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
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
TEA breakdown: green ammonia and synthetic methane
Shayle and his team at Energy Impact Partners (EIP) review a lot of climate-tech pitches. The best kind of pitch uses a solid techno-economic analysis (TEA) to…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Getting heat pumps right
Oh, the heat pump — a climate tech darling that still hasn’t hit the big time yet. One challenge for heat pumps is that the customer experience can be…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Fixing the refrigerant problem
The bad news: The refrigerants we use in air conditioners, fridges, and vehicles absorb hundreds to thousands of times more heat than carbon dioxide does. The…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Why climate tech startups get this one thing wrong
This might be our wonkiest topic yet: Techno-economic analysis, or TEA. Before a startup proves its technology is commercially viable, it models how a…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The unexplored frontier of methane removal
We capture concentrated methane emissions from point sources like dairy barns, landfills, and coal mines. Mitigating methane emissions is essential to hitting…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: An energy-first approach to data centers
AI is enabling a multitude of solutions across power, industry, and transportation. But AI energy demands are increasingly stressing the electric grid —…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The complex path to market for low-carbon cement
Getting the construction industry to try a novel form of cement is like turning a giant ship. It’s hard to redirect the immense momentum behind existing ways…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Unpacking China’s cheap battery costs
Chinese battery companies are manufacturing the cheapest cells in the world right now, and it’s not just because of cheap labor and state subsidies. They’ve…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Giving tribes a stake in the critical minerals boom [partner content]
Tannice McCoy grew up in a mining family, but she never imagined herself in the mining business. Today she’s the president and general manager of NewRange…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
DAC’s bumpy road to commercial scale
The world’s first large-scale, commercial direct-air capture (DAC) plants are coming online – or are about to. How soon will we see a boom in high-quality…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Ammonia: the beer of decarbonization
Editor’s note: There’s some big money flowing into low carbon ammonia right now. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $1.56 billion conditional…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The state of connected DERs [partner content]
The U.S. and U.K. could see 500 gigawatts of distributed resources hitting the power system in the next few years. But after years of watching DERs grow…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Can AI revolutionize materials discovery?
AI is working its way across climate tech, helping companies discover giant lodes of ore, catch battery defects, and monitor energy infrastructure. Could it…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The better mousetrap fallacy
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The rise of climate adaptation tech
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Why are we still flaring gas?
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Hunting for geologic hydrogen
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The cost of nuclear
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: Is America’s green bank ready?
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Understanding the transmission bottleneck
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 —…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Pathways to decarbonizing steel
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The EV market’s awkward teenage years
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Can chip efficiency slow AI's energy demand?
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The reshoring of American solar trackers [partner content]
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Decarbonizing the high seas
While aviation may be converging on one main pathway to decarbonization — sustainable aviation fuel — maritime shipping may require a more diverse set of…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Going deep on next-gen geothermal
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Demystifying the Chinese EV market
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Under the hood of data center power demand
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Drew Baglino on Tesla’s Master Plan
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Heavy duty decarbonization
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
With Great Power: Why dynamic rates are gaining momentum
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Could VPPs save rooftop solar?
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Understanding SAF buyers
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The news quiz episode!
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
CO2 utilization
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Building a supply chain for rare earth elements
Rare earth elements (REEs) are essential ingredients in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and many electronics. As with most critical minerals, China controls…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
How an obscure, 100-year old law is disrupting U.S. energy
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The Big Switch: Are Batteries the New Oil?
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The world of battery recycling
The lithium-ion battery business is taking off, and the battery recycling business is close behind. Financiers are pouring over a billion dollars into…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The electricity gauntlet has arrived
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Digging into the SEC climate disclosure rules
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved new rules this month on what information companies must disclose about their greenhouse gas emissions and…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Climate tech’s tough year in the public markets
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…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The early days of AI on the grid
The first wave of digital grid infrastructure in the U.S. didn’t quite deliver on its promises. More than 100 million smart meters have rolled out across the…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The challenges of building a carbon removal portfolio
The carbon removal market could reach $400 billion to $1.6 trillion by 2050, according to McKinsey. But it’s got a long way to go. Right now the market is…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The electric transformer shortage
The list of things that depend on transformers is long: new housing, EV chargers, renewable projects, and more. That’s why skyrocketing lead times and prices…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Frontier Forum: Diving into the booming transferable tax credit market
It's been a year and a half since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed. In that time, we've seen $110 billion in planned investments for factories that are…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
More 2024 trends: ESG, carbon certifications, curtailment, and AI
There was so much to talk about in Nat Bullard’s 200-page slide deck on 2024’s biggest decarbonization trends that we broke the conversation into two parts…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
2024 trends: batteries, transferable tax credits, and the cost of capital
We’re back for round two, with even more slides than last year. This year’s annual slide deck from Nat Bullard has 200 pages on the key trends shaping…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
What’s really happening in the U.S. EV market?
A recent slew negative headlines about U.S. EVs makes it feel like the sky is falling on the market. Yet the data show robust growth. Combined battery electric…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Solving the cow burp problem
Agriculture in the U.S. produces more methane than the American oil and gas industry, and the biggest share of that agricultural methane is from enteric…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Sourcing biomass for carbon removal
Plants capture hundreds of gigatons of carbon every year in timber, crops, and other forms of biomass. Much of that carbon gets released back into the…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
2023 climate tech venture investment trends
Venture and early-stage investment in climate tech in 2023 was down 30% from 2022, according to market intelligence firm Sightline Climate. But is that a bad…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Fixing the messy voluntary carbon market
The voluntary carbon market is a mess. Oil majors, big tech, and many other industries purchase voluntary credits hoping to offset their carbon emissions. But…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets
There’s a hole in the finance world. Fighting climate change means scaling up lots of new technologies, but financing those first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects is…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
What do you do with a 100-hour battery?
It’s time to get specific. In the power industry “long-duration energy storage” could mean anything from 4 to 10 to 100 hours of energy. But Form Energy’s…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Update: What the new Treasury rules mean for EV supply chains
The U.S. Treasury proposed guidance last Friday that would significantly restrict what battery parts and materials can qualify for incentives in the Inflation…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
EV charging on both sides of the pond
For those of us in the U.S., Europe's strong electric vehicle market might offer a glimpse into the future of EV charging. In 2022 the electrification haven of…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
The cost of nuclear
Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. Recent estimates put it at more than $6,000 per kilowatt, as measured by overnight…
- Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Mailbag episode! Interest rates, carbon dioxide removal, load growth, and more
It’s about that time again. You sent in great questions for Shayle, and in this episode we’re tackling them with the help of Sarah Golden, vice president of…