What we do

Building the bridge to bankability

Mark1 is a Developer-as-a-Service for capital intensive, first of a kind industrial climate technologies. We work with technology companies to maximize the opportunity for deploying their first commercial-scale projects.

Applications open in Q4 2024

The Mark1 Ecosystem

The successful transition to net-zero is heavily contingent on the rapid scale up and deployment of significant amounts of novel climate-related industrial infrastructure. We must provide growth-stage technology companies with the appropriate tools and skills, while simultaneously crowding in key ecosystem partners and financial sponsors, to help bridge the real and perceived risks of novel projects. Without this, we won’t achieve the net-zero transition.

Of the $80-500bn of funding that’s required just for first of a kind (FOAK) decarbonization and negative emissions facilities, current projections indicate less than 7% of that funding is on track and available. To change this we must engage all stakeholders, to provide them with the appropriate tools, skills and knowledge they need, to facilitate their role in the net-zero transition.

Cohort
Companies

Entrepreneurs spend years proving the performance of their climate technology, first in the lab and then at pilot. Developing a first commercial demonstrator, the next stage on the scale-up journey, requires a different set of skills, tools and relationships, which is hard to source and expensive to resource. Mark1 provides this, and tailored support for a company’s specific needs.

Cohort
Companies

Hand in hand, we’re your go-to co-developer for first of a kind industrial climate technologies

Project
Investors

The combination of high capital requirements and real and perceived risks for novel projects often rules out many investors, creating gaps in the financing ecosystem. Through front-loading key risks in the project development process, including early commercial engagement of ecosystem partners, companies in the Mark1 program represent a significant opportunity for project financiers.

Project
Investors

A pipeline of bankable projects for this new emerging asset class

Supporting Ecosystem

Offtakers, EPCs, and other service providers are critical to the success of the project. Similarly, engaging directly in the scale-up of these new technologies represents an asymmetric opportunity to build competitive advantage. Mark1 is the convening point for these engagements.

Supporting
Ecosystem

The ESSENTIAL ecosystem for scaling emerging climate technology

Communities

Every project is a community project, whether it’s the team required for day-to-day operations or local residents who share the same supporting infrastructure. Mark1 brings communities into the conversation early in the development process, to ensure that tangible benefits extend beyond the climate impact.

Communities

Ensuring that local communities are consulted and involved

The Mark1 program

Novel climate venture teams are rarely equipped to successfully address all pre-commercial infrastructure project development stages. Where support does exist, it is often disjointed and strategically misaligned. Mark1 exists to solve these challenges.

Tailored, hands-on project development support

Mark1 helps climate tech innovators develop a faster and less expensive path to bankability. With an experienced in-house team, we provide a program tailored to the specific needs of each participating company, to achieve early DevEx milestones equivalent to front-end loading 2 and supporting across technical project development, commercial project development, and capital strategies.

Supportive ecosystem of EPCs, offtakers and financiers

The quality and engagement-level of the project partners are critical to a project’s likelihood of success. We build a coalition around each company with mentors and experts steeped in each industry, vetted EPC and engineering firms, potential strategic partners and capital providers, as well as other key stakeholders across the project development value chain.

Long-term alignment

Our 18 month program is designed to take participating companies to completion of a joint development plan, formal engagement with ecosystem partners like offtakers, EPC's, capital providers, formation of a project special purpose vehicle (SPV), and delivery of Mark1 milestones. While programmatic support ends with completion of Pre-FEED, development support will continue through both the SPV partner coalition of offtakers and EPCs, as well as the later-stage development capital partners in the ecosystem.

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What our experts say

The successful transition to net-zero is heavily contingent on the rapid scale-up and deployment of significant amounts of novel climate-related infrastructure. DSV is on a mission to accelerate the scaling of these technologies. A Developer-as-a-service (DaaS), with expert human capital assisting projects to get to bankability, is a key component in unlocking novel technologies scale-up from ‘lab to commercialization’ and will feed into other business builds that DSV (and others) are working on further down the value chain to invest in these projects. Mark1 has a mission to become the gold-standard and the ‘go to’ project development accelerator - ‘the Y-Combinator of project development for climate tech' and we couldn’t be more excited in announcing the launch of Mark1 and our partnership with visionary funders like Builder's Vision who are helping to catalyze this space,

Ahmad Butt

Executive Chairman of Deep Science Ventures

RMI and Third Derivative are proud to support the development of Mark 1 and are thrilled to see the program reach this significant milestone. Mark1 addresses a critical ‘valley of death’ that many of our portfolio startups have struggled to overcome. This initiative will be a pivotal component in the journey of scaling to impact for numerous emerging industrial startups, both within and beyond Third Derivative’s portfolio. We believe that Mark1 will play a crucial role in accelerating the deployment of innovative technologies essential for the global energy transition.

Rushad Nanavatty

Managing Director of Third Derivative, a program of RMI

RMI and Deep Science Ventures have a proven track record of understanding how to move the energy transition forward and I'm incredibly excited to be taking the helm at Mark1 and joining an ambitious effort to build the ecosystem around these brave companies working every day to bring these emerging industrial technologies to market.

Julian Ryba-White

CEO at Mark 1

Initiatives like Mark1 are essential for advancing decarbonization in hard-to-abate sectors, as addressing climate challenges demands both innovative technologies and effective collaboration among stakeholders. Mark1 offers the platform necessary to scale these technologies and overcome key obstacles. We are proud to support Mark1 and look forward to its leadership in this critical and rapidly evolving field of climate innovation.

James Lindsay

Investment Director at Builders Vision and head of its energy transition investment portfolio

About us

Created by RMI, Deep Science Ventures and Third Derivative

Mark1 is led by Julian Ryba-White, an accomplished energy entrepreneur and project developer. He started his career working alongside the pioneers at SolarCity, inventing and scaling installation processes, and adopting and evolving novel technologies, before founding Nokomis Energy, an energy transition developer for Midwest distribution grids. Julian brings a wealth of experience in ideating, developing and deploying novel technology projects.

Mark1 is building out a team of experienced project developers in several domains, with professional backgrounds across chemical and process engineering, electrical and power systems engineering, commercialization and offtake contracting, procurement and supply chain management, project finance and legal entity structuring. This team is supported by the 800+ experts in early-stage climate technologies across RMI, Third Derivative and Deep Science Ventures, who have collectively created or scaled over 250+ companies.

Applications open in Q4 2024

Building the bridge to bankability

Cohort Companies

Cohort Companies

Project Investors

Project Investors

Supporting Ecosystem

Supporting Ecosystem

Communities

Communities

Build your Mark1

Tailored, hands-on project development support

Supportive ecosystem of EPCs, offtakers and financiers

Long-term alignment

Created by RMI, Deep Science Ventures and Third Derivative

Cohort
Companies

Cohort
Companies

Project
Investors

Project
Investors

Supporting
Ecosystem