Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets

Catalyst with Shayle Kann · Dec 21, 2023 · 46m

There’s a hole in the finance world. Fighting climate change means scaling up lots of new technologies, but financing those first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects is incredibly difficult. New technologies involving things like sustainable aviation fuel, geothermal, and direct air capture can take a decade or more to scale up. But venture capital is too expensive for FOAK projects, while infrastructure finance is too risk-averse.

So what solutions could solve the FOAK financing problem?

In this episode, Shayle talks to longtime climatetech investor David Yeh. David has spent over 20 years in…