Inside the Green Fuels Accelerator, with Fraser Thompson
Twelve projects, $19 billion of announced capital, and no financial close. Fraser Thompson on the two market failures behind the gap, and the three-legged diagnostic his team uses to find out whether a project is fundable.
Hosts: Joy McConnochie · Fraser Thompson
About this episode
Australia has twelve low carbon liquid fuel projects in development, around $19 billion of announced capital behind them, and not one has reached financial close.
Fraser Thompson joins Joy McConnochie to explain why. His diagnosis is two market failures rather than one. There is no clear demand signal, because nobody prices the carbon externality, underwrites the learning curve, or pays for fuel security in a country that imports about 90 per cent of its liquid fuel. And there is no access to the $30 to $50 million of development capital a project needs to reach a final investment decision, a sum too large for venture capital and too early for infrastructure investors and super funds.
The Green Fuels Accelerator is Cyan Ventures’ response to a narrower question: even with good policy, what stops a capable team getting to financial close?
It is an eight-month, ARENA-funded pilot, backed by Qantas, Boeing, Mission Possible Partnership, SYSTEMIQ, Climate Tech Partners and Mills Oakley, working with seven Australian projects on the commercialisation gaps no founder team can carry alone. At its centre is a diagnostic that asks three things. Have you done the work, is the work good enough for debt and equity investors, and can you take it to market and convert it into capital.
About the guest
Dr Fraser Thompson is Managing Partner at Cyan Ventures, the specialist first-of-a-kind project development and advisory firm, where he leads the Green Fuels Accelerator.
He co-founded Sun Cable. He spent nine years at McKinsey and Company, including leading the McKinsey Global Institute on sustainability topics globally, has lectured in economics at Oxford University and worked as an economist at the World Bank, and holds a PhD in Economics from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
He is Deputy Chair of Climateworks and Domestic Chair of the Low Carbon Fuels Alliance of Australia and New Zealand.
”The worst thing that can happen is a project progresses all this way, they spend lots of development capital, lots of effort, and then they come to a set of investor decisions where they realise there are some really fatal underlying issues which either cannot be rectified or are too expensive to change.
Fraser Thompson
Key Links
- Green Fuels Accelerator media release
- Solving for Offtake: Insights from the Green Fuels Accelerator webinar recording
- Green Fuels Accelerator investor webinar, 27 August 2026:
- The Australian Government’s low carbon liquid fuels consultation
- Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA)
- Cyan Ventures Newsletter (or subscribe below)
- Cyan Ventures LinkedIn
We cover
- $19 billion of projects and no financial close
- The demand signal
- Learning curves, and who underwrites the first project
- Fuel security, the Strait of Hormuz, and tourism risk
- Blending, and the cost to consumers
- The $30 to $50 million development capital gap
- Why policy alone does not close these projects
- Why low carbon liquid fuels first
- Inside the programme, and the mock investment readiness committee
- An airline in the room: managing the conflict
- The seven projects, and what the cohort was selected for
- The Finance Readiness Assessment, and its three legs
- The six dimensions of a financial close
- Long-term funding, and taking the toolkit to other sectors
