Catalyst with Shayle Kann
127 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 14 hours ago -Investor Shayle Kann is asking big questions about how to decarbonize the planet: How cheap can clean energy get? Will artificial intelligence speed up climate solutions? Where is the smart money going into climate technologies? Every week on Catalyst, Shayle explains the world of "climate tech" with prominent experts, investors, researchers, and executives. Produced by Latitude Media.
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Episodes
How an obscure, 100-year old law is disrupting U.S. energy
April 18, 2024 13:00 - 40 minutesA 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 opera...
How an obscure, 100-year old law disrupts U.S. energy
April 18, 2024 13:00 - 40 minutesA 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, a 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 ope...
The Big Switch: Are Batteries the New Oil?
April 11, 2024 17:03 - 46 minutesThis 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 origin...
The world of battery recycling
April 04, 2024 11:00 - 36 minutesThe 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...
The electricity gauntlet has arrived
March 28, 2024 09:00 - 47 minutesThe 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 oth...
Digging into the SEC climate disclosure rules
March 21, 2024 09:00 - 32 minutesThe 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 corporatio...
Climate tech’s tough year in the public markets
March 14, 2024 13:23 - 40 minutesTwo 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 an...
The early days of AI on the grid
March 08, 2024 10:00 - 37 minutesThe 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 country, buoyed initially by billions in federal funding. But instead of using them for exciting things like time-of-use pricing and automated demand response, utilities used them for more mundane things like automated billing, according to a whitepaper from Guidehouse. Could the new wave of AI-based grid tech be different? In this epis...
The challenges of building a carbon removal portfolio
February 29, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutesThe 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 wild, unexplored territory filled with unproven technologies, murky cost curves, and a motley mix of price points and standards. The hope is that one day it becomes a standardized commodity market of high-quality, durable removals. But for now, brave buyers have to wade into the wilds and see what works. So what does that look like – and wh...
The electric transformer shortage
February 22, 2024 11:11 - 34 minutesThe 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 for grid equipment that raises or lowers voltage is a real problem. The wait for a new transformer has jumped to over two years, according to WoodMackenzie. Back in 2020 it took just a few months, according to Tim Mills, CEO at transformer manufacturer ERMCO. WoodMackenzie found that prices, meanwhile, have risen over 60% since 2020. So...
Frontier Forum: Diving into the booming transferable tax credit market
February 20, 2024 11:00 - 27 minutesIt'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 pumping out electric cars, batteries, solar modules, and wind towers. The upper end of 2030 forecasts show nearly twice as much zero-carbon generation getting built compared with scenarios without the law in place. Much of this activity is the result of a new shift in the US tax code that allows wind, solar, storage, hydrogen, carbon ca...
More 2024 trends: ESG, carbon certifications, curtailment, and AI
February 15, 2024 10:00 - 42 minutesThere 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. For the first half of our conversation with Nat, listen here. Nat has worked as an analyst and writer in climate tech for two decades and was BloombergNEF’s chief content officer until 2022. In this second part of the conversation, Shayle and Nat cover topics like: How ESG has become the new third rail of finance, falling out of the spo...
2024 trends: batteries, transferable tax credits, and the cost of capital
February 08, 2024 16:05 - 51 minutesWe’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 decarbonization in 2024. Nat has worked as an analyst and writer in climate tech for two decades and was BloombergNEF’s chief content officer until 2022. We’ve split the conversation into two parts. In this first part, Shayle and Nat cover topics like: The state of batteries, including the rapid growth of LFP chemistries, the concentration of...
What’s really happening in the U.S. EV market?
February 01, 2024 14:00 - 36 minutesA 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 and plug-in hybrid sales in 2023 were up 50% from 2022. Meanwhile, EV market share reached 9.5% in 2023, up from 7.5% in 2022, according to BloombergNEF. Still, there have been real signs of changing expectations. GM and Ford have downsized their EV ambitions. Hertz sold off 20,000 Teslas. And Elon Musk tried to temper expectations in...
