Lever Business measures Unlocking early clean fuel projects requires private sector initiatives to reduce and share risk and coordinate across immature value chains. Businesses accelerate progress by combining capabilities and aligning incentives through partnerships, using innovative financing mechanisms, and deploying contracting models designed to reduce risk and improve project bankability. Partnerships and business models Partnerships and innovative business models strengthen early clean fuel projects by aligning incentives, sharing risk and pooling complementary expertise across the value chain. OEM-developer partnerships combine technology know-how with delivery capability to accelerate deployment, while investor-developer collaborations provide early capital and strengthen financial discipline. Integrated ventures and vertical integration models enhance bankability through captive supply or offtake arrangements. Together, partnerships can help transform fragmented initiatives into coordinated value chains to align development timelines and incentives. Contracting Innovative contracting mechanisms improve project bankability by improving revenue certainty and distributing risk across the value chain. Tools such as advanced market commitments, take-or-pay agreements, tolling structures and back-to-back offtake contracts create predictable cash flows through long-term purchase obligations, minimum payment guarantees, shared risks and/or reduced exposure to commodity price swings. These arrangements are increasingly being adapted from other infrastructure sectors to clean fuels, giving developers and investors clearer visibility of future revenues and counterparty performance, essential to moving projects from feasibility to final investment decision. Financing New financing instruments are also mobilizing private capital for clean fuel deployment by aligning returns with sustainability outcomes and mitigating delivery risk. Green and sustainability-linked loans, transition bonds and innovative approaches to reduce risk by bringing onboard different types of investment capital are proving effective to change return profiles of projects and reduce capital cost. Similarly, mezzanine capital, credit guarantees and insurance products help de-risk construction and technology scale-up. By improving capital efficiency and protecting lenders and equity holders against early-stage volatility, these mechanisms are helping unlock first-of-a-kind clean fuel projects and demonstrate commercial viability.3 Fuelling the Future: How Business, Finance and Policy can Accelerate the Clean Fuels Market 32

Fuelling the Future 2026