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PODCAST

Catalyst with Shayle Kann

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.

technology investing

All Episodes

42:37

More 2024 trends: ESG, carbon certifications,...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2024/02/15

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. 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 spotlight

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51:41

2024 trends: batteries, transferable tax credits, and...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2024/02/08

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 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

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36:15

What’s really happening in the U.S. EV market?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2024/02/01

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 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 last

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42:01

Solving the cow burp problem

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2024/01/26

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 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

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48:19

Sourcing biomass for carbon removal

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2024/01/19

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 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 “unavoidable” —

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43:53

2023 climate tech venture investment trends

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2024/01/11

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 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 that

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48:28

Fixing the messy voluntary carbon market

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2024/01/04

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 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 renewable

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46:07

Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/12/21

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 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 episode,

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49:09

What do you do with a 100-hour battery?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/12/14

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 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 generation

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46:59

Update: What the new Treasury rules mean for EV...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/12/07

The 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 chains

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38:43

EV charging on both sides of the pond

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/11/30

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 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 into how

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47:48

The cost of nuclear

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/11/16

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 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 per

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55:04

Mailbag episode! Interest rates, carbon dioxide...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/11/09

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 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 no clear

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69:37

The Volts crossover episode

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/11/03

Some 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 the

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45:32

The market for microgrids

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/10/26

We want your climatetech questions for Shayle’s Ask Me Anything episode! Email questions to us at catalyst@latitudemedia.com. 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

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37:09

The pace of home electrification

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/10/19

Heat 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 to close

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52:20

How is U.S. industrial policy affecting actual...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/10/12

In 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 the

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14:49

What electric forklifts teach us about creative...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/10/11

This 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. Speeding

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49:39

Climate tech startups need strong techno-economic...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/10/05

We 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 entrepreneurs

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40:49

Reviving the stagnant plant based meat market

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2023/09/28

It 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 meats

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