The First Plant Has More Than One Customer: Mapping the FOAK Decision System

A first-of-a-kind climate project has a decision system around it. Investors, lenders, buyers, host sites, engineering contractors, insurers, regulators, suppliers and public funders each take a different risk and make a different commitment. A FOAK stakeholder map lists those decisions, the evidence each party needs and the order in which they can happen.

One generic deck treats that network as a single sale. It tends to fail in the second meeting, when each party starts asking about its own exposure.

Start with the decision each party makes

A list of names around the project is of little use on its own. For each party, write down what you need them to decide, what exposure they take by saying yes, what evidence they need, what has to be true for their decision to be rational, and which other party they are waiting for. The last column usually reveals the real coordination problem.

Framed this way, the map becomes a plan. It shows who needs which document, who can move first, and where one signature unlocks three more. The same project cannot use one generic proof set for every party, and the table below shows why.

Party	Decision	Evidence it needs
Buyer	Commit to future supply	Specification, price, delivery date
Lender	Lend against the asset	Contracted cash flow, risk allocation
EPC partner	Guarantee cost and schedule	Scope certainty, known interfaces
Host site	Accept the plant on site	Permitting plan, interface clarity
Regulator	Grant a permit	Evidence against statutory standards

Capital providers carry different risks

Equity investors assess value creation, ownership, downside and the path to repeat deployment. Their question for the first plant is what it proves that changes the economics or risk of the next one. Lenders focus on repayment. They look at contracted cash flow, completion risk, counterparty quality, covenants, security and who pays for cost overruns. The upside story that works for venture equity gives a lender very little to hold, a gap we unpack in fundable versus financeable.

Public and catalytic capital sits between the two. In the United States, the Department of Energy's Title 17 loan programme exists to help deploy innovative clean energy technologies at commercial scale. Public funders can take exposures private markets decline because a project produces learning or public value. They answer to their own mandates and their own accountability, so they ask why their support is additional, which market gap it fills and what private capital it could unlock later. A project that describes public money as free capital loses that room quickly.

Buyers, hosts and engineers decide on operational grounds

The offtaker needs confidence that the product will meet specification, arrive on time and justify an early commitment. Its worries are price, reliability, qualification, switching cost, reputation and continuity of supply. The buyer story starts inside the buyer's operation, and the developer's financing problem is a secondary concern for them. Our offtake guide covers how buyers and lenders read those contracts.

A host site may provide land, utilities, feedstock, staff or infrastructure. It needs to know whether the project interrupts production, draws on scarce utilities, depends on its staff, adds permitting obligations or brings safety and reputational exposure. A host agreement often sits at the centre of both the project case and the risk case.

Engineering, procurement and construction partners turn the concept into a buildable asset. They are often asked to guarantee schedule, cost or performance for a configuration nobody has built. The developer needs to say precisely what is novel, what is standard, and which warranties and interfaces are realistic for a first build.

Insurers, regulators and suppliers set the boundaries

Insurers need the exposure described clearly enough to price, with the operating history, engineering controls, contractual allocation and claims scenarios behind it. If a risk cannot be described well enough to underwrite, that tells the team something about the project.

Regulators and permitting authorities sit outside the commercial deal, yet the project cannot exist without their decision. They work to statutory standards on safety, emissions, water, waste, land use and product status. Treat regulatory engagement as evidence work. The governing rules decide the case, and a communications campaign changes none of them.

Suppliers of long-lead equipment and feedstock can set the schedule and move the cost. A supplier may want volume commitments while the project is still raising money, and the project may want firm prices the supplier will not yet hold. Those dependencies belong in the project story.

One more audience sits outside the current room, the capital provider for project two. The first plant should collect the evidence that future decision-maker will ask for, which makes the map forward-looking. Our piece on FOAK to NOAK sets that evidence out.

How Stegra and Carbios show the system at work

Stegra, formerly H2 Green Steel, is building its first plant at Boden in Sweden. Its public announcements show several parties each making their own commitment to the same asset. On the demand side, Mercedes-Benz and H2 Green Steel announced agreements in Europe and North America. On the debt side, the company raised more than €4 billion in debt financing for what it described as the world's first large-scale green steel plant. The car maker decided on supply and specification. The lenders decided on repayment and security.

Carbios shows the same system mid-flight. Its enzymatic PET recycling plant at Longlaville in France has moved through a series of separate public updates, from progress on financing to a renewed commitment to build on an adjusted timeline, and most recently an update on the financing of the Longlaville plant project. Each update reports where one set of commitments stands. A FOAK map stays a working document for the life of the build. A founder can read any announcement like these as one row in a larger map, and trace which party had to move before that commitment became possible.

Map the dependencies as a sequence

Many FOAK projects hit the same loop. The investor wants offtake. The offtaker wants a financing plan. The EPC contractor wants a notice to proceed. The lender wants firm contracts. The host wants proof the project will be funded.

More persuasion rarely breaks that loop. Sequencing does. Work out which commitment can come first, whether it can be conditional, and whether one party's yes creates enough information for the next. Staging exposure so that no single party absorbs every unknown at once is decision architecture. The Department of Energy's review of FOAK financing and development approaches draws its lessons from case studies of first-of-a-kind projects working through this problem.

The investor sees a scale opportunity. The buyer sees a supply decision. The host sees integration risk. The regulator sees a compliance question. Emphasis should change by room and the facts should stay identical, so each party receives one project truth routed to the decision it is making.

Build your FOAK decision map

Make a table with six columns for party, decision, exposure, evidence, dependency and next move. Fill one row per party, then draw an arrow for every "waiting for" entry. The circles that appear show where the project looks stuck while each party behaves rationally. Pick the one commitment that could move first under clear conditions, and write the evidence pack for that party alone.

For help turning one project truth into material for each room, see our positioning work.

Sources and further reading

• FOAK Financing and Development Approaches, US Department of Energy, 2024
• H2 Green Steel raises more than 4 billion euros in debt financing, Stegra, 2024
• Carbios provides an update on the financing of its Longlaville plant project, Carbios, 2026
• Title 17 handout on innovative projects, US Department of Energy