A weekly podcast featuring veteran investor Shayle Kann interviewing experts about the state of the energy sector and the technologies powering decarbonization.
Shayle Kann is asking the big questions about the ways we power our world: How cheap can clean energy get? Where is the smart money going on new technologies? How will the AI boom both help and hinder us on our journey to decarbonization? Every Thursday on Catalyst, Shayle dives deep into the world of energy with prominent experts, investors, researchers, and executives to unpack both the solutions and the challenges at play in this ever-changing landscape.
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more
This episode explores the critical role of industrial steam, which accounts for 50% of global industrial energy, and the urgent need for its decarbonization. Addison Stark of AtmosZero explains why traditional waste heat recovery is often inefficient, instead proposing standardized, air-source heat pumps as a scalable alternative to fossil fuel boilers. The discussion delves into the technical and economic challenges of transitioning, including the "spark spread" between electricity and natural gas prices, and how thermal storage and high COP heat pumps offer viable pathways, especially when considering regional energy costs and security.
Shayle Kann and Chris Sharp from Digital Realty discuss the booming data center industry, driven by AI workloads. They differentiate between training (broad deployment) and inference (regional growth), highlighting the critical role of existing availability zones due to latency and throughput. The conversation delves into the complexities of scaling up, power constraints, extended development timelines, and the industry's navigation of "braggawatts" versus genuine demand, including the role of "bridge power."
The podcast explores the current boom in the gas turbine market, noting high demand from the electric sector, especially data centers, and the resulting increases in lead times and costs. Guest Anthony Brough explains the market's historical boom-bust cycles, the "guarded optimism" of OEMs, and the complex supply chain shared with the oil & gas and aerospace industries. The discussion also covers the impact of diverse market drivers like renewables and battery storage, and technological advancements in efficiency and hydrogen readiness.
Shayle Kann and Carl Hoiland of Zanskar discuss the evolution of geothermal power, examining its initial boom and subsequent stagnation due to exploration challenges and "dry hole risk." They break down the step-by-step process of geothermal project development, including temperature gradient holes, slim wells, and managing reservoir decline, while also highlighting new technologies like EGS and AI-driven exploration. The conversation covers current permitting reforms and the significant, yet geographically specific, resource potential of geothermal.
The episode explores the Trump administration's executive order on deep-sea mining, examining its implications for US and international waters, particularly given US non-ratification of UNCLOS. It details the unique regulatory and operational bottlenecks facing deep-sea mineral exploration in the US, contrasting them with the more advanced frameworks in the Cook Islands and Japan. The discussion also covers the technical feasibility of extraction and refining, addressing environmental concerns and the economic viability of polymetallic nodule projects compared to terrestrial mining.
Former IndyCar race engineer Tristan Doherty, now CPO at LG Energy Solution Vertech, applies his risk management expertise to energy storage. He details industry shifts post-Moss Landing fire, emphasizing containerized systems and continuous safety innovations. Doherty also highlights LGES's substantial US manufacturing investments and vertical integration, crucial for resilience and an "outside-in" design approach to meet unprecedented grid demand.
This episode of The Green Blueprint features Terawatt Infrastructure founder Neha Palmer, delving into the company's ambitious mission to electrify heavy freight transport. She explains how Terawatt secured a billion-dollar investment and successfully launched its first commercial heavy-duty charging depot near the ports of LA and Long Beach, despite market skepticism and infrastructure complexities. Palmer also details the strategic approach to site development, innovative charging designs like pull-through stalls, customer engagement, and the vision for a nationwide network, addressing the critical challenges and future opportunities in this nascent industry.
Shayle Kann and Chris Colbert of Elementl Power discuss the burgeoning US nuclear market, driven by hyperscaler demand and regulatory reform. They explain Elementl's technology-agnostic, customer-first development model, emphasizing how corporate buyers are taking on upfront risks and enabling multi-project deployments to drive down costs. The conversation also covers the evolving role of utilities, the speeding up of regulatory timelines, and projections for new nuclear operations in the early 2030s, highlighting the critical role of repeatability and skilled labor in achieving economic viability.
Ben Brown, CEO of Renew Home, discusses the evolution of virtual power plants (VPPs) from pager-based demand response to AI-driven systems utilizing millions of smart devices. His company builds VPPs that offer continuous, subtle energy shifts across homes, prioritizing customer control and personalization. This approach delivers significantly higher opt-in rates and provides a more cost-effective, faster-to-deploy solution for grid challenges than traditional power plants or large-scale batteries.
