Shows / Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Catalyst with Shayle Kann
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…
Episodes
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The new landscape for gas turbines
Data center developers are facing unprecedented roadblocks to power new facilities. In addition to being hampered by an enormous interconnection queue backlog…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The battery boom behind the AI buildout [partner content]
The AI buildout is the most capital-intensive project in history. The hunger for power has pushed companies to unconventional options, sparking demand for jet…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
BTM data centers’ looming methane surge
It’s no secret that hyperscalers’ behind-the-meter gas bonanza could generate enormous CO2 emissions. But the BTM boom could become responsible for another…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Can natural gas supply handle the AI boom?
As data center-driven load growth continues to rise, hyperscalers are turning to natural gas – both in front of and behind the meter — to secure power. But…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The truth about data center water usage
Of all the concerns surrounding the AI boom, data center water usage tops the list. Opponents claim that massive hyperscaler facilities threaten local drinking…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
ERCOT batteries: boom, bust, or rebound?
It’s been a wild few years for grid-scale batteries in Texas. At the start of the decade, the Lone Star State was home to roughly 200 megawatts of battery…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The rush for clean, on-site power [partner content]
This is a partner episode, brought to you by Bloom Energy. Long interconnection queues, fragile supply chains, and a lack of grid capacity are pushing a wide…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Anduril's vision for powering maritime defense
Dual-use technologies and the rise of defense tech are having a moment. But how does the defense sector approach innovations in energy that may be necessary to…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
AMA: Fuel cells, geopolitics, and the solar growth curve
As we head into the final quarter of this pivotal and dramatic year for the energy sector, Catalyst host Shayle Kann takes stock of 2026 so far – and considers…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Do data centers actually increase electricity prices? No...and yes
You don’t have to look far to see the vitriol and backlash ignited by the rapid expansion of hyperscaler data centers. While critics and activists tend to…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
What comes after the data center backlash?
In their early days, data centers were largely welcomed by communities who saw their arrival as an economic boost. Today as concerns around noise levels, power…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The rise of metal fuels
Diesel generators remain ubiquitous because they offer an unusually powerful combination of low cost, high energy density, long-duration storage, and reliable…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Can AI revolutionize grid operations?
Everyone loves to talk about the “broken grid.” But if you look inside a utility’s planning and operations functions, a different picture emerges…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Is now the time for DERs to scale? [re-published]
A decade ago, DERs were hot. The hype was that things like batteries, smart devices, and other distributed energy technologies would offset the need for…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Critical Capital: Senator Tillis' case for "all-of-the-above" energy
This week, we’re presenting an episode of Critical Capital, a new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Energy policy has become increasingly polarized just…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
The race to build AI infrastructure is often framed around the availability of power, chips, and capital. But another critical constraint is becoming…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The commercial battery comeback
Commercial and industrial (C&I) battery storage has long been the missing middle of the energy storage market. It’s been too complex and expensive to scale…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid integration
Most electric vehicles spend nearly all of their lives parked, doing nothing. But under the hood of those idle cars, a massive store of energy sits untapped…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
When will quantum computing have its breakout moment?
Over the course of the past decade, quantum computing (or the concept thereof) has ridden hype cycles, just like AI or the internet writ large. In the past…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Inside the AI power wars
For those steeped in the world of AI development, the major differences between tech giants’ chip strategies are easy enough to see: the speed of Google’s…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Inside the most sophisticated plan for solar geoengineering
One of the biggest challenges with technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that they require mass adoption. Solar radiation management (SRM) has…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How data centers are complicating transmission expansion
Electric transmission development is notoriously difficult, and these days, NIMBYism gets the brunt of the blame. But as data center loads surge and…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Enter the electric supercycle
While many energy insiders remain focused on the staggering demand coming from AI and data centers, a much larger and far-reaching shift is happening. We are…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How China is reshaping the global auto market
In 2020, China exported about a million cars a year. Now, it’s tracking somewhere around twelve million — surpassing the historic peaks of giants like Japan…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Surprising trends in global electricity generation
While global electricity demand is unquestionably rising, we may nonetheless be underestimating the scale of necessary future generation. In this episode…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Building inference data centers on the high seas
Amidst the increasing urgency of powering data centers, a new solution has entered the mix: send them out to sea. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Garth…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
A blueprint for scalable fusion power
For years, the prospect of commercial nuclear fusion felt a long way off. But recent breakthroughs—like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s historic 2022…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Inside the global fertilizer crunch
While much of the world has been focused on the war in Iran’s impact on the energy sector, another arguably more impactful market has been largely overlooked…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Cracking the code on autonomous trucking
Even though autonomous passenger vehicles have entered the mainstream in cities across the country, autonomous trucks still lag behind. But Humble Robotics…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How AI is modernizing EPCs
