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
Five big questions about the future of energy
We’ve covered AI’s massive power appetite in depth over the past year – with good reason. It’s the driving force behind much of the change and uncertainty in…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: The new power map for AI infrastructure
As AI reshapes the industrial landscape, companies are questioning whether the grid can keep pace. Permitting delays, transmission constraints, and reliability…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Calibrating hype with Akshat Rathi
In the climate space, every idea sits somewhere along the hype continuum. Some command outsize attention. Others fly under the radar despite big potential. And…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How insurance can narrow the valley of death [partner content]
Jamie Daggett started his career as a mechanical engineer working for cleantech startups in Silicon Valley. But after five startups and three buyouts, Daggett…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B
Yesterday, Base Power announced a $1 billion series C, giving the residential battery company an eye-popping $4 billion post-money valuation. Base…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: A new playbook for clean energy growth
After the failure of federal climate legislation in 2010, clean energy advocates realized they had to look elsewhere for momentum. The result was a shift…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The new wave of DERs
Demand response was the original distributed energy resource. In its early days, it was surprisingly manual: a grid operator would call up a large load, like a…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Ag residue and carbon removal
Agricultural byproducts like corn stover, wood chips, and soybean husks typically get left to decompose and release carbon dioxide. Don’t call them “waste”…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Is now the time for DERs to scale?
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
When to colocate data centers with generation
The idea of colocating data centers with behind-the-meter generation is picking up steam, including large projects in Memphis, Texas, and Utah developing…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
AMA: Geoengineering, nuclear, power prices, and more
You sent in great questions, and today we’re answering them. In this episode, Shayle hands it over to Lara Pierpoint, the managing director of Trellis Climate…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The mechanics of data center flexibility
Adding flexibility to data center loads could ease strain on the grid and reduce the need for costly new generation. And, according to one study, shaving off…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The Green Blueprint: Terrawatt Infrastructure’s billion-dollar strategy
Editor's note: With the Trump administration's efforts to roll back California's electric trucking rules, there's new attention on heavy duty transport right…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The case for sodium-ion
Our first episode covering sodium-ion batteries featured a cautious take on the chemistry: Back in February Adrian Yao, founder of Stanford’s STEER program…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Explaining the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’
Editor’s note: The uncertainties of data center construction — like when, where, and how much to build — are as pressing as ever. So we’re revisiting a…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
PJM and the capacity crunch
The PJM capacity auction this month broke records with sky-high wholesale power prices — and that was by design. Under PJM’s auction rules, tight supply raises…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage
The job of an EV battery is unforgiving. If its performance slips too far — say, lost acceleration or range — it's probably off to the recycling heap. That’s…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Five big questions emerging from the OBBB
The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) complicates things. Together with a related executive order, it dismantled key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, while…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Tumult in residential solar
Residential solar has had a rough couple of years. In 2024, the market contracted 31% and major companies like Sunpower and Titan went bankrupt. Now, only…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Fresh intel from state utility regulatory filings
You’ve probably heard about Nat Bullard’s massive decarbonization slide decks, filled with charts and insights into decarbonization drawn from climate and…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
GM's big new battery tech push
Lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) batteries could offer a rare combination in energy storage: high energy density at lower costs. They swap much of the expensive…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The story of steam
Addison Stark thinks waste heat is a waste of time. The real opportunity, he argues, is decarbonizing industrial steam, which accounts for roughly 30% of…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The state of play of data center development
The future of the grid increasingly hinges on where and how data centers get built. To forecast the kind of power infrastructure we need to meet AI’s growing…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The gas turbine crunch
Demand for turbines is growing fast, but so are lead times — causing serious headaches for developers. In Texas, one of six projects that pulled proposals from…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How geothermal gets built
Geothermal seems to be nearing an inflection point. With rising load growth, clean, firm power is more valuable than ever. Next-gen geothermal players like…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
What to make of Trump's deep-sea minerals push
