell don’t know what your real operational costs will be like! Such CAPEX and OPEX overruns will kill any cleantech FOAK project. So the key to surviving your FOAK is being flexible on pricing. Here are several pricing schemes to consider. Pricing schemes CAPEX-based pricing  This method directly addresses the uncertainty of CAPEX in FOAK projects. The price is determined based on the actual CAPEX expenditure, using a predetermined rate of return and term of depreciation. This method is a good fit if your final product has a low OPEX projection. For example, in wind energy projects, CAPEX is the main expenditure. It doesn’t cost much to operate a wind turbine. Thus, 70-90% of your price will be based on your CAPEX and cost of capital.  This method, while pretty straightforward, has a major drawback. You have an inherent incentive to jack up your CAPEX, as your rate of return is fixed and greater CAPEX means more cash for you. Your client will thus try to pass some of the risks of CAPEX inflation by pushing for a lower maximum CAPEX level to be fixed in the off-take agreement.   In my experience, I’ve used CAPEX-based pricing for wind energy projects. Not that I had much of a choice though. The government would set a maximum CAPEX level for a limited volume of wind energy, and the company, suggesting the lowest CAPEX level would get the off-take, with prices based on this CAPEX.  Return-based pricing You and your investors are expecting some level of return from your FOAK, so why not make it a cornerstone of your off-take pricing? In this scheme, you fix the level of return on capital and determine the final price with this return as a base. Instead of a hard price, you will have a formula, where the known component will be your rate of return.  This method protects your downside and gives you greater flexibility. However, it pushes all the commercial and merchant risks to your customer. It can be acceptable if your customer is also your shareholder or has a stake in the project. Otherwise, the scheme is rather unattractive for a customer, eliminating any kind of certainty for him. This scheme also has the drawbacks of the CAPEX-based method, as it gives you incentives to increase your CAPEX, or at least not to control it as vigorously, as you otherwise would.  Margin-based pricing This is similar to return-based pricing, but you fix your operating margin instead of return on capital. If your product’s operating costs take 70-90% of your total costs, then this method might be more relevant for your FOAK. Margin-based pricing often assumes that some or all of the merchant risk is passed through to the customer. Thus, if your product relies heavily on commodities with volatile pricing, the margin-based method is a good way to protect your operational downside.  Another benefit to this method, at least from the customer’s point of view, is the decoupling of CAPEX from pricing. As your operating margins are now protected, you have the incentive to keep your CAPEX as low as possible, freeing up your margin for your investors. This is mirrored as a drawback for you, as now you have to fully bear the CAPEX risk, which, as we’ve seen, is a major risk in all FOAK projects.  Scenario-based pricing In 2021 I signed a conditional off-take with KAMAZ for up to four GWh of lithium-ion batteries. The particular chemistry we were going to make was nickel-manganese-cobalt, or NMC. At that time, there was a generally accepted view on the price of NMC by the time our factory would be in operation. Our agreement had a couple of tables attached, and each table had three columns - year, price, and volume. Each table represented a specific scenario of the demand of KAMAZ for batteries. In every table, prices for the first year of delivery were up to 50% higher, than market prices, projected at the moment. The volumes were correspondingly small. Then, as volumes were projected to increase, after several years of operations, the price would match the projected average for the market. This is just one example of how to build flexibility into the pricing of your off-take. In scenario-based pricing, you draw up several scenarios of demand levels and corresponding prices. In my case, KAMAZ wasn’t sure whether it would be able to make electric cars in a few years but was quite certain that it would continue manufacturing electric buses. So we had two scenarios - one with demand for electric cars, and one without, and the scenario with electric cars assumed lower prices. Importantly, we did not rely on our CAPEX estimations. Instead, we benchmarked our prices to what was currently available in the market and what was projected for the next ten years.  Your five-step framework to negotiate the best price for the off-take Pricing negotiations are rarely clear-cut. You are dealing with a whole lot of uncertainty here. So, how do you approach it? How do you make sure that you get the best deal? Here is a five-step framework for you, based on my experience and those of negotiators and founders I know.  Step 1. Know your customer’s motivation Run-of-a-mill customers do not sign off-takes with FOAKs. It’s too risky. They want predictable quality, prices, and delivery dates. If something from this list isn’t to their liking, they will look elsewhere. Your customer is talking to you for a reason. They might need your technology in their next best-selling product. They might need it to avoid regulatory penalties. Other startups might be in too early stage. The list goes on.  