Don’t play with the government. That’s a rule my father taught me. He built his business in the 90s and early 2000s in Russia. He knew first hand that the government will screw you over faster than your private sector partner and in worse ways. For a long time, I thought that this rule applied only to authoritarian states like Russia, where the law is weak. The current passing of the “Big Beautiful Bill” in the US now shows that it is true for the West as well. The Inflation Reduction Act was a defining legislation of the Biden presidency, which set the US on the path to becoming a major clean energy and technology power. Climate capital rushed in, projects were developed, and equipment was ordered. Only two years later, the policy, critical not only for the US but for the world, is being scrapped. Three things stand out to me. First, the US might lose almost 3/4 of its potential clean energy additions. The analysis by Rhodium Group, published recently in The Economist, shows that after the repeal of energy tax credits under the Inflation Reduction Act, clean energy additions to the US grid are likely to go down 4 times over the next decade. This is despite renewables being the cheapest and most readily available form of energy in the US. Source: The Economist Second, an analysis of the “Big Beautiful Bill" on the CTVC concluded that the bill will hit the First-of-a-Kind climate projects the most. Like the FOAK projects didn’t have enough to worry about. To remind you, the whole FOAK debate picked up right at the same time as the IRA was coming into force, and it did not subside. Now, the champions, struggling to commercialize new climate technologies, will face even more of an uphill battle. Third, the EU stands to benefit from the US's short-sightedness. The sheer amount of talent and capital devoted to climate tech in the US is enormous. Some will find ways to advance clean technologies at home by partnering with state and local governments. Some, but not all. Those who won’t will move to Europe, the only other place on Earth, apart from China, that still cares about climate. The US teaches us a harsh lesson - in climate tech, never confuse political winds with long-term certainty. The rug can, and will be, pulled. If you are building a FOAK, you need to plan for policy risk, just like technical or financial risks. And if you are in Europe, congratulations! The spotlight’s shifting your way! Follow me for tactical advice on scaling up your climate venture! #FOAK #USA #Europe #politics #risk #climatetech

Decarbonizing aviation is sexy. Electrifying cars gets headlines. Hydrogen buses and cars are mostly seen in the news rather than on the streets. But fertilizer? 📉 Quietly, it emits over 2.5 gigatons of CO₂ annually. That’s more than global aviation and shipping put together. We can skip a flight. We can choose a Zoom call over an in-person meeting. But we can’t skip a meal more than once or twice a day. 80% of global ammonia production goes to make fertilizer. How do you make ammonia? Yes, with hydrogen. And this hydrogen is now 100% “grey”, meaning that natural gas is used as a feedstock. Which means the real hydrogen economy isn’t in mobility, it’s in agriculture. That’s why I interviewed Olivier Mussat, the CEO of ATOME Energy. Their goal isn’t to chase subsidies or bet on next-gen electrolysers. They’re building a business that works now, in emerging markets, with existing tech and a clear product-market fit: green ammonia. Their first project alone could replace 1% of all nitrate fertilizers used in Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. And if their pilot is successful, it’ll become a blueprint. 🧠 The boldest startups won’t win by reinventing the wheel. They’ll win by changing the axle, quietly, patiently, and with margins that work. 👉 Full interview here 💬 Know a founder tackling a “boring” climate sector? I want to hear from them. #FOAK #cleantech #fertilizer #hydrogen #startups #decarbonization #climateaction #scalingup

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. --- 📘 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

A climate tech idea that needs more energy than it saves? That’s not innovation. That’s a waste. During a recent advisory project on the hydrogen economy, one question kept bugging me: Where is all the clean energy supposed to come from? And at less than 1.5 cents per kWh? Then I revisited Michael Liebreich’s writings on hydrogen, and it clicked. Instead of burning gigawatts of clean power to make hydrogen, why not just use that same energy to push coal out of the system? Seems obvious, right? This week, while digging into the Climeworks saga and the DAC sector, another piece fell into place. There’s a blind spot in climate tech investing: input energy and its opportunity cost. I am specifically focusing on investing, not startups - they’re supposed to test the wild ideas. But for investors, failing to vet energy inputs is inexcusable. Look at where we are today: DAC, hydrogen, SAF—all on shaky ground. Not always because of bad science or bad engineering, but because we forgot the basics. How much clean energy do you need - and what else could that energy be doing? So I’m adding another checkpoint to my FOAK strategic planning framework - The Energy Test Framework : 🔹 Estimate total energy inputs at scale 🔹 Model worst-case scenario 🔹 Ask: Could this clean power displace coal instead? And would the CO2 savings be greater? 🔹 If yes, maybe your tech isn’t the best use of clean energy It’s simple. But it’s missed far too often. Before we back the next DAC or hydrogen moonshot, let’s be clear-eyed about what the energy math tells us. We don’t have time or clean terawatt-hours to waste.

