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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

4:48

Introducing Climavores: a new show about food and...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/06/13

We're presenting a trailer for a new show from Post Script Media, called Climavores. Climavores is a show for eaters who don’t want to cook the planet. Each week, journalists Tamar Haspel and Mike Grunwald explore the complicated, confusing, and surprising relationship between food and the environment. Episodes drop on June 21. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts.

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41:06

From biowaste to “biogold”

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/06/09

Biomass. It's the organic matter in forests, agriculture and trash. You can turn it into electricity, fuel, plastic and more. And you can engineer it to capture extra carbon dioxide and sequester it underground or at the bottom of the ocean. The catch: The world has a finite capacity for biomass production, so every end use competes with another. If done improperly, these end uses could also compete with food production for arable land already in tight supply. So which decarbonization solutions

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40:34

Climate tech’s surprising bottleneck – land access

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/06/02

There’s a bottleneck in climate tech that we don’t talk about enough: land availability. It’s a physical resource you need to support biomass, renewables, mineral mining, and other essential tools of decarbonization. So how much is enough, and where do we need it? In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, managing director of research at Energy Impact Partners. Andy argues that land—geography, landscape and the rights to land—will be a common constraint among climatetech

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50:34

Tapping the goldmine of consumer energy data

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/05/26

Consumer energy data is vital to the energy transition, especially distributed energy resources (DERs). For example, a rooftop solar company needs consumer energy data to analyze bill savings from a potential solar installation. An electric vehicle (EV) charging company needs it to offer a customer special rates on EV charging. But that data has long been incredibly difficult to access – available only in PDFs and hard-to-access utility databases – often coming in very different formats and

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45:13

How will the downturn affect climate tech?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/05/19

Stock markets are in decline. Inflation is on the rise. Interest rates are up. Private tech companies are laying off workers. Is this the long-awaited market correction that never quite materialized during the bull market of the last 13 years? And what does it mean for climate tech? In this episode, Shayle talks to Saloni Multani, a partner at Galvanize Climate Solutions and former chief financial officer for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. Shayle and Saloni place the current moment in historical

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52:57

Shayle’s “ask me anything” episode

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/05/12

We’re reversing roles today by taking listener questions for our host, Shayle Kann. He’s usually the one interviewing our guests, but he also has expertise (and maybe a few hot takes) to share. He leads a $350 million fund that invests in early-stage climate startups, so he spends most of his time trying to figure out which technologies and businesses will help us decarbonize as quickly as possible. GreenBiz senior energy analyst Sarah Golden joins the show to ask Shayle your questions and dissect

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52:58

Growing the Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) market

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/05/05

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) is having a moment. The most recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change found that the world cannot meet the targets of the Paris Agreement without removing hundreds of gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. Big companies like Alphabet, Stripe and others have formed the Frontier Fund, a nearly $1 billion joint-effort to jump-start the market to purchase CDR offsets. Elon Musk is even sponsoring a $100 million X-Prize focused on it. We’re not

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46:07

Hydrogen, meet salt cavern

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/04/28

A massive green hydrogen project in Utah has won a $504.4 million conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. The project, called Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES), will generate hydrogen from renewables and store it deep underground in what’s called a salt dome. ACES will use that stored hydrogen to generate electricity in a hybrid power plant, running on both natural gas and hydrogen. ACES is one of the many planned hydrogen hubs in the U.S., and once

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60:57

The great rush for battery metals

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/04/21

The metals used to make batteries are in hot demand. In 2021, the price of one form of lithium skyrocketed by over 400%. Automakers are racing to lock up supply deals for key minerals as they roll out new electric-vehicle models. And the market value of companies with mining assets, or new technologies to unlock them, has skyrocketed. What’s behind this scramble for metals and what does it mean for the energy transition? In this episode, Shayle talks to Kurt House, chief executive officer and

