- Tree
- Emerging technologies that make lower-grade ore viable for hydrogen-based ironmaking
- Branch to watch
- DRI + electric smelting furnace (ESF)
- Why it matters
- The smelter removes impurities after reduction, so ores unsuited to DRI with an arc furnace could become usable.
- Evidence
- NeoSmelt pilot plant study, Western Australia (BlueScope, BHP, Rio Tinto and partners), plus linked papers and patents.
- Constraints
- Pilot stage, high power demand, slag handling.
- Confidence
- Medium No commercial-scale plant yet.
- Next step
- Compare with ore beneficiation costs. Alert me when pilot results publish.
Technology intelligence for heavy industry
Helping heavy industry place its R&D bets with confidence
Technology intelligence for faster decarbonisation.
For R&D, innovation and decarbonisation leaders in hard-to-abate industries. We grow a living technology tree for each decision: every finding traceable to its evidence, every analysis repeatable as new evidence arrives.
Why now
Plants rebuilt this decade will still run in the 2060s
Heavy industry is about to make its biggest technology bets in a generation. Teams must choose pathways while costs, rules and technologies keep moving underneath them.
>70%
of the world’s coal-based blast-furnace capacity needs a reinvestment decision this decade
Source: Agora Industry, Global Steel Transformation Tracker ↗30–40years
typical life of the heavy-industry plant that replaces it
Source: IEA, The challenge of reaching zero emissions in heavy industry ↗2026EU CBAM
carbon now has a price at the border for imports of cement, iron and steel, aluminium, fertilisers and hydrogen
Source: European Commission, CBAM definitive regime ↗Industry wants to change, but the assumptions keep moving
Companies are committing billions to lower-carbon routes. Then energy prices, grid timelines, hydrogen bids or carbon prices shift under the business case. Recent examples, and what a tree would have been watching:
Company What changed What a tree would watch
ArcelorMittal2025 Dropped plans to convert two German plants to hydrogen-ready steelmaking despite €1.3bn in public support, citing high energy costs. Global Construction Review ↗ Power prices and energy-light alternatives
SSAB2025 Electric steel mill in Luleå delayed 12 months because grid reinforcements could not be delivered on time. SSAB ↗ Grid connection timelines by site
thyssenkrupp Steel2025 Hydrogen supply tender for its Duisburg DRI plant put on hold after prices came in significantly higher than expected. Hydrogen Insight ↗ Hydrogen bids and hydrogen-light ironmaking routes
Heidelberg Materials2026 Full-scale carbon-capture project at its Edmonton cement plant put on hold as lower carbon prices weakened the business case. Taproot Edmonton ↗ Carbon prices and capture costs
Illustrative decisions
Six industries, six long-lived bets
Every hard-to-abate sector faces a technology choice it will live with for decades. Pick an industry to see the decision, what the R&D lead needs to know, and the question a technology tree would answer.
Steel
Which ironmaking route will we run for the next 30 years?
The head of R&D at a steelmaker, with a blast furnace approaching its next reline.
Options on the table
What the R&D lead needs to know
- Which routes work with the ore we can actually buy?
- Which emerging technologies should we pilot, partner on or watch?
- What evidence would change our mind, and when?
Cement
How do we cut the emissions that come from the limestone itself?
The head of R&D at a cement producer. Fuel switching alone can’t fix it: much of cement’s CO₂ is released when limestone is calcined.
Options on the table
What the R&D lead needs to know
- Which clays and supplementary materials can we source near our plants?
- Which cements will standards bodies and our customers accept?
- Where does capture beat clinker substitution on cost per tonne?
Hydrogen & energy
Which electrolyser technology do we scale for our next project?
The head of technology at a hydrogen developer, choosing stacks for a plant that must run on variable renewable power.
Options on the table
What the R&D lead needs to know
- How do stacks degrade when power comes and goes?
- Which designs cut our dependence on scarce catalysts such as iridium?
- What would it take to reach a final investment decision?
Chemicals
What replaces the gas-fired furnaces in our steam crackers?
The head of R&D at a petrochemicals producer. Cracking furnaces burn fossil fuel to run at about 850 °C.
Options on the table
What the R&D lead needs to know
- Which electric heating concepts hold up at industrial scale?
- What grid connection and power price would we need?
- Which option fits our site’s revamp schedule?
Aviation
Which sustainable fuel pathways do we lock in supply for?
The head of fuels and sustainability at an airline or fuel supplier, facing binding EU blending mandates.
Options on the table
What the R&D lead needs to know
- How far can waste-oil feedstock stretch before prices spike?
- Which e-fuel projects will actually reach a final investment decision?
- What will each pathway cost per tonne of CO₂ avoided?