Climeworks is back in the news—and not for the reason they’d like. Reports from Heimildin and others claim that their latest DAC (direct air capture) facility might not even cover its own emissions. That’s a brutal blow for a company that promised to remove 1% of global CO₂ by 2025. Their CEO Jan Wurzbacher published a response . He acknowledged commissioning problems, but didn’t refute the claim that the total carbon footprint may be net positive. That’s a hard pill to swallow. Before the comments fill up with “DAC is a scam” takes, let’s pause. In 2023, I ran a deep dive for a private investor into CO₂ removal technologies. With the help of German Minkin, we concluded that point-source capture and storage is the only viable tech at scale today. Not sexy, but it works. Still, this isn’t about DAC vs CCS. The real lesson here is about FOAKs. Just like with Northvolt, Climeworks shows us that building FOAK plant is one thing. Running it, scaling it, delivering on its promise—that’s something else entirely. You need a runway, not just to build, but to ramp. To test, tweak, and run at full throttle. You also need to manage expectations: claiming “1% of global CO₂” and delivering ~1,000 tons a year is a gap you don’t want to explain to stakeholders later. Let’s get better at building and operating FOAKs. And let’s stop mistaking commissioning announcements for commercial success.

During my time scaling up climate tech, I wouldn’t touch government grants. Even when they could clearly reduce my capital costs, help to avoid dilution and generally help to speed up a project. In Russia, dealing with government money means that sooner or later, you’ll have a budget controller knocking at your door, whose sole purpose is to find out how you misused public funds, so that he can ransom money from you or throw you into jail. The jail could actually be the first step, so that you are more pliant to buying your way out of it. The fact that you are squeaky clean and used all public funds as promised to the last kopek doesn’t matter. The creative part of the budget controller’s job is to find an excuse, any excuse, to threaten you with jail. That’s just part of doing business with government money in Russia. And that’s in addition to all the paperwork you’d need to submit. Government grants are often cited as one of the best ways to finance a climate tech FOAK, or any FOAK for that matter. The main reason, apart from grants being essentially free money, is that grants do not dilute founders' shares and allow startups to take the next step. While the benefits of grants are evident, there are costs, and not all of them are clear at the outset. If you deal with grants outside of Russia, or any other state where it is normal for government officials to receive kickbacks from the grants they issue, you are likely at least to avoid an embezzlement case. Still, the “free money” is not really free, and does come at some cost. The cost of free money First of all, getting the grants is not easy. The competition can be fierce, and competitors are many. For example, C1, a German startup developing a new process for manufacturing green ethanol, applied for the EIC Accelerator Grand and failed. It was one of the 1100 applicants, of which only 300 made it to Brussels for selection, and only 45 were awarded the grant. Second, compliance and reporting requirements are usually complicated and require devotion of a significant amount of time by your team, especially if you are unfamiliar with using grants. There is a reason why the grant industry in Europe has its own dedicated consulting industry. Governments are bureaucratic organizations, and any money from the government will come with requirements of extensive reporting. For example, Traceless, a circular bioeconomy startup, secured €5,1M grant for its production site. They used a consultancy service to get it, but it still took six weeks of full-time commitment from the founders. Third, getting a grant usually means you have to adapt and lock in your project schedule to accommodate the grant selection procedure, its payment schedule, and deliver results when bureaucrats need to report back. For example, Metafuels, a SAF startup, started preparing for getting a grant a year in advance and submitted its bid 6 months in advance. Then, a typical grant would have a term of one to three years, sometimes more, during which you must deliver on key performance indicators. Are grants for FOAK realistic? Now, let’s say that you are not in Russia and you are unfazed by all these challenges. How realistic would it be to fund your FOAK with grants? Well, not very. FOAK is rarely funded by grants. According to Deloitte, climate tech firms raised $840M in grants in 2021 and $4B in 2023. But most of these go to pre-seed, seed, and early-stage startups. Only 13% by deal count go to later-stage companies. Most grants are awarded to small businesses, with fewer than 50 employees and revenue or balance sheet asset value of less than $10M, and 86% of these are under 10 years old. While it is statistically rare that you’ll get a grant for your full-scale FOAK plant, note that when you get to build your pilot facility, you are most likely to fit the description of a typical grant receiver - less than 50 employees, asset value under $10M and being around less than 10 years. Thus, from a statistical viewpoint, considering grants for your pilot stage is much more reasonable than considering them at later stages. There are, of course, examples of large-scale FOAK plants getting hundreds of millions of public money, like Tesla factory or Northvolt. But these are outliers and require deft political maneuvering and connections, which most cleantech startups lack. So, how do you decide whether