I read two contrasting pieces today, back to back. One by Chris Wright, the current U.S. Secretary of Energy. The other is by Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures, known for backing climate tech like TeraWatt (lithium-ion batteries), TerraBlaster (agriculture tech), and Realta Fusion (yep, fusion energy). Chris Wright accepts that climate change exists, but treats it as collateral. He sees rising emissions as a fair price for longer lifespans and rising living standards. His policy stance leans toward conventional fuels—gas, coal, nuclear—with little room for clean energy support. He raises valid concerns about wasteful subsidies and a narrow focus on climate solutions at the expense of the broader economy. Vinod Khosla offers a different narrative. Clean tech is mature, he says—wind, solar, and EVs no longer need help. But in the same text, he calls for government support for fusion, high-temperature geothermal, and green steel. These are not cost-competitive yet, and won’t be without major public backing. That includes e-fuels, which he openly admits will forever remain on government life support. Both pieces make reasonable points, but neither addresses the present bottleneck. Wright looks to fossil fuels and nuclear for affordable energy and grid stability. In practice, this won’t deliver. Wind and solar are already cheaper than gas and coal across most of the world. Even in the U.S.—where solar modules cost triple what they do in Europe or China—they still win on price. As for gas turbines, lead times are long and growing. Any new capacity won’t arrive in time to ease the current market strain. Khosla is correct to argue that we should prioritise technologies that are already commercially viable. But that shortlist doesn’t include fusion, geothermal, or green steel. The real contenders are wind, solar, and EVs—technologies with global supply chains, proven economics, and a scale-up path already in motion. The missing link is not invention. It’s production. The U.S. can’t build fusion plants when it’s struggling to manufacture heat pumps. It can’t decarbonise steel when it’s not even assembling its own solar panels. What’s needed now is not moonshots but execution on technologies that already work. Apart from Tesla’s impact on global battery and EV markets, the U.S. has not played a leading role in the deployment of clean technologies. Most of the industrial scale-up has happened elsewhere. If the goal is to decarbonise quickly and cost-effectively, then the strategy must start with what can be delivered now. And it must be built, not imagined. Sadly, both the US government and its most forward-looking investors seem to be missing the point. Essay by Chris Wright: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/07/14/climate-change-is-a-by-product-of-progress-not-an-existential-crisis-says-trumps-energy-czar Essay by Vinod Khosla: https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2025/07/09/vinod-khosla-on-how-the-anti-green-agenda-could-help-climate-tech

In the battery world, execution often lags ambition. Factories get announced, funding gets press-released, and then… silence. Because between a PowerPoint and a product, there's a factory. And building one is hard. That’s why I want to talk about Duke Oh. He’s not a battery scientist. Not an IP hoarder. He doesn't pitch solid-state cathodes or next-gen electrolytes. He has 20+ years of experience in Korean battery manufacturing and is the founder of JR Energy Solution, a company that builds batteries for others. More precisely: they build electrodes as a service, for startups and new battery players who want to scale fast but can’t afford their own production lines. Think of JR as the TSMC of batteries, minus the media spotlight. But that’s what makes it interesting. This post is about how Duke went from idea to operational factory in under 9 months—and what practical lessons it offers for cleantech scale-ups. 1. The Foundry Model: A Quiet Revolution Duke’s idea wasn’t new tech. It was a new role in the battery value chain. While others chase patents and performance metrics, JR Energy chose to become a neutral, chemistry-agnostic manufacturing partner. They don't sell cells. They don’t design battery packs. They just make high-quality electrodes, reliably and at scale, for others. The idea is elegant: help startups and new battery players bypass the capex trap. If you're a startup with a promising anode or cathode, what you lack is not ambition—it's a clean room, a coating line, and a team that knows what they're doing. That’s what JR Energy offers. Manufacturing-as-a-service. A foundry for battery electrodes. 