Blog

the minimum viable firm

Strategy

Reflections

the price of cognitive work fell two orders of magnitude in two years. the minimum team for serious professional services dropped from fifteen people to four. someone should build the infrastructure that forms those teams.

June 11, 2026

energy ai is a governance problem

Energy & Climate

Technology

the uk government’s call for evidence on data for ai in the energy system asks a sharper question than most countries ask. who owns smart meter data, grid constraint data, asset data. on what terms. and what gets built only if those terms are right.

April 9, 2026

what i actually want

Reflections

Strategy

you spend years making decisions that look scattered from the outside. then the pattern shows up.

April 1, 2026

the deal doesn’t need teeth. it needs eyes.

Energy & Climate

Policy

canada and alberta struck a methane deal that lets the province set its own rules. the third-party check is the only thing standing between real atmospheric cuts and a decade of paper compliance.

March 26, 2026

the data is the moat

Technology

Strategy

most enterprise ai pilots fail before the model runs. the data pipeline behind the model decides the outcome. clean data, strong metadata, and a real retrieval layer matter more than the llm.

March 12, 2026

ai for oil and gas needs to speak field

Technology

Energy & Climate

general-purpose ai treats ‘friction reducer’ as one thing. in the field, the lab, and the office it means three different things. an embeddings model trained on industry data closes that gap.

March 5, 2026

easy alpha

Strategy

Technology

most AI value in industry is sitting on the table because nobody is doing the basics. the bottleneck is clean data, clear ownership, and the ability to iterate fast.

January 26, 2026

the compression contract

Technology

Strategy

every serious system runs into the same wall: reality is too large to hold. you either keep everything raw and drown, or you compress and risk deleting what mattered.

January 19, 2026

the integrity stack

Strategy

Reflections

most stagnation is a coherence failure in signal, system, or self

January 12, 2026

the argument that taught me something about prompts

Reflections

a theological argument about istighatha as a compact model for why prompts are fragile, because meaning depends on implied agency as much as words.

January 6, 2026

chokepoints all the way down

Strategy

Technology

heavy industry already runs on software. it needs software that survives contact with reality.

December 30, 2025

borrowed time

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

Strategy

most of what moves energy markets is narrative premium running ahead of reality

December 23, 2025

why tokenization usually makes things worse

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

tokenization only helps when you have the same problem hundreds of times. for everything else, it makes things worse. here’s what i learned modeling infrastructure deals.

December 17, 2025

the three tipping points

Technology

AI, clean energy, and bioengineering are hitting their tipping points at the same time. the question is what we are building as change arrives.

December 10, 2025

heavy industry’s carbon problem is already solved

Energy & Climate

canada’s heavy industries emit 78 mt co2 annually. every solution needed already operates somewhere in the country. here’s what deployment actually looks like.

November 27, 2025

canada’s carbon management architecture: engineering a $15 billion market

Energy & Climate

Policy

how federal and provincial policies create north america’s most complete CCUS framework

November 20, 2025

what i’m excited about in co2-to-fuels

Energy & Climate

Technology

exploring where co2-to-fuels can first scale: e-methanol at pulp mills, e-saf at steel hubs, and co2-to-ethylene at crackers. the trade-offs, the risks, and the reasons to be excited.

November 13, 2025

modular e-methanol innovation

Energy & Climate

Technology

pulp mills vent millions of tonnes of CO₂ every year. small modular plants can turn that waste into methanol and flip the economics of green fuel

November 7, 2025

fixing the plumbing in carbon markets

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

Policy

carbon markets look broken because the plumbing is. here is why simple triggers, reporting, and guardrails can restore credibility at low cost.

October 31, 2025

benefits that compound

Reflections

strong organizations do not rely on perks alone. they align pay, time, flexibility, and growth with clear values so performance compounds instead of burning out.

October 24, 2025

move at the speed of trust

Energy & Climate

Reflections

Technology

carbon removal projects live or die on trust. the same is true for startups. here is why building with communities is the real scaling function.

October 18, 2025

the curve that matters

Energy & Climate

Technology

a simple model shows that if clean energy keeps outgrowing demand, fossil fuels peak and decline. the debate is noisy, but compounding is what bends the curve.

October 11, 2025

climate strategy as engineering

Energy & Climate

tracing every carbon leak, patching, and shipping a clean build

October 4, 2025

the shape of data work

Technology

everyone thinks data science is about algorithms. it is really plumbing. after years of building data systems, here’s why 80% of the work happens before any model gets built.

September 28, 2025

the bioenergy blind spot

Energy & Climate

Policy

flawed carbon accounting derails net-zero plans

September 21, 2025

canada’s carbon bet - ccs policies

Energy & Climate

Technology

$23b for ccus and a net-zero goal

September 14, 2025

cracking the ccus code: why purity trumps everything

Energy & Climate

Strategy

Technology

from heat-and-mass balances to a mental shortcut. how inlet purity cuts through ccus complexity fast

September 8, 2025

canada’s clean fuels regs: the arbitrage window

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

Policy

regulations went live before the supply chains existed. documenting the weird pricing and arbitrage opportunities that emerge when policy meets reality.

September 1, 2025

some early thoughts on field-agnostic dd for cleantech

Strategy

preliminary thinking on a 7-layer framework for evaluating diverse cleantech technologies without deep expertise in every field. work in progress.

August 25, 2025

mapping the flows: understanding alberta’s carbon economy as a system

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

Policy

a systems view of how carbon pricing creates an economy of interconnected flows. mapping the machinery that most people never see.

August 19, 2025

pulling carbon from thin air: the dac reality check

Energy & Climate

Technology

carbon engineering wants to pull co2 from air at $100/tonne and make jet fuel. bill gates is in. after modeling the economics, here’s why dac might actually work.

August 12, 2025

financial evaluation of pathways ccs incentives

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

Policy

ran some models on pathways ccs incentives. accidentally discovered how to break capitalism with a 70% tax credit. here’s why infinite irr is a bug, not a feature.

August 5, 2025

theory driven alpha models

Finance & Markets

Strategy

a framework for thinking systematically about returns. from equity research to building python tools for alpha generation.

July 30, 2025

five fault lines in a clean-tech portfolio

Energy & Climate

analysis of two dozen cdn clean-tech projects reveals five recurring patterns of failure. understanding these structural fault lines is critical.

July 23, 2025

when larry fink discovers infrastructure

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

larry fink wants to put pipelines in your grandma’s portfolio. the $68 trillion infrastructure bill is due and suddenly everyone’s an infrastructure expert.

July 16, 2025

the renewable energy reality check

Energy & Climate

Finance & Markets

Reflections

from working on utility-scale solar to watching offshore wind stumble. an honest look at why the renewable transition is harder than anyone wants to admit.

July 10, 2025

between things

Energy & Climate

Reflections

thirteen years across engineering, finance, and policy. I got good at each one. then I left.

July 3, 2025

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