you should go for a grant or not, and if you do, what should be your steps to getting one? Here is a framework that you can apply. The 6-step framework to decide if you need a grant or not Check with your suppliers for the possibility of equipment loan or deferred payment. Check with your customers (if you have them at this stage) for advance payment Look for “patient capital”, like impact funds or corporate VCs, who might be willing to provide you with cheaper capital than VCs. Look for non-government grants from foundations or universities. Check that you still have at least a year of burn available before launching your pilot/demo/FOAK If all of the above turn out not to be enough, and you still have a year to go, congratulations, you need a grant and have enough time to get it! Otherwise, focus on getting less cumbersome non-dilutive funding. The 5-step framework of getting and managing a grant Now that you’ve decided you need a grant, apply the five-step grant framework below to maximize your success in securing and successfully implementing the best possible grant: Get a grant manager. Treat grant management as a full-time job. Is there anyone on your team who has experience in applying, securing, and completing a grant? Is he or she able to devote at least a third of their time to grant management? If yes, good, you now have a grant manager; if not, seek outside help. Hire a consultant with a proven record of securing grants. You’ll probably need only one person, not a full Deloitte team, unless your project is exceptionally big, and you can afford to blow €100-200K on a grant application and management. Hire a consultant not only for selecting and applying, but also for reporting, after the grant is secured. This will free up your team to focus on running your project, rather than filling out papers. If your business is closely government-related, like the government is your main investor or customer, or you are heavily dependent on particular government regulations, it makes sense to hire a full-time government relations (GR) manager. He will take care not only of your grant but all other cabinet shoulder-rubbing as well. And boy, government officials love long meetings! You wouldn’t want your CTO running off to a ministry in the midst of commissioning your plant! Determine which program you should apply for. This should be done by your GR officer or a consultant. Feed them your FOAK plan, just make sure that you have at least a year of runway during which you will be applying for the grant. Don’t skimp on it, and read the fine print of the grant documentation. Make sure your project goals 100% align with the grant's purpose. You don’t want to explain to a government budget committee why you’ve spent taxpayers' money on something that doesn’t match the grant’s description. Devote necessary resources to the preparation of the application. Your GR officer or consultant is not an expert in your business or technology. They are experts in getting shit done in the corridors of power. They will need your and your team's help in preparing documents and in conversations with government officials. Recall the example of Traceless above, where the founders had to devote a full one and a half month of their time to the preparation of the application, despite having a consultant. Talk to your team, explain to them that their contribution is critical to grant financing. They must see talking to your GR or consultant as a priority; otherwise, in a frantic startup environment, they’re likely to push grant applications down the list as it is not “real work”. Plan your project with grant limitations in mind. Include grant application time, grant term, and reporting cycles in the planning. Include time buffers for critical deliverables to manage the risk of slipping past grant reporting or tranche release milestones. Make sure you know how fast you can get the grant money, so that you plan your cash flows accordingly. And just to be on the safe side, add another two months to the planned date of funds release. There is always some additional document to be filed, of which you’ll never know until it is time to get your money. After securing the grant, include your consultant or GR officer in the project reporting flow, so that they get project updates as regularly as you do. They must not fight to get the necessary data from your team and must not be excluded from project discussions. Treat them like a representative of your main shareholder. Takeaways As the Deloitte research shows, grants are most commonly used in FOAK for financing pilot plants. By the time your project gets to building a pilot, you’ve likely already become familiar with grant funding. But getting grants for pilot or demo, or even FOAK, takes the grant game to a whole new level. Now it's not only about research and development, it is about implementation and real assets. The stakes are higher. When planning for grants as a non-dilutive funding, remember that getting grants takes a long time, with no guarantee of success. Plan accordingly, and ensure you have enough burn to see you through the grant application process. Finally, get someone with experience in grant applications and reporting. Usually, that would be a consultant. Occasionally, if your business is dependent on government decisions one way or another, you’ll have a full-time GR manager. In any case, grant application and management require a certain skill set, which startups normally lack. The examples and figures are taken from Deloitte and Climate First report "Driving Climate Tech Growth: A Startup's Handbook for Non-Dilutive Funding", which can be downloaded here: https://www.deloitte.com/il/en/services/consulting/perspectives/ndf-climate-tech-report.html