Solving the cow burp problem
January 26, 2024 12:08 - 42 minutesAgriculture 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 fermentation – essentially cow burps. Cows and other ruminant animals release methane because of the way they digest food. And as animal protein consumption rises, so will enteric emissions. It’s a problem for climate change, but also for farmers. Methane is wasted energy that could have been used for beef or dairy production – and so enteric...
Sourcing biomass for carbon removal
January 19, 2024 10:00 - 48 minutesPlants 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 atmosphere through natural processes and human intervention. But there are a few ways that we can lock it away for good, like biochar, bio-oil, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS — all processes that fall under the umbrella of biomass carbon removal. The International Panel on Climate Change calls carbon removal “unavoidabl...
2023 climate tech venture investment trends
January 11, 2024 10:00 - 43 minutesVenture 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 thing? In this episode, Shayle unpacks the findings of Sightline’s 2023 Climate Tech Investment Trends report with Kim Zou, co-founder and CEO of the firm, which also produces the popular CTVC newsletter. (Shayle is an adviser to Sightline, and Kim was also previously a partner at Energy Impact Partners where Shayle works.) Kim argues th...
Fixing the messy voluntary carbon market
January 04, 2024 10:00 - 48 minutesThe voluntary carbon market is a mess. Oil majors, big tech, and many other industries purchase voluntary credits hoping to offset their carbon emissions. But years of reporting have revealed major problems in the industry, from worthless credits to outright fraud. Amid allegations that many of its credits might actually worsen global warming, the CEO of the largest issuer of credits, Verra, resigned last year. And so perhaps it’s no surprise that the market for traditional offsets like renew...
Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets
December 21, 2023 10:00 - 46 minutesThere’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 incredibly difficult. New technologies involving things like sustainable aviation fuel, geothermal, and direct air capture can take a decade or more to scale up. But venture capital is too expensive for FOAK projects, while infrastructure finance is too risk-averse. So what solutions could solve the FOAK financing problem? In this epis...
What do you do with a 100-hour battery?
December 14, 2023 10:00 - 49 minutesIt’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 Mateo Jaramillo argues that batteries in the ballpark of 100 hours hit a sweet spot, and that sweet spot deserves its own term: multi-day storage. In the 15 minute to 12 hour range, lithium-ion batteries shine, effectively displacing natural gas peaker plants that run less than 5% of the year. But they don’t displace higher-capacity generat...
Update: What the new Treasury rules mean for EV supply chains
December 07, 2023 10:00 - 46 minutesThe U.S. Treasury proposed guidance last Friday that would significantly restrict what battery parts and materials can qualify for incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The rules label China and several other countries as “foreign entities of concern.” These rules will prevent materials and parts sourced from those countries, starting in the next few years, from counting toward the IRA’s electric vehicle tax credits. The new rules are meant to push battery companies to develop supply cha...
EV charging on both sides of the pond
November 30, 2023 10:00 - 38 minutesFor 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 Norway had a whopping 166 plugin-in electric vehicles per 1,000 residents. Germany had 20 per 1,000 residents and Europe’s largest fleet, based on reporting by Euronews. That’s far ahead of the U.S., which averaged 8.6 in 2022, according to Argonne National Laboratory. So, it stands to reason that these countries must have insights int...
The cost of nuclear
November 16, 2023 18:39 - 47 minutesNuclear 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 capital cost. But high costs are a problem for new small modular reactors (SMRs) too, killing what was going to be the country’s first small modular reactor before it got built. On the other hand, South Korea has some of the lowest costs in the world. Estimated overnight capital costs for reactors in South Korea are closer to $2,200 pe...
Mailbag episode! Interest rates, carbon dioxide removal, load growth, and more
November 09, 2023 10:00 - 55 minutesIt’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 energy at GreenBiz. Together Shayle and Sarah cover topics like: Load growth and whether data-center demand is good or bad for decarbonization. The crash in photovoltaic module prices and what it means for the solar industry. The impact of interest rates on climatetech. The challenges of siting carbon dioxide pipelines. Why there’s n...
