Posed as a contest, green hydrocarbons versus green hydrogen is the wrong question. They are not substitutes competing for the same dollar; they are different points in the same value chain, with very different policy support, demand certainty and time-to-cash. After OBBBA, and after a year in which crude has whipsawed from $55 to $120, the allocation question has a clearer answer than the slogans suggest, and it turns almost entirely on one thing: the incentive stack. They A

The sustainable aviation fuel debate spends most of its energy on the wrong question. It asks which technology wins, HEFA, alcohol-to-jet, power-to-liquid, when the technologies all work and demand is already guaranteed by mandate. The question that actually decides who makes money is narrower and less discussed: which producer controls feedstock. Feedstock is 50 to 70% of the cost of SAF, and the supply of the cheap feedstock is capped. That makes SAF a feedstock-spread busi

Brent crude has traded from $55 to $120 and back toward $87 in the space of four months. Any view on bio-based platform chemicals pinned to today's oil price is obsolete by next week. So this piece is built the other way round: as a reference you can return to whenever crude moves. Tell us where Brent is, and the cost curve tells you which drop-in chemicals make money, and who wins. Drop-In Is Market Access, Not a Moat A drop-in bio-based chemical, bio-ethylene, bio-MEG, bio-

Plastics pyrolysis is not a science experiment. The chemistry, cracking mixed plastic waste into an oil that can re-enter the petrochemical chain, works in any competent lab. The reason advanced-recycling plants keep destroying capital is that running one at scale, on real-world feedstock, every day, is a different problem entirely. The IRR lives or dies there. A 100,000-Tonne Plant That Recycled 2,000 Brightmark’s Ashley, Indiana facility is the case study every circular-eco

Roughly 60 clean-hydrogen projects, more than 4.9 million tonnes a year of planned capacity, were cancelled in 2025. The technology did not stop working. The economics only ever closed on a single subsidy, the demand never showed up at the price, and OBBBA just lit a fuse under the subsidy. Here is the arithmetic a 2026 investment committee actually needs. The 60-Project Reset These were not fringe ventures. Air Products walked away from a multi-billion-dollar project; BP and

A pitch deck that leads with "200 granted patents" is telling you almost nothing about whether that IP will defend a margin, survive a challenge, or be worth anything in a downside. Three numbers from the last 18 months explain why, and they should change how you diligence climate-tech IP. The Vanity-Count Trap, Now Quantified The instinct to count patents is understandable and almost always wrong. The hard data: when a US patent is actually challenged at the Patent Trial and

When the IRA expanded 45Q to $180 a tonne, Direct Air Capture looked underwritten by Washington. By 2026 the picture is more selective, and that gap is precisely the opening Direct Ocean Capture walks into. Beyond Subsidies: Why the DAC Setback Opens a Door for Direct Ocean Capture The One Big Beautiful Bill Act left the 45Q credit itself intact. What it did not protect was the federal grant money behind the flagship DAC hubs, which has been frozen or pulled back. That distin

There are two ways to make money in bio-based chemicals, and they are almost opposites. One is to make a molecule identical to the petrochemical it replaces and win on cost. The other is to make a molecule petroleum cannot easily make at all and win on performance. The first is a bet on the oil price wearing a green label. The second is where the potential of platform chemicals is actually unlocked, because its value does not depend on where crude trades. Most investor attent

Most electrolyzer investment cases are really 45V cases wearing a technology costume. They turn on a production credit that, under OBBBA, expires for any plant that has not begun construction by 1 January 2028. Strip the credit out, and a harder set of questions appears: what does the machine cost to run on real, intermittent power, and what is it worth to anyone when the subsidy is gone? The answers are not the ones the capex headlines suggest. The Capex Race Is the Wrong Ra

The standard framing sets two markets side by side: compliance, where regulation forces companies to surrender allowances, and voluntary, where they buy credits by choice. It is a tidy split, and it is the wrong one. The voluntary market has fractured into two tiers that have less in common with each other than either has with compliance, and the whole system is converging on a single axis: integrity. Read carbon as one market sorted by trust, not two markets sorted by obliga

The renewable-diesel gold rush ended in 2025, and it ended the way booms usually do: with overbuilt capacity, collapsing credit prices and idled plants. For most of the market that is a cautionary tale. For a disciplined operator it is an inventory. The 2024-25 shakeout created a stock of modern, distressed biofuel assets whose sunk capital can be reactivated at a fraction of greenfield cost, and the firms already converting them into SAF and renewable-diesel champions are no

Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is a century old. The reason FT routes to sustainable aviation fuel keep failing is almost never the chemistry. It is the build, the ramp, and the operating margin. Here is what actually moves the return, with numbers. $456 Million, Proven Technology, and Still Dead Fulcrum BioEnergy is the cautionary tale every SAF investor should keep on the desk. It had committed investors, a Fischer-Tropsch process licensed from established technology, and offtak

Sustainable aviation fuel has no shortage of demand and no shortage of technology. It has a shortage of bankable projects. Mandates are tightening, airlines are signing agreements, and capital is queued, yet most SAF proposals still fail to clear an investment committee, because the proforma oversells the upside and hides the three risks that actually decide whether a deal funds. None of them is the IRR on the cover slide. De-risking SAF means running a financial lens and a t