Before It Scales

Dr Davood Dehestani is the founder of Smartizer, which makes small, portable home batteries for renters and apartment dwellers. Alan Yu runs HighFlow Energy, an electricity retailer brand that uses households' existing solar and batteries in a virtual power plant, and is a director of ConnectVPP, the platform underneath it.

Australia has installed more than half a million home batteries under the federal rebate in a little over a year. Every one had to be capable of joining a virtual power plant, but joining is optional and most have not. Around a third of households rent or live in apartments and are usually locked out. Davood and Alan join Joy McConnochie and Michael Robinson of Cyan Ventures to talk about both problems.

In this episode:

• How Davood and Alan got here, and what Smartizer, HighFlow and ConnectVPP do
• What a virtual power plant is, in plain terms
• Why so few home batteries are in a virtual power plant
• Why households are wary of handing over control of their battery
• The renters and apartment dwellers locked out of solar and batteries
• Paying households for local network support, and the UK example
• Integrating many inverter brands, and the limits of manufacturers' clouds
• Plug-in batteries: where the rules stand, and the 5 kWh rebate floor
• Bill-free allowances, payback for renters, and consumer protections

For the projects, deals and policy shaping the energy transition, subscribe to the Cyan newsletter: https://cyan-ventures.beehiiv.com/

Key links:

• Smartizer: https://www.smartizer.com.au/
• HighFlow Energy: https://www.highflowenergy.com.au/
• ConnectVPP: https://www.connectvpp.com.au/
• Show notes: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-9/
• Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/@CyanVentures

Kumbi Gutsa is a Senior Manager at Cyan Ventures. James Boyle is Australia Country Lead at Mission Possible Partnership. Together they have been leading the Clean Deal Monitor, which tracks commercial-scale clean industry projects in Australia across green iron and steel, hydrogen and ammonia, and low-carbon liquid fuels.

MPP's tracker counts about 70 projects in Australia, and about 44 are under active development. Only one has reached a final investment decision. Kumbi and James join Joy McConnochie to explain what the monitor does, where the pipeline stands, and what developers say is holding them back.

In this episode:

• What the Clean Deal Monitor is and who uses it
• How it links to MPP's Global Project Tracker
• Where Australia's pipeline stands now
• Why Orica's FID is not a guide to the rest of the pipeline
• Where the momentum is: low-carbon liquid fuels and electric arc furnace steel
• What developers say: offtake first, financing second
• Why demand for green commodities needs policy support
• The missing middle in development capital, and first-of-a-kind risk in construction capital
• What the pipeline could look like in five years, and what to watch this year

If you are developing a clean industry project in Australia and are not yet on the monitor, get in touch: https://cyanventures.com.au/contact-us/

For the projects, deals and policy shaping clean industry, subscribe to the Cyan newsletter: https://cyan-ventures.beehiiv.com/

Key links:

• Mission Possible Partnership: https://missionpossiblepartnership.org/
• Episode 2, with Faustine Delasalle of MPP: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-2/
• Show notes: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-8/
• Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/@CyanVentures

Julia is Senior Director, Europe at Breakthrough Energy, the climate innovation network Bill Gates founded at the Paris COP in 2015. She has spent more than two decades on industrial decarbonisation, starting as an analyst at the International Energy Agency, then founding the Institute for Industrial Productivity and running programmes across China, India, the US and Europe, then building the industrial innovation programme at the European Climate Foundation. At Breakthrough Energy she built the organisation's European partnerships, including the fund with the European Commission and the European Investment Bank. She sits on the board of the Mission Possible Partnership.

She joins Joy McConnochie and Shaun Chau to talk about what happens between a technology that works and an industry that exists.