2. Funding Strategy: No VCs, Just Industry The usual route would be a few million in VC funding, a pitch deck full of traction curves, and a long pre-revenue runway. Duke did the opposite. He raised $40 million, not from financial investors, but from strategic partners: Equipment suppliers who became both vendors and shareholders. Materials providers who saw value in supporting their downstream client. Future customers who wanted reliable supply. In Duke’s words: “They trusted me because they knew the market—and because I wasn’t asking them to imagine the future. I was showing them how we’d build it.” The JR founding team also had skin in the game, investing $1 million of their own capital—not symbolic equity—real cash. That changed how partners listened. 3. Speed by Design: How to Build a Smart Factory in 8–9 Months Here’s where it gets impressive. From founding to commissioning, Duke and his team took just 9 months to make the first factory operational. How? This is his five-step framework: Step 1: Parallel Planning Factory design, equipment selection, and fundraising happened simultaneously. Not sequentially. No "wait for permits, then order machines." Everything ran in parallel. This required precise coordination, but it shaved months off the timeline. Step 2: Early Equipment Orders JR didn’t wait for construction to finish. They pre-ordered all key equipment before breaking ground, working closely with top-tier Korean suppliers. By the time walls were up, machines were arriving. Step 3: Top-Tier Partners The facility was co-designed with a firm that had built factories for SK On and LG. Suppliers like PNT and Young FNC treated the project as a priority, partly because they were investors. Step 4: Smart Scope JR’s first factory wasn’t massive—500 MWh/year—but it was enough to serve initial clients and prove quality. It also helped avoid the trap of building a giga-scale facility with no customers or cash flow. Step 5: Strong Team The core execution team came from established players like SK and LG. They knew the timelines, standards, and where things usually go wrong. 4. The Real Bottleneck Isn’t Tech—It’s Execution Duke’s story isn’t flashy. There are no press releases about “game-changing chemistry.” What JR Energy did was execute—on time, on budget, and on purpose. In cleantech, that’s rare. Most companies in this space underestimate how hard it is to build at scale. Or they focus on the next round of funding rather than the first day of production. JR’s approach shows another way. Start with something boring but vital. Raise from partners who understand what you’re doing. And build faster by planning in parallel and delivering what you promise. 5. What This Means for Scale-Ups If you're in cleantech and stuck between prototype and production, ask yourself: Can your product be manufactured in someone else’s factory? Can you borrow execution before you raise $100M to own it? And if you do plan to build—can you coordinate fundraising, equipment, and construction as one project? It’s not about scale for scale’s sake. It's about smart sequencing, partner alignment, and speed without shortcuts. JR’s model won’t work for everyone. But for companies in batteries, electrochemistry, or even hydrogen components, this is a playbook worth studying. 📩 Want help figuring out your manufacturing strategy, investor targeting, or smart factory rollout? That’s what I do. Let’s talk: https://www.askerov.pro/contact-your-cleantech-help Watch the full interview with Duke here: https://www.askerov.pro/scale-up-and-foak-podcast-and-video?wix-vod-video-id=9ee563c4754e4333a12173eaa4793ae5&wix-vod-comp-id=comp-lsadk39d

Image is AI-generated. Scaling up sustainable aircraft is like scaling up nuclear power—a comparable challenge in terms of regulatory obstacles, timelines, and the weight of responsibility. At least, that’s how it seemed to me, looking from the outside. I was sure that the climate tech community could learn many lessons from the aviation startup experience, so I’ve asked an expert. I’ve just finished recording the next episode of WattsUpWithStartups with Dirk Singer, aviation expert, book author and consultant. Dirk spent decades working in the aviation industry and has seen startups rise and fall. Here are some of the questions we covered: 1.     Why does aviation take so much time to scale? 2.     How much money do you need to go from idea to full order book, like Airbus? 3.     Which technologies might disrupt traditional aviation? 4.     What investors are looking for when investing in sustainable aviation startups? 5.     Lessons learned from successful and failed aviation startups. This episode will be completely packed with insights! Whether you are working in the sustainable aviation industry, batteries, or circular materials, you will recognise a lot, learn a lot, and have fun while watching it. I will be publishing it in a few weeks, so stay tuned and catch up on previous episodes! #sustainableaviation #podcast #cleantech #scaleup