As the utility-scale solar market collides with an era defined by massive load growth, EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) firms are rethinking…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
As the race to build out artificial intelligence accelerates, the infrastructure required to support it is undergoing a remarkable transformation. In February…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B [re-published]
[This episode is a re-run from October 2025. Look out for a new episode of Catalyst on Thursday, April 23.] Yesterday, Base Power announced a $1 billion…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The rise of flexible data centers
As the buildout of data centers accelerates on a dramatic trajectory,its strain on the electric grid has increased in turn; forecasts suggest they could…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: Why clean energy capital boomed in a volatile year [partner content]
In 2025, the clean energy market navigated a mix of shifting tariffs, evolving FEOC compliance rules, and uncertainty around tax policy. On the surface, it…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain
Even as momentum grows for U.S. nuclear, the fuel supply chain is often overlooked. This dynamic is shifting as the industry wakes up to critical choke points…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Battery booms and the rise of flexibility [partner content]
Battery markets have a pattern: They boom, capital floods in, prices collapse, and then the cycle starts again. So as storage becomes more important than ever…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The state and future of nuclear waste
The nuclear power sector is gaining a lot of momentum. But even as SMRs continue to flourish, the Department of Energy’s reactor pilot program moves forward…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Scaling America's domestic solar supply chain
Despite the dark cloud of federal policy hanging over the solar industry, skyrocketing load growth is driving demand. The question is whether supply can keep…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
AI scaling pathways: on grid, on edge, off grid, off planet
As demand for data center power skyrockets, available options to provide that power have dwindled. And cohesive frameworks for finding sustainable generation…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: How VPPs earn grid-scale trust [partner content]
Can a grid operator tell the difference between a virtual power plant and a traditional one? That’s the idea behind the Huels Test, a framework developed by…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Despite its ability to deliver ample carbon-free energy, the potential of geothermal and EGS is limited by the number of drilling sites close enough to the…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Volts crossover: Six big energy questions
They’re at it again. Two years after they last teamed up for a Volts/Catalyst crossover episode, David Roberts joins Shayle for another far-ranging…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The rise of grid power electronics with Drew Baglino
For decades, the physical equipment underpinning the electric grid has remained largely unchanged: passive, "dumb" devices installed as far back as the 1970s…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
PJM and ERCOT navigate a capacity rollercoaster
Last year, the PJM capacity crunch became a focal point for an entire industry struggling to navigate the explosive growth of hyperscaler data centers. Yet…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The path to market for new nuclear reactors
Spurred by a suite of executive orders and investments from the federal government, new nuclear reactors are coming soon. Or the announcements are at least…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The rise of permissionless DERs
Distributed batteries are having a big moment. On one hand, companies like Base Power and Tesla have leaned into large residential batteries that export power…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
More 2026 trends: Solar costs, oil oversupply, and the startup slump
We are back for Part 2 of Shayle’s double header conversation with the veteran energy analyst Nat Bullard, dissecting his annual presentation on the state of…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
A ‘rain delay’ for the energy transition [partner content]
In 2024, Tom Burton described the clean energy transition as entering its “third inning” — a phase defined by execution and scale. A year later, the game looks…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
2026 trends: Gas turbines, Texas’ load queue and China electrifies
It’s a new year, which means the veteran energy analyst Nat Bullard has dropped another annual, data-rich presentation on the state of energy and…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The VC case for 'full stack deeptech'
For “deep tech” or industrial tech investors, a captivating idea on paper doesn’t always translate into a sustainable or viable business. Even a remarkable…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How AI is changing weather forecasting
Weather forecasting drives billions of economic decisions — from grid operations to evacuation planning. Better forecasting could improve supply chain…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The gas turbine crunch
Demand for turbines is growing fast, but so are lead times — causing serious headaches for developers and even cancellations. In Texas, one of six cancelled…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Will inference move to the edge?
Today virtually all AI compute takes place in centralized data centers, driving the demand for massive power infrastructure. But as workloads shift from…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Can AI revolutionize EPC?
Big construction projects in the U.S. are notoriously unpredictable, often finishing over budget and behind schedule. Part of the problem is the inherent…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Who benefits from the AI power bottleneck?
The bottleneck holding back AI is a scarcity of power, or so goes the story. That may be true — and plenty of reporting backs it up — but different actors in…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Looking for a turnaround in transmission
After years of stalled transmission buildout, there are new signs of progress. Earlier this month, SPP approved $8.6 billion in transmission projects across 14…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
New Mexico proves America can still build [partner content]
Across the country, people are asking the same question: why is it so hard to build in America? From transmission lines to clean energy factories, projects are…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Driving down the cost of green hydrogen
A few years ago, industry and political leaders embraced hydrogen as a solution to a laundry list of hard-to-abate decarbonization challenges — steel…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Inside a $300 million bet on AI for physical R&D
A big problem with using artificial intelligence to discover new materials? It struggles to predict beyond its training data. That means AI might be better at…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Unpacking DOE's proposal to transform data center interconnection
Last Thursday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to consider rulemaking to fast-track interconnection for large…