Shayle Kann hosts Mike Schroepfer and Nick Chaset at SF Climate Week for a live Catalyst episode. They explore the challenges and successes of building consumer-loved climate tech products, emphasizing the need to solve tangible problems and offer clear value beyond just environmental benefits. The discussion includes a game where they assess the current hype around topics such as data center load growth, nuclear fusion, carbon removal, virtual power plants, and AI's role in climate solutions. They conclude by identifying critical minerals as a key sector impacted by geopolitics and sharing 'craziest ideas that just might work.'
Shayle Kann and Ahmad Ghahreman delve into the geopolitics of rare earth elements, highlighting China's decades-long strategy to monopolize their supply chain, from mining to magnet production. They discuss the recent escalation of Chinese export controls on REE technology, processing equipment, and finished magnets, causing significant market disruption. The conversation also covers the challenges and opportunities for developing alternative rare earth supply chains outside China, emphasizing the potential of recycling end-of-life products for a critical source of these essential minerals.
Jeff Waters, CEO of Powin, discusses the rapidly expanding US battery storage market, highlighting lessons from the semiconductor industry for domestic manufacturing, advocating for partnerships with China. He explains the astonishing scaling of project sizes, key deployment models, and market drivers like surging data center demand. Despite policy headwinds and tariff uncertainties, Waters remains optimistic, emphasizing the industry's resilience and future trends in technology, long-duration storage, and cybersecurity.
Big tech’s data center construction boom is fueling a flurry of natural gas development, despite the fuel’s challenges, and it’s complicating big tech’s climate goals. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) could mitigate emissions from those new plants, and hyperscalers could secure low-carbon power while meeting their needs for speed and reliability. So how could natural gas with CCS serve data center loads? In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann , chief scientist at Carbon Direct, who...
Premiums are rising. Insurers are leaving markets. But people keep building in risk-prone areas, and the climate disasters just keep coming. Can insurance markets adapt? In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Judd Boomhower , an assistant professor of economics at the University of California-San Diego and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He studies how insurance markets are reacting to climate change. Shayle and Judd cover topics like: Why insurers are limiti...
Data centers face a critical timing problem. They need massive amounts of power immediately, but grid upgrades can take more than seven years to complete. Microgrids could be a solution to this growing power gap. "How do you future-proof your systems through adaptability of technologies? Microgrids are really a nice technology to address that," explains Adib Nasle, CEO of Xendee. In this episode, recorded as part of a live Frontier Forum, Latitude Media's Stephen Lacey speaks with Xendee co-foun...
Everyone wants a piece of general purpose models. Instacart has deployed ChatGPT for recipes and meal planning. The Mayo Clinic is using it to summarize patient records. Schneider Electric is using an OpenAI LLM to generate sustainability reports. With such powerful models, what’s the need for specialized models built for specific industries, especially in climate tech? In this episode, Shayle talks to Sam Smith-Eppsteiner , partner at Innovation Endeavors. She recently wrote a blog post arguing...
Tyler Norris says regulators have been getting two different stories. On one side, they’ve been hearing that data centers are largely inflexible loads. On the other, last year the U.S. Department of Energy recommended data center flexibility, and EPRI launched its DCFlex initiative to demonstrate the same. So he and a few other researchers wanted to know, What’s the potential for data center flexibility? And what benefits could it have system-wide? In this episode, Shayle talks to Tyler , a PhD ...
In 2023, the U.S. market for transferable clean energy tax credits was just getting started. One year later, that market has tripled in size , with credits diversifying beyond wind and solar into nuclear, manufacturing, and other technologies. "The statistics on just how much it grew over that period are really impressive — indicating the transparency, efficiency, liquidity, and growing nature of the market," explains Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, which operates a debt and tax credit platform for...
Robots are becoming cheaper to make and more powerful because of AI. In the climate tech space, they’re already laying transmission lines, inspecting wind turbines, and installing solar panels.. And with labor productivity stagnating, immigration restrictions tightening, and the cost of labor rising, they’re looking even more appealing. So where might robotics have the biggest impact on climate tech? In this episode, Shayle talks to Andy Lubershane, a partner and head of research at Energy Impac...
