Fernandez: EPC contractors avoid small, high-risk climate demonstration projects
Mario Fernandez · FOAK tales · Jun 4, 2025 · at 12:36
Mario Fernandez, head of Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, discusses the practical challenges early-stage climate tech companies face when building demonstration-scale facilities.
0:00 / 0:07exact quote · 7.2s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Most of the time, the team has to build it themselves. No EPC contractor really wants to get into this smallish projects, high risk projects, right?”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Mario Fernandez
Fernandez: Climate startups succeed by deploying technology themselves, not licensing
“What we found looking at over 300 projects, 350 projects in the past couple of years, is the fact that the companies that actually deploy their own technology and follow that path Are the ones that get to success. There are companies that have spent two or thr…”
Fernandez: Large EPC firms stopped offering lump sum turnkey contracts post-COVID
“The reality is the EPC CapEx world changed dramatically after, after COVID, right? Things that used to be very secured, large scale EPC companies that used to be able to give you a, you know, lump sum turnkey contract are just not doing that anymore in, in con…”
Fernandez: FOAK scaling is limited by technical risk skills, not capital
“Our contention is that capital is an issue, but the biggest issue is the skill set that is required to be able to help the companies see a risk and really assess the risk of that big construction operation of first of a kind.”
Fernandez: FOAK project investors require six-plus months of demo runtime
“At the end of the day, the investors that come in at the Series C, Series D, you know, most of the time funding or partially funding first of a kind projects, they really want to see six months or more, or performance.”
Fernandez: Startups risk failure by fixing offtake prices before FEED engineering
“Many times Off-takes are priced in a way before engineering, you know, failed one, failed two, engineering have been done, and it's based on optimistic CapEx assumptions. Now, when the companies go through the engineering process, and they actually get to a fe…”
Fernandez: FOAK climate projects cannot secure project-level debt
“As far as debt goes, we haven't seen it. We've seen people be able to raise debt at the corporate level via, via venture debt or via corporate debt. Now, those are very low leverage numbers, right? They're not the 80, 95% that, you know, you will get in solar.…”