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PODCAST

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,

technology investing

All Episodes

44:04

Surprising trends in global electricity generation

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/06/04

While global electricity demand is unquestionably rising, we may nonetheless be underestimating the scale of necessary future generation.In this episode, Shayle speaks to Nic Fulghum, senior energy and climate data analyst at Ember. Nic is the co-author of Ember’s annual Global Electricity Review. This year’s installment, released in April, demonstrates that renewable sources – and solar in particular – are continuing to grow exponentially, even as those markets mature. In 2025, solar generation

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48:05

Building inference data centers on the high seas

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/05/28

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 Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO of Panthalassa. The company is building 85-meter steel "nodes" – taller than Big Ben – that it deploys into the deep ocean. These untethered, self-propelled nodes harness wave energy to power AI clusters, then beam their data back to land via satellite. The technology isn’t without its fair share of logistic

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40:35

A blueprint for scalable fusion power

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/05/21

For years, the prospect of commercial nuclear fusion felt a long way off. But recent breakthroughs—like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s historic 2022 net energy gain—have marked a new chapter in the quest for fusion. Proving the physics in a lab, however, is a lot different than building a power plant that can compete on the open grid. Massive hurdles remain across physics, financing, and scaling.In this episode, host Shayle Kann sits down with Carrie von Muench, COO of Pacific Fusion and

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36:29

Inside the global fertilizer crunch

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/05/14

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: fertilizer.The global fertilizer market is in a precarious spot. Roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertilizer trade goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Even before the war in Iran began, China, the world’s top phosphate producer, halted exports of the crucial compound. As a result, the longer the strait remains closed, the more the

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43:23

Cracking the code on autonomous trucking

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/05/07

Even though autonomous passenger vehicles have entered the mainstream in cities across the country, autonomous trucks still lag behind. But Humble Robotics thinks it has cracked the code with a new design that completely does away with the tractor-trailer model we see on the highway every day.In this episode, Shayle speaks to Eyal Cohen, founder and CEO of Humble. The company built its electric trucks from the ground up. Fully cabless, they combine the tractor and trailer into a single platform

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34:01

How AI is modernizing EPCs

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/04/30

As the utility-scale solar market collides with an era defined by massive load growth, EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) firms are rethinking their strategy to meet the moment.In this episode, Shayle speaks to George Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy, one of the largest solar and storage construction firms in the US. George offers a unique perspective into the state of the market as well as the logistics of building gigawatt-scale projects and insights into how automation is changing the

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35:54

Live from Transition-AI 2026: Inside Google’s massive...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/04/23

As the race to build out artificial intelligence accelerates, the infrastructure required to support it is undergoing a remarkable transformation. In February, Google announced a plan to spend $175 billion to $185 billion in CapEx for 2026— a figure roughly equivalent to the GDP of Hungary.In this special live episode, recorded at Transition-AI 2026 in San Francisco, Shayle sits down with Amin Vahdat, Google’s chief technologist for AI infrastructure. Amin pulls back the curtain on how the

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39:51

How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B [re-published]

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/04/16

[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 series C⁠, giving the residential battery company an eye-popping $4 billion post-money valuation. Base manufactures, installs, owns, and operates residential batteries — a vertical integration strategy that CEO ⁠Zach Dell⁠ says is the “magic” to beating utility-scale batteries on CapEx. The company also acts as an electricity retailer and sells

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43:06

The rise of flexible data centers

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/04/09

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 consume up to 17% of all US power by 2030. To avoid higher rates and slower AI growth, the industry has embraced a promising solution: data center flexibility.In this episode, Shayle speaks with Varun Sivaram, the CEO of Emerald AI. Coming on the heels of a $25 million investment round led by Energy Impact Partners, Varun returns to the show to

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33:57

Frontier Forum: Why clean energy capital boomed in a...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/04/06