Why do many cleantech startups stall before they even start? They skip the hard part: talking to customers. When  Polina Vasilenko  founded  HelioRec | BCorp , a floating solar startup, she didn’t just build prototypes and pitch investors. She went to the ports, the future clients. Image credits: HelioRec One hundred fifty conversations later, she had the data she needed: ✅ Ports want to decarbonise ✅ Rooftop solar isn’t enough  ✅ Wind turbines? “Not beautiful” for city ports ✅ Floating solar? Interesting, but “too risky” She says, "Everyone talks about climate action, until they need to change how they work.” Polina heard every objection: ⚡ What if a ship crashes into it? ⚡ Solar panels can catch fire ⚡ What would extra maintenance cost? But because she did the hard prep, 150+ meetings, events, customer interviews, she knew the pain points and had answers ready when investors asked: “Is this scalable?” Takeaways for cleantech founders: ✔ Start customer discovery before you fundraise ✔ Expect objections, plan your risk-mitigation pitch ✔ Real clients beat fancy pitch decks every time Want to build something that scales? Talk to your customers, all of them, before you talk to investors. Image: HelioRec

If you’ve spent time around cleantech startups, you know the type. A charismatic founder, a glossy pitch deck, and just enough market buzz to book a panel at COP28. But the problem isn’t the pitch. It’s the follow-through. Scaling a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) climate venture isn’t about ideas. It’s about execution infrastructure. And that infrastructure begins with people. Olivier Mussat understood this from day one at ATOME Energy. He didn’t hire a team. He engineered one. The Wrong Way to Hire for FOAK Before we get into how ATOME did it right, let’s talk about how many do it wrong. In the cleantech startup world, hiring often mimics Silicon Valley patterns: 👉 Hire a generalist. 👉 Hire a “strategy guy.” 👉 Hire a charismatic BD lead with no sector experience but a killer network. That might get you through a seed round. But it won’t get a 400 million euro industrial project financed, permitted, built, and delivering product on-spec. What FOAK projects demand is not a “startup team.” They demand a team that knows what it’s like to go to war with infrastructure — with regulators, corporate offtakers, contractors, timelines, and physics. That’s what ATOME built. Here is their three-step framework to build a FOAK-ready leadership team. Step 1: Execution Core – People Who’ve Already Done It The first thing ATOME did right? They didn’t start with founders. They started with a foundation. Olivier himself came from the IFC (the private investment arm of the World Bank). He had managed a multi-billion-dollar portfolio of energy and infrastructure investments across emerging markets. He didn’t need a course in project bankability — he taught that class. Their Chairman had taken multiple companies public. That matters when your go-to-market plan includes going public before raising venture. Yes, ATOME IPO’d before VC—but we’ll come back to that later. Then there was the local lead in Paraguay: a former Minister of Finance and head of the national hydro company. When your first plant is in Latin America and relies on baseload hydro, that’s not a nice-to-have. That’s survival. Step 2: Domain Depth – Experts in the Right Places ATOME’s intent wasn’t to invent new hydrogen tech. It was to use mature technology to produce green ammonia and sell it into the $70 billion fertilizer market. Fast. So they recruited accordingly. * A former lead on hydrogen strategy at the International Energy Agency (IEA) * An Executive VP from Yara and Euram, two of the largest fertilizer players on the planet * And instead of hiring an in-house engineering army, they retained AECOM — the 50,000-person global EPC giant — as their external “on-call” engineering brain. In the early days, that meant access to exactly the right experts for FEED (front-end engineering design) decisions, without the bloat of a 40-person in-house team. This is how you stay light while moving heavy. Step 3: Incentive Alignment – It’s Built In Most startups reward early hires with equity, a title, and a good luck handshake. ATOME went further. They tied ownership to execution milestones. They brought in strategic investors, like Baker Hughes, not just as capital, but as future suppliers with skin in the game. And they embedded delivery expectations into their contracts, ensuring partners were as accountable as employees. As Olivier said during our conversation: “This isn’t just a team-building exercise. It’s a risk management strategy.” Watch the full interview here:

