AI is working its way across climate tech, helping companies discover giant lodes of ore, catch battery defects, and monitor energy infrastructure. Could it help us find revolutionary new materials, too? Turns out, it’s complicated. In this episode, Shayle talks to Ekin Dogus Cubuk, or Dogus, a researcher focused on materials at Google DeepMind. DeepMind is one of several players, including Microsoft, trying to discover new materials that could be used in things like better battery chemistries, ...
Sep 19, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast Deploy or innovate? Scale up an existing technology or develop a breakthrough? Build, build, build, or invent a better mousetrap? The question isn’t which strategy to follow; it’s which strategy to use in which sector. Virtually no one thinks that solar needs brand new tech breakthroughs to scale. Crystalline silicone took the lion’s share of the market years ago from cadmium telluride, amorphous silicon, CIGS and other early solar technologies. But in carbon removal, batteries, nuclear, and oth...
Sep 12, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Cutting emissions is essential to avoiding the worst of climate change, but we also have to deal with the impacts of climate change happening now. Fortunately, there’s a growing list of technologies that could help us adapt — and potentially turn a profit for investors, too. Will these emerging adaptation and resilience (A&R) technologies take off as an investment category? In this episode, Shayle talks to Katie MacDonald, co-founder and managing partner at Tailwind. They talk about the areas of...
Sep 05, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast Oil producers waste a lot of natural gas. Last year they flared 150 billion cubic meters of associated gas into the atmosphere, equivalent to about half the global carbon emissions of aviation over a 30-year period. So why are oil producers burning a valuable commodity like gas? In this episode, Shayle talks to Tomás de Oliveira Bredariol, an energy and environmental policy analyst focused on methane at the IEA. So far, multiple major global initiatives haven’t made a dent in flare volumes, whic...
Aug 29, 2024•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Hydrogen has two big problems: cost and supply. As a low-carbon feedstock, it could decarbonize planes, industry, and power plants. It could even replace the oil in plastics and chemicals. But the leading contenders for low-carbon hydrogen production — like using zero-carbon power for electrolysis and methane pyrolysis — just haven’t cut it yet. So far, the price points are too high and the scale of production is too low to spur a hydrogen revolution. But instead of synthesizing hydrogen, what i...
Aug 23, 2024•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast Editor’s note: There’s new interest in nuclear power from electric utilities, the White House, and the public. While NuScale’s deal to build a small modular reactor failed last year, TerraPower is currently building the U.S.’s first advanced non-light water reactor in Wyoming. So we’re revisiting an episode from last November with The Good Energy Collective’s Dr. Jessica Lovering unpacking one of nuclear’s biggest challenges: cost. Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. are some of the highest i...
Aug 15, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast America’s green bank – officially known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – is ramping up. Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government is sending $27 billion to a network of non-profit organizations, state green banks, and local private lenders to fund distributed energy projects. The pressure is on to invest those dollars quickly and efficiently. The GGRF won’t be considered successful if it only deploys that $27 billion – it will be successful if it catalyzes 5x more in ca...
Aug 13, 2024•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Editor’s note: There’s momentum behind permitting reform in the U.S. Congress right now. It could mean unstopping a serious bottleneck in climate tech — transmission. So we’re revisiting an episode from last May with Grid Strategies’ Rob Gramlich to understand how we got here, the impacts on climate tech, and the potential fixes. The U.S. power grid is clogged, and it’s holding back the energy transition. Solar and wind farms are waiting four or more years to connect to the grid. Rising congesti...
Aug 08, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Little-known fact: The primary product of steel mills is CO2. A conventional blast furnace produces almost two tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of steel. And with almost two billion tons of steel produced annually — roughly 500 pounds for every human, every year — that’s a lot of carbon: about 8% of global energy system emissions. And yet, steel is vital for vast parts of the economy, including the energy transition itself. So why does steel production emit so much CO2? And what are the path...
Aug 02, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast Automakers got ahead of their skis. EV sales are up globally and in the U.S., but growth has been slower than expected and uneven. After enjoying a wave of growth driven by early adopters, automakers overestimated demand of more cautious consumers and ended up producing more than buyers wanted. Now auto dealers are slashing prices to move cars off the lot. So how did the market get here? And how can EVs appeal to the next wave of consumers? In this episode, Shayle talks to Gene Berdichevsky, co-...