I’ve recently watched a video by Patrik Boyle, ”The Inevitable Decline of WeWork”, which ended with the story of Adam Neuman, the founder, raising another $ 300 M+ after crashing WeWork, on some unspecified startup in, ahem, real estate. I had a good laugh until my LinkedIn feed supplied me with an announcement in a timely manner that Mr. Peter Carlsson, the ex-founder of Northvolt, had launched another venture, Aris Machina AB. Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-09/ex-northvolt-ceo-gets-new-funds-for-ai-startup-in-manufacturing?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=linkedin?sref=3gAbaqte The venture would use artificial intelligence to optimize manufacturing processes, and according to co-founder Siddharth Khullar, it has already attracted early-stage investment from investors such as Earlybird, Village Global, AENU, and Planet A. It seems that Mr Carlsson was disappointed at the way his team could not bring the Northvolt factories up to speed. In keeping with modern times, Mr Carlsson found a perfect solution - AI! Let’s just replace those pesky workers with AI and robots, so that Mr Carlsson and Mr. Khullar could run a factory very efficiently and in peace! Managing people is so tedious! Same as all investors, I, for sure, adore Mr Carlsson’s genius. I just hope that in his genial spark, he won’t be using Northvolt’s data as an input to train his AI. After all, as most AI scientists say, garbage in, garbage out. I would doubt, though, that Mr Carlsson could find a willing battery OEM to share with him the necessary data. Jokes aside, I would imagine that after a blunder as big as Northvolt, Carlsson would be persona non grata in the investment world. But it seems that I am fundamentally missing something here. It just doesn’t make sense to me that investors continue to invest not only in failed founders (that’s ok, failures happen), but in those who blew it out of all proportion, like Adam Neuman or Carlsson. If that were to happen in Russia, I would assume that Mr. Carlsson pocketed the money, shared it (kicked back) with the fund managers, and let the venture die. Nice and clean way of separating investors from their money. Then he would go and repeat it with another venture, with all the fund managers cheering him up as a founder who tried, but failed, and deserves to try again, as he now has "experience". But of course, such a thing could only happen in criminal states like Russia, it is simply implausible for it to happen in Sweden. It must be Mr. Carlsson’s vast experience that allows him to rise again and again. The most visible demonstration of this, as you might have noted, is how deftly Mr. Carlsson rode the wave of battery hype, and how timely the “batteries” theme is now replaced with the currently hot AI theme. Hype, raise, burn, repeat. Could someone please recommend outlandishly expensive online courses or Bali retreats, where I could learn the wisdom of raising billions, burning them, and raising again? Because I am definitely missing something here.

Can you build a solar/storage company with no outside capital?
 Turns out, you can. If your customers pay upfront. Earlier this week, I spoke with a few startups in B2C solar and storage.
 Some sell high-end solutions to the well-off.
 Some team up with real estate developers. 
Others build SaaS platforms connecting customers, installers, and hardware suppliers. None of this is my core territory.
 But I’ve been learning fast, and one insight stood out. Every one of these ventures faces the same issue: working capital.
 And the most common answer? Advance payments.
 One founder shared that 80–100% of the order value comes in before delivery. Think about that.
 No dilution.
 No debt.
 Just customer cash to get started. Of course, this only works when you’re small and your customers are willing to wait.
 Turns out that many are. Two, even three months. But if you want to scale—really scale—you’ll need to start offering credit.
And that’s a different game entirely. Still, if you’re building in B2C solar and storage, maybe start with this question:
Can you get your first hundred customers to pay upfront? That might be all the capital you need. How do you work your working capital?