Building first-of-a-kind (FOAK) cleantech projects is the main thing we can do now to avert catastrophic climate change. We have all the innovations we need, but we fail to deploy them at a sufficient scale. FOAK projects are not about innovation - they are about execution in the most complex, high-stakes environment imaginable.  Over the past year, I've documented this process, drawing from my own and other founders’ hands-on experience to create a comprehensive, step-by-step guide for cleantech founders and operators. This is still  a work-in-progress , but enough material has piled up that I wanted to structure it and give it an overview. Here’s an overview of the key stages, each linked to detailed articles for deeper insights.  1. Laying the Groundwork for the FOAK Journey Why are you doing it? Will it make a noticeable reduction in CO2, methane, or other gases? Will it genuinely help avert climate change, or will it simply postpone it? How should you start? When do you know that you are ready? Every FOAK journey begins with a solid foundation. Understanding the unique challenges and opportunities in cleantech is crucial. Here, I cover how to move from an innovative idea in the lab to a scalable business model, aligned with real-world energy needs and market expectations. The key articles so far: When are you ready to scale?   The 1% check Why most climatetech startups don’t deliver 10x returns A framework for choosing scale-up business model Do you have a drop-in solution?    2. Financing FOAK  Most of the online articles on FOAK contain funding advice and most of them are written by VC’s whose partners never had to execute a FOAK. In my posts, I examine VCs and strategic investors’ perspectives, provide actionable advice on how to de-risk FOAK, how to avoid strategic investors’ traps, when to take VC’s advice and when not.  From Series A to Series B What do VCs get wrong in cleantech? Navigating the capital stack from lab to NOAK The pitfalls of FOAK capital stack   How to de-risk your FOAK   How important is intellectual property for a scale-up What strategic investors are looking for   How strategic investors can kill a startup   When to listen to VCs and when not   Grants for FOAK  3. Securing Off-take Agreements Off-takes are revered in the FOAK space. They give investors certainty, validate your product, and reduce your next customers' anxiety. Off-takes are more than contracts. They’re signals to investors, anchors for financing, and roadmaps to NOAK. What most available articles fail to provide are the step-by-step instructions and insights to get an off-take. I’ve written a series of posts about each step you need to take to secure an off-take, and provided negotiating tips and tactics from my own experience and those of other founders.  What do you need to know about off-takes? A primer. The road to off-take - what are the main stages of getting there Step one - MOU Step two - letter of intent Step three - term sheet Step four - off-take term Step five - off-take price How to sell to utilities - a case study  4. From Pilot to FOAK to NOAK: Scaling Up You’ve validated the tech—now you need to prove it at commercial scale. These posts cover what it takes to build a pilot, transition to demo, and finally deploy your FOAK. I dive deep into each stage, providing actionable and clear frameworks for execution. What are the three key steps to build a FOAK? How big should your FOAK be? Pilot stage framework Demo stage framework Do you need an EPC for your FOAK? How to select an EPC   Beyond FOAK  5. Building and Managing Your Team You can’t FOAK alone. And your early-stage startup team is not up to the task. These articles share what I’ve learned about building teams that can execute when speed, risk, and ambiguity are all high. What skills are usually missing? Why is it important to hire a chief operating officer? What mistakes did I make in hiring for my FOAK? FOAK management means managing chaos. Are there ways to control it? I am still working on this section and will add new posts on hiring and managing FOAK teams soon.  What skills are usually missing in FOAK Hiring mistakes - my case study CTO - Why do you need him? Simplifying FOAK management   How ATOME built its leadership team  6. Building a supply chain It is said that modern warfare is defined by supply lines, and this is equally true for businesses. Simply managing your supply chain is a big challenge. Building it is a whole new challenge. Sometimes, mapping your suppliers and bringing them together will be straightforward. Sometimes, your supply chain might not exist yet, and you’ll have to build it up from scratch.  How to build a supply chain How supply chain chaos can sink a startup  7. Real-World Case Studies: Lessons from the Field Learning from others' experiences is powerful. These stories show what works—and what to avoid. FOAK lessons from nuclear energy Building wind turbines in the shadow of a nuclear giant Dangers of ramping up battery manufacturing - Fraunhofer report review Redflow - flow batteries failure Canoo - electric minibus failure DAC FOAK success story Vianode - sustainable graphite success story (video) Explore the Full FOAK & Scale-Up Blog Directory For a comprehensive collection of articles, case studies, and resources on FOAKing and scaling cleantech innovations, visit the full blog directory: 👉 FOAK & Scale-Up Blog Directory Whether you're at the ideation stage or preparing for your NOAK deployment, this resource is designed to guide you through each step of the journey with practical, experience-based insights. What would you like to see in an expanded version? What FOAK and scale-up challenges should I cover more?