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 looked like a year defined by instability.And yet, capital continued to move. Total capital expenditures across the clean economy reached roughly $120 billion, with total financing activity exceeding $200 billion across the full stack of project capital. The transferable tax credit market scaled to about $42 billion, growing rapidly in just a

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38:49

Building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/04/02

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 and a heavy reliance on countries like Russia for enrichment. As America aims to reduce geopolitical dependency in energy, fixing these domestic gaps has become a strategic priority.In this episode — a companion to a separate episode of Catalyst focused on nuclear waste — Shayle Kann speaks with Scott Nolan, the CEO of General Matter. The

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30:31

Battery booms and the rise of flexibility [partner...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/03/30

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, how do we maximize revenue and deliver needed flexibility? In this episode, Stephen Lacey speaks with Sean McEvoy, chief product officer and head of commercial at GridBeyond North America, about how that cycle is playing out across global power markets — and what happens when batteries stop being scarce. As markets saturate, the source of

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34:09

The state and future of nuclear waste

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/03/26

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, and decommissioned plants come back online, the question of what to do with nuclear waste has largely stayed out of the spotlight. The U.S. currently houses 90,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel; as more plants come online, that number could rise dramatically. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Dr. Jen Shafer, a former ARPA-E director and current

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40:26

Scaling America's domestic solar supply chain

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/03/19

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 up.In this episode, Shayle talks to Scott Moskowitz — VP of market strategy and public affairs at Qcells and board chair of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) — about the challenges of reshoring solar in the U.S. They cover topics like: How supply chain resilience incentivize reshoring efforts The specific state of

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42:32

AI scaling pathways: on grid, on edge, off grid, off...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/03/12

As demand for data center power skyrockets, available options to provide that power have dwindled. And cohesive frameworks for finding sustainable generation remain few and far between.In this episode, Shayle speaks with Jake Elder, senior vice president of research and innovation at Energy Impact Partners. The two colleagues dig into the four main generation solutions — on grid, off grid, on edge, and off planet – and consider the viability of each in the years to come. Shayle and Jake explore

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35:25

Frontier Forum: How VPPs earn grid-scale trust...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/03/10

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 EnergyHub to answer a simple but consequential question: when does a distributed fleet of customer devices become reliable enough to function like a power plant? Passing the test means more than just aggregating thermostats or batteries. It means delivering predictable, repeatable performance that utility planners and operators trust enough to

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36:05

Digging deep for super hot geothermal

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/03/05

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 earth’s surface.But a few pioneering companies have landed on a potential solution: dig way deeper. In this episode, Shayle speaks with Carlos Araque, the founder of Quaise Energy. The company has developed millimeter-wave drills to vaporize rock, allowing them to dig up to twelve miles underground in search of water around 800 degrees

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64:33

Volts crossover: Six big energy questions

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/02/25

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 conversation exploring the future of energy. Their prompt was simple: Each host brought three critical questions they want to see answered in the next decade. From “data center fever” to closed-loop critical mineral economics, Shayle and David take the opportunity to dive deep into a myriad of second-order effects of the clean energy transition. In

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50:29

The rise of grid power electronics with Drew Baglino

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/02/19

For decades, the physical equipment underpinning the electric grid has remained largely unchanged: passive, "dumb" devices installed as far back as the 1970s that lack much real-time control. But today, in the face of skyrocketing energy demand, a new class of technologies has emerged.In this episode, Drew Baglino, the founder and CEO of Heron Power, returns to the show to discuss his company’s new generation of solid-state transformers, or SSTs. After a 17-year career at Tesla — where he led

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40:08

PJM and ERCOT navigate a capacity rollercoaster

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/02/12

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 even in the first two months of 2026, capacity prices have continued to skyrocket, and the economics of energy generation have only become more tenuous. In this episode, Shayle Kann talks to Paul Segal, the CEO of LS Power. A major player in the space, LS Power owns a diverse portfolio of generation, storage, and transmission assets across the

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