Batteries were electrochemistry’s breakout hit. For years it was a field that kept a low profile, outshined by flashier cousins like biotech and computer science. That is until lithium-ion batteries became big business, showing that studying the relationship between chemicals and energy could unlock technical pathways that other disciplines could not. Now the field is making breakthroughs in critical areas like cement, metallurgy, and new battery chemistries. So what else can electrochemistry do...
Laurent Boinot, a power and utilities leader at Microsoft, remembers the moment he discovered the power of artificial intelligence. Years ago, as a student using a basic AI model to assess World Bank project risks, he was amazed to discover the technology outperformed human experts. "With a very basic AI tool, we were able to replicate that risk analysis and do a better job than the human graders did," says Boinot. Today, Boinot works with utilities to implement AI solutions — an industry tradit...
The predictions are coming in hot. Data centers could grow to consume more than 9% of U.S. electricity generation by 2030, according to EPRI . That’s more than double its current estimated data center load. AI will increase global data center power demand 165% by 2030, says Goldman Sachs . And billions of dollars are at stake. Utilities , megasite developers , and data center operators are all basing major decisions on predictions like these. But they’re also the kinds of predictions we’ve seen ...
Between 2013 and 2023, cultivated meat companies raised a total of nearly $3 billion . In 2020, Singapore approved the world’s first cultivated meat products, with the U.S. and Israel following close behind. But head to the meat department of any American grocery store today, and you won’t find cultivated meat for sale. After short-lived restaurant tasting menus in the U.S., it’s no longer available . Distribution in Singapore is growing but small , and no products have launched in Israel yet. S...
Sodium-ion could be the next big thing. Last August, Natron announced a $1.4B factory in North Carolina. Other U.S. companies like Peak Energy , Bedrock Materials, and Acculon Energy are jockeying for position in the market. Meanwhile, almost all of the world’s sodium-ion manufacturing capacity, current and planned, is in China . CATL’s CEO Robin Zeng suggested that sodium-ion could ultimately take up to half of LFP’s market share . The potential advantages are exciting: Sodium-based chemistries...
Sheldon Kimber says the grid is broken — at least for new data centers and other large, industrial loads that need lots of clean power, fast. But the founder and CEO of Intersect Power believes there’s a workaround that enables larger data centers and speeds up time to power: colocating behind-the-meter generation and storage on megasites rich with renewable resources. In short, instead of bringing clean generation to load, bring load to clean generation. Major partners are on board with the str...
Didn’t catch last week’s episode on Nat Bullard’s mega slide deck on energy transition? Start there . This is the second half of our extended conversation with Nat, the former chief content officer at BloombergNEF and current co-founder at data insights company Halcyon. In this episode, Shayle and Nat dig into topics like: Rising solar installations and stagnating wind Why we’re wasting so much renewable power amid skyrocketing load growth The rise of Chinese plug-in hybrids and exports Whether ...
When it comes to decarbonization planning, utilities tend to focus heavily on the supply side. But they may be overlooking one of their most powerful tools for managing a cleaner grid — demand flexibility. Demand response and time-varying rates have been in use for decades. But many utilities still haven't fully embraced demand flexibility in their planning. As utilities push toward higher penetrations of renewable energy, the ability to shift demand becomes increasingly vital for maintaining gr...
Out today: Nat Bullard ’s 200-page slide deck with data from across the energy transition. Nat is the former chief content officer at BloombergNEF and current co-founder at data insights company Halcyon. In part one of their two-part conversation, Shayle cherry-picked the most interesting slides and sat down with Nat to unpack them. They cover topics like: Accidental solar geoengineering and the state of aerosols The United States’ record-setting fossil fuels exports Whether Chinese oil demand i...
Here’s a three-part puzzle for global agriculture: How do you increase calories for a growing population, while zeroing out emissions and minimizing land usage? The stakes are enormous. According to the UN, the world has to feed an estimated 9.8 billion people by 2050. But agriculture currently accounts for about a third of global carbon emissions and is driving the conversion of important ecosystems – like rainforest and grasslands – into farmland. Converting land is especially problematic beca...
First-of-a-kind projects need infrastructure investment, the kind of money that costs less than venture capital and usually comes in the form of deals worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But infrastructure investors are notoriously conservative and convincing them to bite can be challenging. So what do infrastructure investors really want? In this episode, Shayle talks to Mario Fernandez , head of Breakthrough Energy’s FOAK finance program. It has worked with companies like Rondo, For...