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 technologies. And these are major costs. Any green hydrogen project has half of its OPEX and CAPEX in clean energy. Looking at it this way, it is easy to see that 1 TWh of clean energy, used to produce hydrogen to be fed into a fuel cell EV, will reduce 3x less CO2 than the same amount of clean energy, used to power BEVs. It’s a great illustration of my second step in the framework for assessing the climate impact of cleantech startups - assessing systemic risks, opportunity costs, and rebound effects. The picture is taken from the post by Michael Liebreich.

BMW is famous not only for its cars, but also for its approach to advertising. One such great advert shows two scientists developing teleportation technology. It works, and they exclaim - “This changes everything!”. They then look back, see their BMW standing behind them, look at each other, and shake their heads. One of the scientists erases all formulas from the whiteboard, and another purposefully spills coffee on their computers, destroying any evidence of their breakthrough.  This ad delivers in a light-hearted way that not all technological breakthroughs are worth scaling. The right time to ask these questions is just before you are ready to start scaling up your technology, just as the two fictional scientists did. Scientific research can take any direction, and that’s ok, as the consequences are limited to the laboratory. Money and resources spent on R&D are always many orders of magnitude less than money and resources spent on deploying this technology at scale. We need to use available resources wisely, especially the most limited of them - time. Working to avert climate change, we are racing against time and need to focus our energy and resources only on solutions that can deliver tangible results now, not many decades in the future.  So, the first and foremost assessment of your technology is not for product-market fit, price, or delivery timeline. If that were it, this article would be just another startup management article. No, we are doing this business, we are developing this technology for a purpose - to make our planet livable for generations to come. The irony is that we, the founders and investors, might not even live to see the full result of today’s actions. But our children, and their children, certainly will. And if not, then we were doing something wrong.  It doesn’t feel well to devote the rest of your life to developing a technology, thinking that it will help make the world a better place, and end up doing simply another business that makes money, but fails to move the needle on climate. What’s the point? If we set out on this noble crusade, it is best to make sure that what we are doing will really make a difference and will have a positive impact on the climate and society. We thus need to ask ourselves, will our technology reduce a meaningful amount of man-made CO2 or its equivalent, and are there any unforeseen consequences of deploying our technology at scale? This is how to assess your FOAK Impact. The first question on the FOAK impact: Can this tech eliminate 1% of global emissions if scaled across the industry? Aviation is responsible for almost 2% of global emissions, so it makes sense to do something to decarbonize air travel. Universal Hydrogen, a US-based startup, claimed that it would do just that. A closer look revealed that the company seemed to target only propeller aircraft, which are responsible for 10-15% of all commercial air traffic. In case of success, Universal Hydrogen’s technology could, in theory, eliminate 0,3% of total man-made CO2 emissions. On the scale of challenge we are facing - it’s a rounding error. Yet, at least $100M was raised and spent, and the team was working on it for four years precisely because it was positioned as a climate technology.  The first question you should ask any cleantech startup is simple: is your cleantech truly clean, or just pretending? It is important to distinguish between business-as-usual ventures and those that can genuinely reduce CO2 emissions on a global scale. And if you’re not, it’s not a problem! You still can do business, but please, for the Earth's sake, rub out all mentions of how you’ll help to solve the climate crisis from your pitch deck.  