You read the Abundance thesis, nodded along, and closed the tab thinking "yes, obviously, we should build more of everything." Then the next morning you sat down to actually work and realized you have a worldview but not a to-do list.
That gap is the whole problem this post tries to close. Abundance is a good lens. It says the constraint on a better future is often not physics or money but the rules, queues, and software that sit between an idea and a finished thing. But a lens is not a product. If you want to build, you need a concrete direction anchored to a specific bottleneck that a real person is stuck behind today.
Below are build directions in energy, housing, permitting, and the grid. Each one names the bottleneck instead of waving at a vibe. At the end there is a sanity check you can run before you commit a year of your life to any of them.
If you want the worldview itself first, read the Abundance agenda, explained for non-wonks. This post assumes you already buy it and want the build list.
From Thesis To To-Do List
The Abundance argument, compressed: we know how to make clean energy, housing, and infrastructure cheaper, but we've accumulated process debt that makes building slow and expensive. The interesting work is often in the connective tissue, not the headline invention.
That reframes what "climate builder" means. You do not have to invent a new battery chemistry. A lot of the highest-leverage work is unglamorous software and services that shave months off a queue, cut a soft cost, or make a permit legible. Those are real businesses with real customers who are in pain right now.
Two filters to keep in mind as you read:
- Bottleneck first. Start from a step that is slow, expensive, or opaque, and where the person stuck there would pay to be unstuck. Do not start from a technology you think is cool.
- Buildable by you. A direction you can ship a useful first version of in months beats a moonshot you can only gesture at. You can grow into the hard version later.
Energy: What's Still Missing In The Stack
Generation gets the attention. The stack around generation is where a lot of the friction actually lives.
Interconnection and siting workflow. Getting a new solar, wind, or storage project connected to the grid involves long study queues and a mountain of paperwork. The bottleneck is process, not silicon. Software that helps developers manage interconnection applications, estimate queue position, or screen sites for likely approval is boring and valuable. The customer is a developer bleeding money while they wait. The wait has grown long: Lawrence Berkeley National Lab's tracking finds the typical time from interconnection request to commercial operation has climbed from under two years in the mid-2000s to roughly five years for recent projects, though it varies by region and year (LBNL, "Queued Up").
Storage economics and dispatch. Batteries make money by charging cheap and discharging valuable, which is an optimization and forecasting problem. Tools that help operators bid into markets, forecast prices, or size a system to a specific load are software problems sitting on top of hardware someone else builds.
Behind-the-meter and commercial-industrial. A lot of demand is stuck at the "I'd electrify or add solar but I can't get a clean quote and financing path" step. Anything that turns a fragmented, quote-by-phone process into something legible is a real service business.
If you want to see who is already working these seams, browse startups worth watching in energy and grid. Studying who exists is how you find the gap they left, not a reason to give up.
Housing And Permitting: The Software The Buildout Needs
Housing is where "the rules are the bottleneck" is most obviously true. The physical act of building a home is well understood. The path to permission to build it is where months and dollars disappear.
Permit legibility. In many jurisdictions, figuring out what you're even allowed to build on a parcel means reading zoning code, overlays, and setbacks that are scattered and written for lawyers. Tools that turn a parcel and a jurisdiction into a plain-English "here's what's allowed and what it'll take" answer save enormous time. The customer is a small builder, an ADU owner, or an architect.
Process and compliance tooling. The submission-review-revision loop with a city is slow and stateful. Software that tracks where an application is, what's outstanding, and what a reviewer will likely flag reduces round trips. This is unglamorous and the buyers (builders, sometimes cities) have money.
Construction cost and scheduling honesty. Soft costs and delays kill projects. Tools that give a realistic early estimate and flag the risky steps help decisions happen sooner.
The physical and regulatory constraints here are real and you must respect them. You are not going to software your way out of a legitimate flood setback or a structural code. The opportunity is making the real rules faster to navigate, not pretending they don't exist.