When I was on the buy side in the wind energy business, I had a pressing need for a technology that I could scale locally. That is why, Lagerwey, the Dutch startup with a wind turbine technology, was able to charge us much more than GE. The US giant had comparable technology and was arguably less risky to deal with. Their pass to localization, however, was uncertain and left our team out of key technologies.  The Dutch on the other hand allowed full localization and were ready to provide next-generation turbine design as well. They were able to charge us several times more for the license and we also paid handsomely for parts, that were to be manufactured by them during the transition period.  Find out why your customer is talking to you. What exactly motivates them to take this extra risk. This will be your best leverage in price negotiations.  Step 2. Determine if you are CAPEX or OPEX-intensive What type of business are you in? Are you CAPEX-intensive like wind and solar, or are you OPEX-intensive, like green cement? Look at the price structure. If more than 80% of your price is return on capital, then you are CAPEX-intensive. If your OPEX is of greater share of your price, then this is what you need to protect.  A CAPEX-intensive business will do well with a CAPEX-based or return-based pricing. The OPEX-based will be better off with the margin-based scheme, or even a reduced version of - merchant pricing, accounting just for fluctuations in the prices of underlying commodities. Step 3. Determine how competitive your market In the case of the KAMAZ off-take that I’ve described above, the battery markets were already quite competitive. This ruled out CAPEX-based or even margin-based pricing schemes. In an already competitive market, a scenario pricing tied to specific off-take milestones might work best. This way, you will be able to match your competitors in a gradual way. In less contested markets, you can rely more on pricing mechanisms based on your actual costs or required return.  Step 4. Determine how much you depend on commodity prices Often your FOAK will rely on an extensive chain of suppliers, and some of them will set the price based on the market rates for their goods. If you can secure your supplier's prices, you will have much more control over your OPEX. For example, a green hydrogen producer may secure a long-term power purchase agreement with a renewable energy supplier at a fixed price, or a battery manufacturer may secure a long-term fixed-price agreement for lithium, cobalt, or graphite. If these options are available, you will be able to focus on protecting your CAPEX via CAPEX or return-based pricing, or, even agree on a fixed price, if your CAPEX share is not large. If, on the other hand, it is not possible for you to fix your suppliers' prices, then full or partial pass-through pricing with a fixed operating margin will be the way to go.  Step 5. Determine if a buy-out is possible Sometimes, it is extremely hard to negotiate a good price for your FOAK. If that is the case, then offering your customer a buy-out option could give you some leverage. A buy-out clause allows your customer to buy your FOAK facility at some point in the future. Normally, such a balance sheet transaction will not be on the cards. After all, FOAKs are built by startups for a reason. Still, there may be some instances when a customer might consider transferring the FOAK facility to its balance sheet.  This might allow the customer to integrate your product more tightly into its supply chain and somewhat reduce costs. At the same time, a buy-out does not necessarily mean that your participation in the project is over. More likely that after the buy-out your team will stay on and continue running the facility for a fee.  Final remarks You won’t be negotiating prices only during your binding off-take negotiations. Your price negotiations will start the moment you meet your customer for the first time. They will drag along your off-take process from MOU to Term Sheet. They will be muted during the MOU’s and LOI’s. They will become much more pronounced during the Term Sheet phase. And they’ll be (almost) fixed when you sign an off-take.  The key to negotiating a good price for your off-take is knowing your weaknesses and unknowns and knowing the reasons why your customer is willing to take the risk of contracting a FOAK. The former is needed to protect your downside. The latter allows you to get the best terms. Your final price scheme is likely to be a blend of several methods. It will depend on the nature of your technology, current market conditions, and how badly your customer needs your product.  So, start negotiating early by learning the true motivations of your customers. Learn about your own risks as much as possible, by gradual scaling through pilot and demo stages. Slowly fix the main principles of cooperation in LOIs and MOUs and then agree on the general pricing mechanism in the term sheet, before legally finalizing it in the fine details in the off-take. In the end, remember, that the pricing mechanism is a balance of covering your and customers’ risks.