Bill Gates, in his excellent book “How to Avoid the Climate Disaster”, suggested a good rule of thumb to test technologies for climate impact. Consider whether the technology in question could, in principle, reduce 500 million tons of CO2 annually. That’s roughly 1% of global emissions, which are estimated at 50 billion tons of CO2 equivalent. We are talking about not your specific scaleup here, but the entire market adopting this technology.  It is extremely important to get this right. Capital, talent, and, most importantly, time are scarce. We simply cannot afford to waste resources. There are many other global problems that we need to fix and that are competing for capital, talent, and time. Artificial Intelligence is one. Global pandemics, food security, nuclear deterrence, and a multitude of other things that require our attention. So, if you are sure that your scale-up can be a great business, but its technology will fail to make a meaningful impact, then rebrand your company in any other way and find different investors. You’ll do everyone a favor.  The Second Question – Does it avoid creating new systemic risks or rebound effects? One of the epic economic achievements of the turn of the century was the rise of China. More recently, China has been hailed as an “electric state” - a country whose primary energy source is electricity, rather than fossil fuels. One of the key reasons for “going electric” is the unintended consequences of fossil-powered economic growth. In a rush to pull the country out of poverty, the government relied on tried and tested technologies like coal power and internal combustion engines, neglecting health risks. In 2005, 2,6 million people died in China from air particle pollution. Towards the turn of the first decade of the XXI century, the Chinese government fully acknowledged the problem, declared a “war on air pollution,” and by 2019, total deaths attributed to air pollution (all causes) were estimated at approximately 1.85 million. The danger of unintended consequences is not limited to fossil fuels. My favorite example is green hydrogen. The world is currently producing around 100 million tons of hydrogen, predominantly from fossil fuels. Making one kilogram of green hydrogen requires approximately 50 kWh of clean energy. Thus, to decarbonize hydrogen completely, we will need 5,000 TWh of clean energy per year. Total renewable energy generation in 2023 was 8500 TWh. So, we would need to almost double today’s output of clean energy to simply make all currently used hydrogen clean. Instead, we could have used clean energy to decarbonize our electricity grid, pushing out coal energy generation. The Oath of Hippocrates, sworn by doctors worldwide, says, “First, do no harm”. Our case is the same. Our technologies have already taxed the planet to the extent that we start to feel rebound effects (people in China certainly did). The key to decarbonization is to create technologies that will improve the lives of people on this planet and avoid creating new, unintended, and systemic risks. This includes your technology.  Not everything that can work in the lab should be scaled worldwide. When assessing a climate technology, think holistically, think like a circular economist. Examine what be upstream and downstream effects of deploying your technology at a planetary scale are. Look at what critical raw materials are required. Where and how are you going to get them? Be careful of unintended consequences, as the EV industry found out, that the prevalence of nickel-manganese-cobalt cathodes in EVs led to widespread child exploitation in the DRC in the mining of cobalt. Never in history have we run out of raw materials, but time and time again, from coal mines in England in the XVIII century to cobalt mines in the DRC in the XXI century, technologies were certain led to the exploitation of people. Check the energy needs of your technology. How much would it need at a global scale? Is it available? Where will your company and its competitors get it? Would that clean energy be better used elsewhere to decarbonize energy generation? Go downstream, and think about how your product will be used. How about end of life? How will your product be disposed of or recycled?  Climate change is the first worldwide crisis that has forced humanity to think far beyond the next couple of years. Tackling climate challenges makes us think in decades, even centuries. At this timescale, we need to consider not only the immediate effects of technology on its use cases and our business. We need to look wider at what economists call “externalities” of running a business.