🔋 The European battery industry has taken some serious hits over the past 12 months: Freyr pulled the plug, ACC stalled, Northvolt collapsed, and CustomCells is the latest to go under. What’s common in all these cases? High capital burn, delayed scale-up, and a gap in *deep manufacturing know-how*—especially in electrode production. Many respected voices—Christopher Chico, Michael Sura, Christoph Siara—have said it plainly: if Europe wants a battery industry, it has to work with those who’ve already mastered it. That means partnering with Korea, Japan, and yes, China. But let’s be honest—how many of those top-tier Asian battery players are really ready to share their IP or know-how? If you’re at Smarter-E Europe this week and you’re serious about tackling electrode and cell production challenges, there’s one booth you should not miss: 📍 Booth C3.640 at the ChungBuk Technopark stand. That’s where you’ll find JR Energy Solution—a Korean foundry that offers manufacturing-as-a-service for electrodes and pouch cells. 👷🏻‍♂️ What’s new this year? — 20+ chemistries produced (including LFP, NCM, Si, and solid-state trials) — A new pouch cell line, with sample modules/packs — Open contract manufacturing slots for H2 2025 — And hands-on training for manufacturing personnel at their 500 MWh facility in Eumsong, Korea. This is what Europe needs—real partnerships with those who’ve done it before, and are willing to roll up their sleeves and help. Let’s build smarter, faster, and stronger. Together. 🛠️ Let me know if you’d like an intro.

Everyone wants to decarbonize industry. Not many talk about what happens after the pilot works. Scaling hardware isn’t linear. It’s exponential — in pain. Case in point: Via Separations Their FOAK gamble? Scaling their membrane-based heat separator 100x at a commercial paper mill in Alberta, Canada. * The science? ✅ Solid * The pilot? ✅ Promising * The scale-up? ❌ A swamp of unexpected engineering nightmares: 🔧 Labour costs exploded — getting a good welder on site during snowstorms = great for the schedule, brutal for the budget 🧳 The team wore every hat imaginable and spent weeks on-site ❄️ Winter storms delayed shift changes and logistics 📦 Equipment had to be ordered on-demand, not upfront — shaving 18–24 weeks off lead times to keep the project alive This wasn’t a “tech readiness” issue. It was ops readiness, supply chain readiness, and above all, mindset readiness. FOAK means debugging the real world. Despite it all, the team got it done. Was it painful? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely. If you're on the FOAK frontlines, building tech for hard-to-abate sectors, let’s trade war stories. I’m building a living archive of real-life scale-up pitfalls and tested FOAK frameworks. The original interview of Shreya Dave, CEO of Via Separations, can be found here .

If you’re building your first-of-a-kind (FOAK) project, good advice is hard to find. Most online sources on climate FOAKs are either too fragmented or come with a strong VC spin—lots of talk about financing, little about building. That’s why this new guide from Climate Drift  is worth your time: 👉 The FOAK Field Guide It’s one of the most comprehensive pieces I’ve seen in a while—broad in scope, packed with case studies, practical links, and sharp observations from people who’ve actually done it. A great primer for anyone moving from pilot to demo, or from demo to FOAK. And if you’re hungry for more insights like this, I keep a regularly updated directory of articles, case studies, and field notes on FOAKs and cleantech scale-up: 👉 FOAK & Scale-Up Blog Directory More practitioner voices. Less hype. Picture credits: Climate Drift

I'm deep into research on large-scale solar heating vs. heat pumps – and the findings are fascinating. At the household level, heat pumps dominate. They’re fast to install, scalable, and increasingly efficient. But when you move into industrial heat and district heating at a serious scale, the picture flips. Solar thermal projects start pulling ahead. At scale, solar heat beats heat pumps on operating costs, emissions, and resilience. Once built, the sun’s energy is basically free. And in regions with high solar irradiation and large, steady heat demand, the economics are hard to ignore. The trade-offs? Solar thermal takes longer to build, needs a serious land area, and is location-dependent. It’s not a plug-and-play solution everywhere. But if we are serious about decarbonizing industrial and district heat, especially in Europe, we need to think beyond just heat pumps. Scaling solar heat is slow... but if you want cheap, clean heat over decades, it's probably worth the patience. Curious to hear from others: where do you see solar heating fitting into the clean heat transition? #climatetech #decarbonization #solarthermal #heating #heatpumps