The Volts crossover episode
November 03, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourSome technologies grab the spotlight even beyond #energytwitter, and some fly under the radar. Which ones are getting more attention than they deserve, and which aren’t getting enough? This is the episode you never knew you needed: Shayle talks to Volts host David Roberts about the most underhyped and overhyped trends in climatetech right now. David has written about clean technology for the past two decades, first at Grist and then at Vox. He now writes a newsletter and hosts a podcast of th...
The market for microgrids
October 26, 2023 09:00 - 45 minutesWe want your climatetech questions for Shayle’s Ask Me Anything episode! Email questions to us at [email protected]. You can also tag us on Twitter or LinkedIn with the hashtag #AskCatalyst. Or you can leave us a voicemail at 919-808-5832. The electrification gauntlet is this: The more we electrify, the more we ask of the grid. New demands on the grid are coming right as it’s facing some of its biggest challenges, like interconnection delays, transmission congestion, and extreme weat...
The pace of home electrification
October 19, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutesHeat pumps in 140 million U.S. homes by 2050 — that’s the goal laid out in Rewiring America’s recent report on the pace of home electrification. It’s a daunting target for a country that had heat pumps in only 17 million homes in 2020. But we’re not that far off. According to Rewiring America, the U.S. is currently on track to install about five million heat pumps by 2025, only about two and a half million short of the pace we need to reach 140 million homes by midcentury. So what can we do t...
How is U.S. industrial policy affecting actual climatetech investment?
October 12, 2023 09:00 - 52 minutesIn climatetech circles, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was a big deal. The expectation was that, combined with other parts of U.S. industrial policy like the CHIPS and Science Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the IRA would transform the American economy and ultimately slash U.S. carbon emissions. We can’t see the impact on carbon emissions yet, but we can measure the initial effects on the economy. So how’s it going so far? In this episode, Shayle talks to Trevor Houser, partner at ...
What electric forklifts teach us about creative policy [partner content]
October 11, 2023 13:38 - 14 minutesThis is a partner podcast episode, brought to you by DNV. Wes Whited and Angie Ziech-Malek work for DNV designing efficiency, electrification, and decarbonization programs for utilities. And lately, they’ve been paying attention to electric forklifts. There are 1.5 million forklifts sold in the U.S. every year. And converting that vast fleet to run on lithium-ion batteries could be a cost-effective way to boost electrification – and add a helpful resource for demand management to the grid. Sp...
Climate tech startups need strong techno-economic analysis (TEA)
October 05, 2023 09:00 - 49 minutesWe have a flash sale for Transition-AI: New York through October 9th. Use the code FLASH30 to get 30% off your ticket price to our event on AI + energy. Spots are limited, so don't miss out! This might be our wonkiest topic yet: Techno-economic analysis, or TEA. Before a startup has proven that its technology is commercially viable, it models how its technology would work. These TEAs include things like assumptions about inputs, prices, and market landscape. They help investors and entrepren...
Reviving the stagnant plant based meat market
September 28, 2023 15:54 - 40 minutesIt was 2020 and plant-based meats were hot. Sales were up 45% that year and expectations were high. The industry set its sights on performing as well as plant-based beverages, which had reached about a 15% dollar share of the U.S. cow-based milk market at the time. In the $300 billion U.S. meat market, a 15% share would be a massive $45 billion prize. But then, starting in 2021, plant-based meats hit a wall. U.S. sales began three consecutive years of declines. Headlines described plant-based...
Fixing interconnection
September 21, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutesEverything's bigger in Texas—the hats, the boots, the convenience stores. But its interconnection times? They’re surprisingly short. In the U.S. it takes power generators four years on average to get approval to connect to the grid, and in some places, it takes far longer. In the Texas electricity market, it takes only about 1.5 years between interconnection request and agreement. And it costs way less to interconnect, too. The results are telling. The Texas grid, operated by the Electricity...