In this episode:

• The thread that connects a career: the IEA, the Institute for Industrial Productivity, the European Climate Foundation
• From analysing the transition to moving money into it
• What she believed early on that turned out to be wrong
• A narrow set of options, then abundance, and why the discipline now is prioritisation
• What Breakthrough Energy is: discovery, development, deployment, and why it is not a solo but a choir
• The deployment era, and what it means concretely
• Why TRL 9 is not the finish line if your supply chain is at 3
• Not a sprint, not even a marathon: a relay, and the baton that keeps getting dropped
• The 12 Keys to Scaling Up, and the ARPA-E test: if it works, will it matter?
• Why you cannot skip from pilot to first-of-a-kind commercial scale
• One balance sheet, four kinds of risk, and why that is the wrong place to put them
• Portfolios rather than projects, and why company building matters more than a single deal
• The missing middle: too big for venture, too unproven for infrastructure
• System-level benefits, single-company balance sheets, and the mismatch between them
• The European Commission and European Investment Bank partnership, and what blending actually solves
• Structures that solve for the specific risk, and why the answer is not more money
• Where the model stops working, and aiming for nth of a kind
• Five non-negotiables: crowd in rather than crowd out, demand-side tools, the discipline to reach the nth of a kind, permitting that helps, and cost and scale
• Australia's role, and five places deployment could start
• Project SkyPower

For the projects, deals and policy shaping clean industry, subscribe to the Cyan newsletter: https://cyan-ventures.beehiiv.com/

Key links:

Breakthrough Energy: https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/

The 12 Keys to Scaling Up: https://www.breakthroughenergy.org/newsroom/articles/unlocking-capital-for-climate-tech-projects-the-12-keys-to-scaling-up/

Project SkyPower: https://project-skypower.org/

Show notes: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-7/

Watch the video:https://youtu.be/uivuIppTz2c

Australia has at least twelve low carbon liquid fuel projects in development, around $19 billion of announced capital, and enough capacity between them to cover roughly 17 per cent of national aviation fuel demand. Not one has reached financial close.

Fraser is Managing Partner at Cyan Ventures, a co-founder of Sun Cable, and an economist who spent nine years at McKinsey including leading the McKinsey Global Institute on sustainability. He runs the Green Fuels Accelerator, funded by ARENA and supported by Qantas, Boeing, Mission Possible Partnership and Climate Tech Partners, which is working with seven Australian projects to get them to a final investment decision faster and with better odds.

He joins Joy McConnochie to talk about the Green Fuels Accelerator and the problem it’s working to solve.

In this episode:

• Why $19 billion worth of projects has produced no financial close
• Market failure one: the missing demand signal
• Learning curves, and who underwrites the first project
• Fuel security, the Strait of Hormuz, and the tourism risk
• Why blending means a 5 per cent low carbon blend costs less than a cup of coffee a flight
• Market failure two: the $30 to $50 million development capital gap
• Why a mandate on its own does not fix it
• Why low carbon liquid fuels first, out of every clean industry sector
• What a developer in the cohort gets, and the mock investment readiness committee
• The experts on the bench, including Natalie Lonergan and Oliver Yates
• Why ARENA funded capability rather than a project
• Having an airline in the room while a developer discusses its offtake gap
• The seven projects, and what the cohort was selected for
• The Finance Readiness Assessment: surfacing problems while they are still cheap
• Three legs: development progress, FID readiness and transaction readiness
• The six dimensions, and why any one of them can stop a financial close
• The long-term funding model, and whether this extends beyond liquid fuels
• Fuel security, Australian champions and regional benefit

Key links:

• Green Fuels Accelerator media release: https://cyanventures.com.au/media-release-launch-of-green-fuels-accelerator-to-fast-track-commercial-scale-low-carbon-liquid-fuels/
• Solving for Offtake: Insights from the Green Fuels Accelerator webinar:
  https://youtu.be/ct3-iIfLy7A
• Green Fuels Accelerator investor webinar, 27 August 2026: https://www.bioenergyaustralia.org.au/events/373861
• The Australian Government's low carbon liquid fuels consultations, submissions close 15 September 2026 https://consult.dcceew.gov.au/securing-australias-cleaner-fuels-industry-consultation
• Show notes: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-6/
• Video: https://youtu.be/s972oxOmUsQ

Australia takes 30 to 40 percent of its primary energy from liquid fuels. Dave Stribley's view is that we have barely started replacing them.