Jul 25, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In March, Nvidia announced a new microchip designed for AI that is 25 times more energy efficient than its predecessor. Two months later, Google announced one with a 67% efficiency improvement. Today, the rest of the semiconductor industry is hyper focused on efficiency gains. Will they save us from ballooning data center energy demands? In this episode, Shayle talks to Christian Belady, former Microsoft vice president now focusing on data center advanced development. They unpack concerns about ...
Jul 18, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast While we were all at home during Covid desperately trying to get our hands on toilet paper, exercise equipment, and home furnishings, solar executives like Dan Shugar were trying to get steel and power electronics to massive PV farms under development. As equipment and workforce disruptions spiraled due to lockdowns, the cost of installed solar started going up for the first time in nearly a decade. “Costs just skyrocketed. And so at this point in my career. I wasn't going to proceed like that,”...
Jul 17, 2024•20 min•Transcript available on Metacast While aviation may be converging on one main pathway to decarbonization — sustainable aviation fuel — maritime shipping may require a more diverse set of solutions: a portfolio of fuels, energy efficiency, and on-board carbon capture and storage. But each technology has operational and capital challenges. So what will it take to scale them up? In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Lynn Loo, CEO of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation. Ocean-going shipping consumes about 300 million tons...
Jul 12, 2024•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Investment is on the rise in geothermal, where advances in drilling techniques are driving down the cost of generation right as the grid needs more clean, firm, dispatchable power to meet rising load growth. And enhanced-geothermal startup Fervo is leading the pack of entrants, signing agreements to provide power to Southern California Edison and Google. So how ready are these next-generation geothermal technologies to scale? In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Roland Horne, professor of earth ...
Jun 27, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast New electric vehicles — including both battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles — make up nearly half of new car sales in China. Compared to slowing EV sales in Europe and the U.S. the Chinese market is booming. So what’s going on? In this episode, Shayle talks to TP Huang, who writes a Substack about EVs, clean energy, and other tech focused on China. (Editor's note: TP Huang is a pseudonym, used for family reasons.) Shayle and TP cover topics like: How EVs became extremely cost competitive...
Jun 20, 2024•38 min•Transcript available on Metacast Driven by the AI boom, data centers’ energy demand could account for 9% of U.S. power generation by 2030, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. That's more than double current usage. So how do we meet that demand? And what impacts will it have on the grid and decarbonization? In this episode, Shayle talks to Brian Janous, former vice president of energy at Microsoft and current co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Brian talks through the options for meeting data center demand, ...
Jun 13, 2024•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast Tesla’s Master Plan Part 3 lays out the company’s model for a decarbonized economy — and makes the case for why it's economically viable. It outlines a vision for extensive electrification and a reliance on wind and solar power. In this episode, Shayle talks to one of the executives behind the plan, Drew Baglino, who was senior vice president for powertrain and energy at Tesla until April when he resigned. In his 18 years at Tesla he worked on batteries, cars, and even Tesla’s lithium refinery. ...
Jun 06, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Transcript available on Metacast Batteries are making their way into more passenger cars and commercial vehicles than ever before, but the limits of electrification mean that we’ll likely need alternative fuels to decarbonize heavy transport like ships, planes, and trucks. So what are those fuels and what modes of transport do they suit best? In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. They talk through the limits of electrification and the alternatives...
May 30, 2024•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we’re featuring a crossover episode of With Great Power, a show produced by Latitude Studios in partnership with GridX. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. Ahmad Faruqui has been researching electricity pricing since the mid 1970’s, when the cost of a kilowatt-hour was flat. But in the 80’s and 90’s, he started working on dynamic pricing – pioneering the concept of time-of-use rates. The big breakthrough for time-of-use rates came during the fallout from the Cal...
May 28, 2024•24 min•Transcript available on Metacast The U.S. rooftop solar market has tanked. Residential applications in California, the largest market in the country, plunged 82% from May through November 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Contractors are going bankrupt. The big culprits are high interest rates and California’s subsidy cuts. But there are some bright spots. Battery attachment rates in California have surged. So what will it take to revive the U.S. rooftop solar market? In this episode, Shayle talks to Jigar Shah, directo...
