First-of-a-kind (FOAK) commercial projects are a pivotal milestone in scaling emerging climate technologies. FOAK projects can carry distinct risks and struggle to attract sufficient capital. The CREO FOAK framework identifies characteristics that qualify a commercial climate project as “first” - helping to demonstrate deployment precedent, reduce perceptions of risk, and allay financier concerns.

This paper illustrates the framework’s usefulness by applying it to carbon management technologies. Due to the relative nascency of these technologies, many of the commercial-scale projects within the sector are first-of-a-kind. Detailed project descriptions and data visualizations within the paper exhibit the scalability of carbon management technology projects. The FOAK framework should help to remove obstacles to financing and achieving decarbonization objectives within and beyond the carbon management sector.