Stopping geoengineering, by accident
September 14, 2023 09:00 - 47 minutesSolar geoengineering is a hot (er, cool?) topic these days. One method involves injecting a form of sulfur into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation and help reduce global temperatures. But it could also cause unpredictable changes to ozone, rainfall, and ecosystems. So when a rogue startup began sending balloons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere earlier this year, it sparked outrage. But here’s the thing: We’ve been geoengineering our atmosphere for decades, just not intentionally. ...
The food-energy nexus
September 08, 2023 09:13 - 39 minutesLast time we talked to Dr. Michael Webber, we dug into the nexus between water and energy. This episode we’re diving into food. The connections are myriad. Food itself is just a means of energy storage, and a particularly good one at that. While photosynthesis is remarkably inefficient—averaging only 0.3% globally, compared to 90% or more in an electric motor—it stores energy for weeks to years. In the U.S. we use around 12% of our energy to produce food, in the form of inputs like diesel, fe...
Can the V2X dream become reality?
August 31, 2023 09:00 - 38 minutesHere’s the dream: Millions of EVs plugged into their charging docks, working in concert to relieve stress on the world’s power grids. They reduce charging load or even inject energy back onto the grid. They back up renewables when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. That’s the vision for managed charging, or V1G, and vehicle-to-grid, or V2G. There’s also a third technology called vehicle-to-home that allows an EV battery to power a building, just like a home battery. Collectively...
Seeking the holy grail of batteries (Rerun)
August 24, 2023 09:00 - 56 minutesIf there were a holy grail of electric vehicle batteries, it would be low-weight, long-range, and fast-charging. It would last a million miles and cost less than anything produced today. So in the booming EV battery market, what kind of battery will check all those boxes? Who will invent it? And do we really need all those features in one battery in the first place? In this episode, Shayle talks to Sam Jaffe, vice president of battery solutions at E-Source. They trace the history of the two m...
Navigating the electricity gauntlet
August 17, 2023 09:00 - 51 minutesElectrification should be a field day for utilities. As we electrify the economy, adding gigafactories, charging stations, and green hydrogen hubs to the grid, the demand for power is growing for the first time in decades. For savvy utilities, there’s a lot of money to be made. But only if they can keep up. Utilities face massive challenges to deliver the power needed for electrification – years-long interconnection queues, a shortage of transformers, an uncertain regulatory environment—the ...
Beaming 24/7 solar… from space
August 10, 2023 09:00 - 48 minutesIt’s the highest-intensity solar power you can get. It’s available 24/7. And you can send it anywhere on earth. All you need to do is launch a ten-by-ten kilometer array of solar panels into geosynchronous orbit, capture solar energy, and beam it to earth using a massive antenna array. Then set up a receiver a few kilometers in diameter on earth to collect that power and send it to the grid. Sound like science fiction? You wouldn’t be far off (looking at you, Isaac Asimov). But the reality i...
With Great Power: What other industries can teach utilities about innovation
August 04, 2023 15:27 - 28 minutesThis week we’re bringing you a special crossover episode from With Great Power. It’s a show about one of the most complex machines ever built – the power grid. It’s a machine that’s changing faster than ever. With Great Power is about the people driving that change: A third of the world's largest companies now have net-zero targets in place for carbon emissions. Google was ahead of the curve. Back in 2007, it had already achieved its goal of going carbon neutral across all of its offices and ...
Mining the deep sea
July 27, 2023 14:21 - 50 minutesThe good news: The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) contains more nickel and cobalt than the rest of the world’s land-based reserves combined. It also has significant resources of high-grade lithium, copper and rare earth metals—all of which are critical for the batteries the world needs to meet Paris Agreement targets. The bad news: The CCZ lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and contains biodiverse ecosystems we know very little about—and that we could profoundly harm if we mine them. The ...
The good and bad of carbon capture
July 20, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutesCarbon capture and storage. It’s a controversial tool in the energy transition that we don’t want to use, but probably have to. Most of the scenarios in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report include capturing and storing hundreds of gigatons of carbon dioxide between now and 2100. When people say carbon capture and storage, or CCS, they often mean different things. It’s a term that covers multiple technologies used to capture CO2—such as point-source and direct-air capture— and different approa...