May 23, 2024•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast Airlines are lining up to buy as much sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as they can, despite it costing two to three times more than conventional jet fuel, according to BloombergNEF. United Airlines has secured 2.9 billion gallons of SAF over, and others like Delta, Air France-KLM, and Southwest have secured around 1 billion gallons each. And yet to meaningfully decarbonize aviation, the SAF market needs to grow thousands of times larger than it is today. BloombergNEF estimates that global product...
May 16, 2024•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week, we have something a little different: a news quiz. We recently took the stage with four investors at the Prelude Climate Summit — armed with a bell, a buzzer, and four different categories of questions. We tested two teams of venture investors on their knowledge of the most recent industry news. Shayle Kann and Cassie Bowe, partners at venture firm Energy Impact Partners, are team High Voltage. Dr. Carley Anderson, principal at venture firm Prelude Ventures, and Matt Eggers, Prelude’s...
May 08, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast The IPCC says that we likely need to capture hundreds of gigatons of CO2 if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So what are we going to do with all that carbon? In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. Julio says we will store the vast majority of that CO2. But the markets for using CO2 in things like concrete, fizzy water, and chemicals will play an important role in developing the carbon management economy. Shayle and Julio cover t...
May 02, 2024•47 min•Transcript available on Metacast Rare earth elements (REEs) are essential ingredients in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and many electronics. As with most critical minerals, China controls the vast majority of the REE supply chain. And so when it banned the export of REE processing technology last December, it raised concerns about supply. So what will it take to secure the supply of REEs? In this episode, Shayle talks to Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO and cofounder of Cyclic Materials, a rare earth elements recycling company. (Energy...
Apr 25, 2024•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast A little-known U.S. law called the Jones Act shapes climate tech in weird ways — like hindering offshore wind deployment and pushing up energy prices. The law, part of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires all cargo shipped between U.S. ports to be carried by ships that meet strict standards. Those ships must be built in American shipyards, owned by an American company, registered in the U.S., and crewed by a majority American crew. As a result, building cargo ships in the U.S., and operatin...
Apr 18, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast This week we’re bringing you a deep dive into battery supply chains — the season premier of The Big Switch, a show that Latitude Media makes in partnership with Columbia University’s SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy. Across this five-episode documentary series, hosted by the acclaimed energy scholar Dr. Melissa Lott, we examine every step of the sprawling global supply chains behind lithium-ion batteries. In this first episode, we break apart one of the battery cells that was in the original ...
Apr 11, 2024•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast The lithium-ion battery business is taking off, and the battery recycling business is close behind. Financiers are pouring over a billion dollars into recycling companies like Redwood Materials, Ascend Elements, and Li-Cycle. But success depends on a steady supply of used batteries, and with batteries lasting longer than expected — and the battery market still in its infancy — there just aren’t enough dying batteries to go around. As a result, a significant portion of recyclers’ feedstock is com...
Apr 04, 2024•37 min•Transcript available on Metacast The electricity gauntlet we covered last year has been having a moment in the national spotlight, with coverage of rising load growth in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. On one side of the gauntlet, demand for electricity is rising, driven by new loads like EVs, data centers, and electrification. On the other side, electricity supply is slow to grow, bogged down by years-long interconnection queues, the immense challenges of building transmission, and other b...
Mar 28, 2024•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved new rules this month on what information companies must disclose about their greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks, but notably dropped more stringent requirements that the commission initially proposed. Despite being halted by lawsuits, the rules are a significant win for climate transparency. But they’re not as strong as existing climate disclosure regulations in California and the European Union, where many multinational corporations d...
Mar 21, 2024•32 min•Transcript available on Metacast Two major indicators of climate tech stocks – the S&P Clean Energy Index and the MAC Global Solar Index – are significantly trailing the overall market. They’ve been declining for months, down from their mid-pandemic highs when they performed far better than the rest of the economy. So what happened to climate tech investments in the public markets? And what do these investments tell us about the coming year for climate tech? In this episode, Shayle talks to Shanu Mathew, portfolio manager and r...
Mar 14, 2024•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