In April, the Trump administration issued an executive order to accelerate the development of deep-sea minerals — part of its broader push for “energy…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
A former race car engineer on battery safety and supply chains [partner content]
From his days as an IndyCar race engineer to his current role as chief product officer for a leading storage integrator, Tristan Doherty has always worked at…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Terrawatt Infrastructure’s billion-dollar strategy
This week, we're bringing you a special episode of The Green Blueprint, a show about the stories behind first-of-a-kind climate projects. In this episode…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The U.S. nuclear groundswell
The nuclear renaissance of the 2000s turned out to be something of a mirage. Buoyed by rising fossil gas prices, growing climate awareness, and steady load…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: Unlocking next-generation VPPs
In the mid-2000s, Ben Brown started his career designing demand response programs that relied on pagers and telephones. Today, as Renew Home's CEO, he's…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Catalyst Live at SF Climate Week
It’s a Catalyst first-of-a-kind: our very first live event! We hosted it last Wednesday at San Francisco Climate week. In this episode, Shayle talks to Mike…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The geopolitics of rare earth elements
China’s new export controls on rare earth elements (REEs) are a problem for EVs, renewables, and other industries that rely on the minerals, especially the…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
What’s next for the battery storage boom? [partner content]
The U.S. storage market is experiencing hockey-stick growth, with multiple gigawatts being installed quarterly. But new policy uncertainties around tariffs and…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Serving data center load with carbon capture
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How climate disasters are shaping insurance markets
Premiums are rising. Insurers are leaving markets. But people keep building in risk-prone areas, and the climate disasters just keep coming. Can insurance…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: Future-proofing data center power infrastructure
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Specialized AI brains for physical industry
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The potential for flexible data centers
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: How tax credit transfers are reshaping energy finance
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The coming robotics wave
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
An ode to electrochemistry
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How AI is solving real utility challenges [partner content]
Laurent Boinot, a power and utilities leader at Microsoft, remembers the moment he discovered the power of artificial intelligence. Years ago, as a student…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Cultivated meat’s “trough of disillusionment”
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The promise and perils of sodium-ion batteries
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The case for colocating data centers and generation
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
More 2025 trends: DeepSeek, plug-in hybrids, and curtailment
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Are utilities ready to fully harness demand flexibility? [partner content]
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
2025 trends: aerosols, oil demand, and carbon removal
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The climate-ag grab bag
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
FOAK tales
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Making DERs work for load growth
To meet AI-driven load growth utilities and big tech companies have been building — or reopening — big power plants. Georgia Power, for example, is planning to…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Lithium’s wild ride
If you’ve followed global lithium prices over the past few years, you know what a wild ride it’s been. Chinese spot prices shot to record highs in 2022 and…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Drew Baglino on Tesla’s Master Plan
Editor’s note: For the holiday break, we’re bringing you one of our most popular episodes of the year — a conversation about Tesla’s Master Plan 3 with Drew…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Scaling low-carbon products with book and claim systems
A mismatch between suppliers and buyers is making it hard to grow the supply of low-carbon products like cement, steel, and sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). If…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
What went wrong at Northvolt?
Northvolt’s ambition was to become a European batterymaker to rival Chinese battery behemoths like CATL and BYD. They wanted to offer a homegrown supply chain…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How cyber attacks could threaten the energy transition [partner content]
Security experts often say there are two kinds of companies. “There are those companies that have been hacked, and those that don't know that they are being…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Explaining the 'Watt-Bit Spread'
Every data center company is after one thing right now: power. Electricity used to be an afterthought in data center construction, but in the AI arms race…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: Why utilities should go big on VPPs
In the next five years, Arizona Public Service estimates peak demand will grow by 40%. In order to meet that peak, the utility is increasingly turning to…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
From biowaste to “biogold”
Editor’s note: In honor of all the frying oil used this Thanksgiving, we’re revisiting an episode with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, on…