The early days of transoceanic hydrogen transport
July 13, 2023 09:00 - 44 minutesBefore hydrogen makes it big, we have to overcome a massive, ocean-sized challenge: Transporting the fuel between continents. The places that will be best suited to produce hydrogen via renewables-powered electrolysis, like Australia and Egypt, will have to ship that hydrogen to demand centers in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere. And it turns out that shipping hydrogen is way harder than shipping oil or natural gas. Hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density. Compared to one barrel of oil...
The fungus among us
June 29, 2023 09:00 - 35 minutesMore than a third of the world’s current greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels go through underground networks of fungi, according to a new peer-reviewed study in Current Biology. That’s a whopping 13 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year. Mycorrhizal fungi act as a symbiotic partner of plants, seeking out nutrients and bringing them back to the plants’ roots. In return, they accept carbon in the form of carbohydrates—which they then lock away in the structure of the fungi. Thi...
Building out a U.S. solar supply chain
June 22, 2023 09:00 - 45 minutesEverything, everywhere, all at once—that’s the state of the U.S. solar industry right now. Suppliers are rushing to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous domestic-manufacturing incentives. Major manufacturers like First Solar and Enel have announced billion dollar investments in places like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Lawrence County, Alabama. But tariffs on the import of some Chinese-made parts may resume at the end of 2024; and the industry still faces supply chain shortages and ...
AI for climate: a real world test
June 15, 2023 14:06 - 1 hourThe list of potential uses for AI in climatetech is growing fast: developing better materials, optimizing solar farms, integrating renewables and microgrids. But many of these are still theoretical. We wanted to find a real-world application that changed the way we make climatetech. So we decided to come up with our own test run. Back in March Duncan Campbell, vice president at Scale Microgrids, used ChatGPT to code some battery dispatch software and tweeted about his experience. Duncan isn’t...
The carbon market’s quality problem
June 08, 2023 09:00 - 49 minutesVoluntary carbon credits are a lot like used cars; you really have no idea what their quality might be. Or maybe they’re more like expensive bottles of wine. Most people (or at least Shayle) can’t tell if they’re buying good quality wine. If it’s expensive, it must be good, right? That’s the logic that has plagued voluntary carbon markets for years. A carbon credit can work in two ways. First, it can avoid 1 metric ton of emissions that would have otherwise happened by, for example, preventi...
Keeping copper from limiting the energy transition
June 01, 2023 13:16 - 50 minutesThe energy transition is fueling skyrocketing demand for copper, an essential metal for renewables, batteries, and other climatetech. But supply isn’t keeping up. There’s more than enough copper in the earth’s known reserves to supply our growing demand for the metal, but supply is stagnating due to rising extraction costs and decades-long lead times to open new mines. A July 2022 report from S&P Global predicts that demand could begin to exceed supply in just a few years.. Without action, a ...
Four ways to store sunlight
May 25, 2023 09:00 - 58 minutesAre you a utility or climatetech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston, on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20. On the Catalyst with Shayle Kann podcast this week: The good news: the U.S. has about 47 days’ worth of energy stored up for later use. The bad news? Virtually all of it is in the form of fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. By comparison, if you add up all...
Unpacking EPA’s newly proposed power emissions rule
May 18, 2023 09:00 - 55 minutesAre you a utility or climate tech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20. Last year, the Supreme Court struck down the EPA’s first attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. But it also preserved the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The agency just needed to find the right approach. The ...
The great Bitcoin energy debate
May 11, 2023 09:00 - 49 minutesDepending on who you talk to, Bitcoin mines are either great for the grid or the worst thing that’s ever happened to it. These warehouses of computers essentially turn electricity into bitcoins. Proponents argue that mines can do a number of things for the grid, like: Support grid reliability by reducing demand during peak hours Incentivize new renewable generation by raising the prices that solar and wind farms receive Reduce methane emissions by capturing flare gas from fossil fuel wells...