Dave is co-founder of HAMR Energy, a low-carbon liquid fuels platform. He spent 15 years at ExxonMobil, ten of them on the Bass Strait assets and three in Qatar on LNG mega trains. He came back to Australia to help decommission Bass Strait, then left with Alex Smith to build HAMR.

HAMR's flagship Portland Renewable Fuels project turns forestry residue from the Green Triangle into renewable methanol. A second facility in South Australia upgrades that methanol into sustainable aviation fuel. Total investment is around $1.8 billion, and the product is not yet a traded commodity.

Joy McConnochie and Fraser Thompson cover the following with Dave:

• Leaving ExxonMobil, and the gap the founders saw in liquid fuels
• What HAMR Energy does, and why HAMR Fuels exists
• The Series A: Qantas, Airbus and thyssenkrupp Uhde as shareholders
• Portland Renewable Fuels: forestry residue, hydrogen and methanol
• Why methanol, and the commercial flexibility it buys
• The hub and spoke model, and the limits of the mega train
• Feedstock: the Green Triangle, and what comes after it
• The BHP biofuel trial with Berge Bulk and GCMD
• The partnerships that got the projects this far
• Why a demand signal matters more than more supply-side funding
• Sulphur, lead, and valuing the externality
• What a credible Australian demand mechanism needs
• The Investor Front Door, from the inside
• The three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle of FOAK
• Financing $1.8 billion in an undeveloped market
• Risk, and the better conversation to have with government
• What first-of-a-kind changes, and what it does not
• Advice for other first-of-a-kind developers
• Supply chains, ecosystems, and the China cost question
• Kathmandu to Everest: what Dave is excited about     

For the projects, deals and policy shaping clean industry, subscribe to the Cyan newsletter: https://cyan-ventures.beehiiv.com/

Key links:

• HAMR Energy: https://www.hamrenergy.com/
• Investor Front Door: https://www.industry.gov.au/investor-front-door
• Cleaner Fuels Program: https://arena.gov.au/funding/cleaner-fuels-program/
• Not covered in this episode, HAMR has secured up to $32M in ARENA funding in July 2026: https://arena.gov.au/assets/2026/07/ARENA-Media-Release_HAMR_22072026_FINAL.pdf
• Show notes: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-5/
• Watch the video: https://youtu.be/jE8M9ESdvMY

Most clean industrial projects start as science in a university lab. Someone has to back that science years before it makes a dollar. Mike Molinari does exactly that.

Mike is the Managing Director of IP Group Australia, one of the most active early-stage deep tech investors in the country. IP Group partners with Australia's leading research universities, finds breakthrough science, and backs it from the university lab through to scale. Its Australian team manages just over half a billion dollars.

Joy McConnochie sits down with Mike to open up how deep tech investing actually works. They get into IP Group's evergreen structure and why being "patient but not lazy" matters when a technology takes longer than seven years to mature, how the team backed Hysata's record-breaking electrolyser out of a University of Wollongong lab, the new $50 million Climate Catalyst Fund and why Mike thinks the AI boom is exactly what makes now the moment to back climate tech, and the first-of-a-kind funding gap that strands good technology between the lab and the market.

·       The IP Group model, and how it differs from typical venture capital

·       The evergreen structure: why patient but not lazy capital matters

·       Backing Hysata: spotting a record-breaking electrolyser early

·       Technology risk versus market risk, and the first-of-a-kind translation gap

·       The Climate Catalyst Fund, and why the AI boom makes now the moment

·       Decarbonising the mineral supply chain: lithium, and the copper tailings opportunity

·       Diligence with no revenue, and the red flags that make them walk away

·       Policy: Future Made in Australia, ARENA, and the need for stability

·       Keeping companies Australian while selling to the world

·       Unlocking institutional capital: super funds and the Hostplus model

For the projects, deals and policy shaping clean industry, subscribe to the Cyan newsletter: https://cyan-ventures.beehiiv.com/

Key Links:

• IP Group Australia: https://www.ipgroupanz.com
• Show notes: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-4/
• Watch the video: https://youtu.be/dO9IQY5LBxQ

Australia has four million homes with rooftop solar and the highest penetration of the technology in the world. Renters and people in apartments have mostly been left out. That gap sits at the centre of Thom Woodroofe's new book.