This morning, while sipping on my coffee and scrolling through the news, I found myself devouring 30 minutes' worth of video footage about the Renault 5 EV. Honestly, can’t remember now how I got there, but I was unable to unglue myself from the screen. A couple of things went towards me missing my most productive time of the day: 1. I’ve a soft spot for retro-themed cars. When Hyundai showed its electrified Grandeur, I was blown away (a pity they aren’t for sale). The Renault 5 EV is based on the iconic Renault 5, which was produced from 1972 to 1996. I’ve always thought that modern cars don’t have a soul, and all are just bland copies of one another. Well, Renault seems to break the mould! 2. I love being wrong, as that’s the only way to learn. If you read my posts, you might have noticed that I’m a bit sceptical of European battery industry survival chances in the era of electric transport. The Renault 5 seems to deliver good performance at an affordable price of €33,000, while, of course, not yet beating its Chinese rivals on it. It was developed only in three years, instead of the usual four to five. Could this hint that it is too early to write off European car manufacturers? 3. It’s the batteries that I was most interested in. The car uses an NMC battery from Envision-AESC. which helps to explain a higher price than that of Chinese brands. Currently, the batteries are shipped from overseas, but the plan is to source them from the AESC Doui factory in France. It should be operational as of summer this year, but knowing how battery factories ramp up production, I’d expect that for the next two to three years, these NMC cells will continue to arrive by sea. Renault also seems to be aiming at introducing lower-priced models with LFP batteries from CATL later on. What is your take on the Renault 5 and the future of the EU automakers? Can cars like this turn it around?

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 by making it standardized, boring, and, above all, fast. Jereme Kent, CEO of One Power, describes the transformer industry: “Every single transformer coming down that line is different. It’s rare to get an order for two or three of the same thing. Bespoke doesn’t work when you need a gigawatt in Columbus, Ohio, tomorrow.” Instead of 18-month lead times, Kent’s team builds substations with “standardized 30 MW blocks”, and can drop them in “just 90 days”. That’s unheard of in a world where data centers wait 5 years to get grid access. So, what’s the secret tech? Not magic. Not software. It’s a 100-year-old "Ford Model T” logic: “We said: I’ve only got one block. It’s 30 megawatts. If you need 40 MW, you get 60. No custom designs. You want that? Wait five years like everyone else.” This approach turns supply chain chaos into a competitive edge: * Predictable costs and timelines * Available spare parts and timely maintenance * Real-time transformer health monitoring every 10 minutes (not once a year by oil sample 🤦‍♂️) As someone who’s built and scaled factories and invested in electrical grid companies, I’ve seen what lack of standardization does. In my experience, trying to launch with tailor-made gear meant constant redesign, missed deadlines, and spiraling budgets. One Power is skipping that pain and showing others how. The irony here is that One Power takes the most boring piece of energy equipment and makes it even more boring. But that might be the most exciting innovation in grid infrastructure today. So maybe boring is the new disruptive. This post was inspired by this episode of Redefining Energy Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7yjpE4HApyHMIkarxk8jYq?si=omVvl8ecR5yyL93QJkQsAg #FOAK #EnergyTransition #Grid #Transformers #ScaleUp #Cleantech

In May 2025, the European Commission published a new staff working document titled “Choose Europe to Start and Scale.” The document positions itself as a comprehensive assessment of the EU startup ecosystem—its achievements, the barriers it faces, and the support measures needed to improve scale-up performance. It’s a dense, data-rich report. There are facts worth knowing and trends worth watching. But if you’re looking for a practical playbook, this isn’t it. Where the EU startup and scaleup ecosystem stands There’s a surprising headline buried in the first pages: the EU has created more startups per year than the US over the past five years (15,200 vs. 13,700 between 2018 and 2023). European startups raised $426B in venture capital since 2015, and over 35,000 early-stage startups now operate in the region. In raw numbers, the EU’s startup scene is alive and expanding. And yet, the conversion rate from startup to scaleup remains weak. Only one in five startups make it to scale, compared to significantly higher ratios in the US. Despite the volume, the EU still trails in late-stage funding, unicorn creation, global IPO presence, and cross-border expansion. The five barriers The report identifies five structural bottlenecks: 1. Regulatory fragmentation Europe’s national laws remain stubbornly misaligned. From incorporation to tax compliance to employment law, setting up across borders still means starting over from scratch. The only EU-level company form (SE) requires €120K minimum capital—hardly “startup-friendly.” 