Shipping
Which fuel will the ships we order now run on for 25 years?
The head of newbuilds at a shipowner, ordering vessels before the fuel market has settled.
Options on the table
What the R&D lead needs to know
- Where will each fuel be available to bunker?
- Which engines and fuel systems keep our options open?
- What will global rules look like when these ships are mid-life?
Illustrative scenarios, not customer cases.
Leading R&D, innovation or decarbonisation in one of these industries?
Bring us a live decision. Early adopters get a tree grown for their own question.
The problem
Today, answering these questions is slow, scattered and hard to defend
The evidence is spread across sources that each use different language. The usual result is a one-off report that is hard to audit, dated within months, and can still miss the branch that mattered: budget spent on the wrong technology, or a better one never examined.
Where the evidence lives
- Papers and patents
- Projects and suppliers
- Standards and regulation
- Corporate and market evidence
How teams cope today
- Narrow keyword searches
- Manual spreadsheets and shortlists
- Large document dumps into generic AI tools
- Consultant reports that date quickly
Analysts, researchers and technology scouts
Help us get this right: tell us your challenges
Where does your evidence trail break? Which sources, tools and hand-offs slow you down? Your answers shape what we build next.
How it works
We grow a technology tree for each decision
You describe the decision. We gather the evidence, map the technologies, and deliver insights you can trace back to their sources. The tree keeps growing as new evidence arrives.
-
Seed Your use case, in plain English
Describe the decision and its context: the question the tree should answer.
-
Roots A vector database of relevant content
Papers, patents, datasheets, standards and your own documents, searchable by meaning, not just keywords.
-
Branches A knowledge graph of technologies
Technologies, performance metrics and the explicit relationships between them.
-
Fruit Insights you can act on
Alerts, answers, reports and dashboards, each traced back to its sources.
Concept · illustrative output
What the R&D lead receives
An update from the tree: one branch worth a closer look, with the evidence, constraints and confidence behind it.
The finding is illustrative, but its evidence is real: Project NeoSmelt in Kwinana, Western Australia, where a smelter after direct reduction removes impurities so lower-grade Pilbara ores could be used.
Why it’s different
A platform that works for heavy industry
Built for technology decisions that have to stand up in front of boards, regulators and 30‑year payback periods.
Traceable
Every finding links to the paper, patent or datasheet behind it, so it stands up to scrutiny.
Repeatable
Same inputs, same tree, every time. Rerun the analysis as new evidence arrives.
Yours
The tree stays with you after the engagement, including what it learned from your own documents.
Deployable
Runs in your environment for sensitive work, with language models optional.
How we work
Start with one live decision. Keep the tree.
- Step 1
Start
A focused, paid consulting engagement on a live technology decision.
- Step 2
Keep
The tree stays with you as a platform, growing as new evidence arrives.
- Step 3
Grow
One tree per decision, many per company.
It takes the place of one-off consultant reports, analyst subscriptions, patent searches and generic AI tools.
The climate case
Worked example · one steel plant
- Plant output
- 2.0 Mt steel/yr
- Blast furnace route2.0 Mt × 2.2 t CO₂/t
- 4.4 Mt CO₂
- Hydrogen DRI route2.0 Mt × 0.5 t CO₂/t
- −1.0 Mt CO₂
- Avoided per plant
- 3.4 Mt CO₂/yr
- Decisions influenced
- × 3
- Total avoided
- ≈10 Mt CO₂/yr
Better evidence → earlier decisions → lower-carbon routes sooner. Figures are approximate; this is the hypothesis we are testing.
Who’s behind it
Warren Fauvel
Founder · Berlin
I’ve spent 20 years across design, founding, product and growth in B2B SaaS, leading product and growth at a market intelligence platform used by organisations including NATO, Rolls-Royce, E.ON and Deloitte. I have a deep understanding of the existing tools and AI/ML pipelines, and of finding the technical edges that make a better approach work at scale.
I believe sustainability will drive the next hundred years of business, and I want to point that experience at it.
OfTech is part of Carbon13’s Venture Builder, Berlin 2026.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
Get involved
Bring us a live technology decision
Pick the conversation that fits. Each link opens a booking page in a new tab.
R&D and innovation leaders
Become an early adopter
The platform is running with a small group of testers. Book an onboarding call and we’ll set you up with a tree for a live decision.
Register for onboarding Commercial partners
Scope a decision together
Explore a paid engagement on a live technology decision, or another way of working together.
Discuss a partnership Investors
Challenge our hypotheses
Test our buyer and impact hypotheses, and follow how they hold up as we go.
Book an investor call Everyone else
Thirty minutes, any topic
Tell us about a recent technology decision, or anything else on your mind.
Book 30 minutes