Thom is a climate diplomat turned policy strategist. He helped secure the Paris Agreement, advised former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in Washington, and built the Asia Society's China Climate Hub. He is now a Senior International Fellow at the Smart Energy Council. His book is Power, Prosperity and Planet: Climate and Energy Policy for All.

Joy McConnochie and Fraser Thompson sit down with him to work through the argument that the climate movement won the case on the science but has not built the coalition to carry the transition. They get into how to make solar and batteries reach renters, why regional towns like Gladstone and Townsville vital to include, why Australia has no other industry (beyond the suite of new clean industries) ready to replace coal and LNG, and how to work with China without picking a side.

For the projects, deals and policy shaping clean industry, subscribe to the Cyan newsletter: https://cyan-ventures.beehiiv.com/

Key links:

·       Show notes for this episode - https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-3/

·       Watch the video - https://youtu.be/YWZzcZAekzs?si=3uljCDQ_d1TGmViW

·       Power, Prosperity and Planet, Monash University Publishing - https://publishing.monash.edu/product/power-prosperity-planet/

·       Thom Woodroofe - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomwoodroofe/

·       Smart Energy Council -https://smartenergy.org.au/

·       Future Made in Australia - https://treasury.gov.au/policy-topics/future-made-australia

In the last six months, 19 commercial-scale clean industrial projects reached final investment decision, worth USD $43 billion. That is more than double the pace of a year earlier, and 2026 is on track to be the strongest year yet for clean industry investment. 

Faustine Delasalle is the CEO of the Mission Possible Partnership, the organisation tracking the global pipeline of clean steel, cement, chemicals and fuels projects. MPP recently released the fifth edition of its Global Project Tracker. Joy McConnochie and Shaun Chau sit down with her to work through what the data shows and what it means for Australia. 

They cover why China now holds 45% of projects past FID and why that is hard to copy, why demand, not technology, is the barrier holding projects back, how Green Market Makers like H2Global bridge the green premium, the "5% tipping point" that turns slow growth into fast, and what Australia's 70-project pipeline needs to get moving. Cyan and MPP are building a Clean Deal Tracker for Australia together. 

For the projects, deals and policy shaping clean industry, subscribe to the Cyan newsletter: https://cyan-ventures.beehiiv.com/ 

Key Links:  

• Mission Possible Partnership: https://www.missionpossiblepartnership.org 

• Clean Industry Rising, the Global Project Tracker 5th edition: https://missionpossiblepartnership.org/clean-industry-rising-interactive-report/ 

• H2Global: https://www.h2-global.org 
• Show notes: https://cyanventures.com.au/podcast/episode-2/
• Watch the video: https://youtu.be/saRUMnrMBFw

What is a first-of-a-kind clean energy project, and why do they keep stalling?

The IEA estimates that about 35% of the emissions reductions needed by 2050 depend on technologies that aren't even commercially available yet. Australia has the endowments to lead on these projects. So why aren't they getting built?

In the first episode of Before It Scales, Joy McConnochie, Fraser Thompson, and Shaun Chau take on 7 myths about FOAK. Why it's not a technology problem. Why strong fundamentals alone won't attract capital. Why grants aren't enough. Why regulation gets too much of the blame. Why Australia can't afford to sit back and wait. Why green premiums won't fall on their own. And why the window for action is shorter than most people think.

Before It Scales is produced by Cyan Ventures: https://cyanventures.com.au/

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