2. Venture capital and finance gaps The EU startup scene is underfunded at every stage, especially late-stage. Between 2016–2024, the US raised $932B in VC. The EU raised just $133B. Only 12 EU VC funds managed to raise above $1B, compared to 157 in the US. 3. Corporate engagement disappoints 80% of EU startups say they want to work with corporates. Only 1% of startup projects actually reach the market via corporate collaboration. For those who try, the main takeaway is frustration: different speed, different priorities, and a hell of a procurement process. 4. Infrastructure and talent bottlenecks Cleantech, manufacturing, and energy startups especially struggle with access to industrial infrastructure. Even when funding exists, talent is hard to hire—and harder to retain. Efforts like the new €10B AI Factories are promising, but small compared to global competitors. 5. Public support is fragmented and hard to access There’s a lot of public money on paper, but getting it requires navigating a maze. Administrative burdens are high. Tax rules differ across every border. And smaller companies, with no dedicated compliance teams, suffer most. What the report gets right The document doesn’t sugarcoat the situation. It acknowledges the growing financing gap, the underperformance in exits and unicorns, and the uncomfortable truth that EU corporates invest more in US startups than in European ones. It also flags that public procurement—potentially one of the strongest levers for scale-up support—is underused. Only 10% of EU public procurement is “innovation-oriented,” compared to 20% in the US and 25% in South Korea. The diagnosis is clear. What’s less clear is the cure. What’s missing: a real strategy The report ends without clear next steps. There’s no timeline, no commitment to regulatory harmonization, and no bold financial instruments announced. We hear from founders and investors, but not enough from policymakers ready to act. To be fair, this is a working document, not a legislative proposal. But if Europe is serious about closing the scale-up gap, the real work starts now. My takeaway This report is a useful map of the terrain. It tells us where the mountains are. But a map is not a compass. For founders in cleantech, energy, and advanced manufacturing, many of the core challenges—like infrastructure access, cross-border compliance, and corporate partnerships—won’t be solved in Brussels. They’ll be solved by building local alliances, hiring internationally, navigating procurement, and keeping an eye on where the actual demand sits. Still, I’m glad the Commission is listening. Now let’s see if they’re ready to act. 💬 If you’re a startup working with corporates, raising public funds, or struggling to hire, get in touch! Some of these bottlenecks don’t need a new policy. They need better tactics. #scaleup #foak #startups #cleantech #vc #EU #publicfunding #corporateinnovation #policy #strategy

Financing and executing a FOAK is an exercise in creative de-risking. On top of all the uncertainty you have about new tech, which has never been tested in the real world, you don’t have collateral for loans, you don’t have a future income stream from off-take, and your CAPEX is eye-wateringly high. Yesterday, I had two interesting conversations, totally independent of each other, yet linked, and both pointing to ways of de-risking your FOAK. In one, we talked about a startup in biochar, getting ready to raise its next round to build a pilot plant. We spoke about the ways to de-risk its proposal and lower the necessary CAPEX. Going in incremental steps, such as suggested by the Breakthrough Energy Catalyst pilot-demo-FOAK, is one. Another one discussed was to ask equipment suppliers to provide finance for the equipment. The other talk was with a platform, bringing together B2B players for second-hand equipment in oil, gas, renewables, and even carbon capture. The oil and gas industry is cycle-prone, so there is a lot of used, but perfectly sound equipment available. Retired wind turbines can still find new uses. And you can even buy a carbon capture and storage facility (not that you really need to, but still). Using equipment finance lowers your equity needs and helps to avoid dilution, but using second-hand equipment reduces CAPEX. There are tradeoffs, such as lower flexibility in project scheduling in the former case and a higher risk of malfunction in the latter. Using second-hand equipment might work for the pilot or demo stages, where you don’t need to run it for thousands of hours, and are still tweaking your process. And these stages might prove too small for equipment manufacturers to provide you with a loan. When building your FOAK, though, you’ll have a greater need for reliability while having a scale decent enough for equipment manufacturers to consider finance. Would you consider using second-hand equipment for your pilot/demo/FOAK? #FOAK #risk #financing #equipment