Grid, Interconnection, And The Boring-But-Huge Opportunities
The grid is the connective tissue for almost everything else, and it is aging, congested, and hard to see into. That combination is a builder's opportunity.
- Grid data and visibility. Much useful grid information is fragmented across utilities and formats. Anyone who makes it easier to see where there's capacity, congestion, or hosting headroom is helping every downstream developer.
- Grid-enhancing technologies and adoption. Reconductoring, dynamic line ratings, and similar upgrades can get more out of existing lines. Some of the bottleneck is deployment and coordination, not invention.
- Load flexibility. As EVs, heat pumps, and data centers add demand, shifting load in time becomes valuable. Software that coordinates flexible loads has a growing customer base.
To ground any of this in real numbers rather than guesses, lean on the best open data and tools for tracking clean-energy progress instead of citing figures from memory.
How To Pressure-Test An Abundance Idea Before You Build
Enthusiasm is cheap. Before you commit, run your idea through these checks. The goal is to fail on paper before you fail with a year of your life.
1. The named-bottleneck test
Name the exact step that is slow, expensive, or opaque, and name the person stuck behind it. "The grid is bad" fails. "Interconnection studies take a developer months and they'd pay for better queue visibility" passes. If you can't name the person and the step, you have a vibe, not a bottleneck.
2. The demand test
Would a specific customer pay for this today, before it's perfect? Can you find five of them and get a "yes, that's a real pain" in a conversation? If the demand only exists in a future where policy changes, note that dependency honestly. Building ahead of a policy shift can work, but only if you know that's the bet you're making.
3. The moat and constraint test
Why is this hard enough that it won't be trivially copied, and what physical or regulatory constraints will you never engineer around? Regulatory knowledge, data access, and integration depth can be moats. A constraint you're ignoring is a landmine. Write both down.
4. The honesty test
Would this still be worth building if it grew slowly and stayed small? Strip out any assumption about a huge market or guaranteed success — those aren't yours to promise, and plenty of good, real businesses are medium-sized. If the idea only makes sense at hype-scale, be honest with yourself about that.
An idea that clears all four is not guaranteed to work. Nothing is. But it's grounded in a real problem someone has today, which is the only starting point worth having.
Starter Moves And Where To Browse Next
If one of these directions is pulling at you, the next step is small and concrete:
- Pick one bottleneck and one customer. Write a single sentence naming both.
- Talk to five people stuck behind it. Not a survey — conversations. Listen for the phrase "yeah, I'd pay to make that go away."
- Ship the smallest useful thing. A spreadsheet, a script, a one-page tool. Get it in front of someone before you build the real version.
When you reach a genuine ship moment and need to put a simple landing page or portfolio in front of those five people, there are lightweight tools for that; we keep an honest, disclosed note about what we recommend on our disclosure page. That pointer is only worth anything once you actually have something to show — not before.
To see what other people are making and find your gap, spend time in Builders & Makers and The Optimism Directory. If you're earlier than that and still orienting, Start Here and the Climate, Energy & Abundance hub are the calmer on-ramps.
In Plain English
What this is: a set of concrete, bottleneck-anchored build directions in energy, housing, permitting, and the grid, plus a four-part check to test an idea before you commit.
Who it helps: builders and founders who already buy the Abundance worldview and want a to-do list instead of a manifesto.
When to use it: when you're deciding what to actually make and want to start from a real problem someone has, not from a technology you think is cool.
What to do next: pick one bottleneck and one customer, talk to five people who live with it, and ship the smallest useful thing you can. Then browse Builders & Makers to see who else is working the same seams.
You don't need to invent the future from scratch. A lot of it is waiting behind a slow queue, an unreadable rule, or a process nobody has bothered to make legible. Go make one of those things faster.
If you want the wider survey this sits inside, read the pillar: the clean-energy and build-more-stuff projects making the future look bright. Then head to Builders & Makers and start on your one bottleneck.