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51:12

Alternative protein: it’s what’s for dinner

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/04/14

Support strong climate journalism! Donate to Canary Media to celebrate its one-year anniversary. Conventional livestock agriculture, especially beef production, is a huge climate problem. It makes up 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But there’s good news: alternative proteins are hot. Brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat rely on alternative proteins to replicate the taste and texture of conventional meat and dairy – but with drastically less carbon pollution. Alternative proteins

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37:35

Carbon capture and storage is making a comeback

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/04/07

Support strong climate journalism! Donate to Canary Media to celebrate its one-year anniversary. After a string of relatively high profile failures and cost overruns, point source carbon capture and storage (CCS) – that is, capturing carbon dioxide directly from flue stacks at industrial and power generation facilities – fell into disrepute. Many projects were shelved. And yet, in just the first nine months of 2021 the global capacity of planned CCS projects grew 50% to 111 million tons, which would

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50:05

Can Europe quit Russian fossil fuel by next winter?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/03/31

Europe imports about 45% of its natural gas from Russia. As the conflict in Ukraine escalates, pressure is mounting for Europe to wean itself off Russian energy as quickly as possible. European sanctions against Russia have excluded the energy trade, meaning that European purchases of oil and gas – which fund about 40% of Russia’s federal budget – are in effect funding the Russian war effort in Ukraine. So how could Europe eliminate the import of Russian fossil fuels? In this episode Shayle talks to

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54:26

Will this carbon market boom be different?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/03/24

Carbon markets of all types – avoidance, removal, voluntary, compliance – are hot. Startups are sprouting up, looking to develop, broker and verify new kinds of credits. More than a decade ago there was a similar flurry of excitement around offsets, followed by a big crash in carbon markets. Experts blamed the Great Recession, but also a lack of trust and transparency in the offsets themselves. Will this time be different? In this episode, Shayle talks about what’s changed with Nat Bullard, chief

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59:22

When will batteries take over the world?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/03/17

In the 90s batteries powered your camcorder and boombox. Then your phone. Now they’re running your electric vehicle (EV), and in some cases, even your house. At what scale will batteries meaningfully reduce greenhouse gas emissions? We may be nearing an inflection point with electric vehicle batteries, but we’re nowhere near as close with grid storage technologies. What’s it going to take to get there? Guest host Lara Pierpoint explores this question with battery expert – David Schroeder, chief

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61:47

What the grid can learn from the internet

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/03/11

For nearly two decades, the terms "smart grid" and "grid edge" have been used to define the digital layer of the electricity system that can help integrate more rooftop solar panels, EVs, smart meters, and home batteries to avoid outages and save customers money. But even with massive increases in computing power, utilities are still lagging in technology to communicate with DERs (also known as grid-edge assets) and the computing power to crunch all that data. In this episode, what can the grid

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50:46

Unlocking hyper-efficient cooling

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/03/03

It may not get the same attention as higher-profile sectors, but cooling accounts for 4% of global greenhouse gasses emissions. That's more than even aviation or shipping. Demand for cooling is expected to triple by 2050. In places where global warming is triggering intense heat waves, cooling has become a matter of life and death. And yet, cleaner, more-efficient air conditioning technology exists. Why aren’t we using it? And how do we make it affordable and widely available? In this episode,

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68:43

Will advanced reactors solve nuclear's problems?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/02/25

Traditional nuclear power is bogged down by cost overruns and concerns about safety and waste. But does it have to be that way? Could we deploy scaleable reactors that are cheaper, safer, and that produce less waste? Advanced nuclear startups in the U.S. certainly think so. In this episode, guest host Lara Pierpoint speaks with Jake DeWitte, co-founder and CEO of Oklo, one of many advanced nuclear companies that have emerged in recent years. Lara and Jake survey the polarized landscape of nuclear

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48:52

A critical tool for scaling climate tech: insurance

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/02/17

We buy insurance for everything – our cars, our houses, our health. But climate tech insurance? That’s a new one. When Jeff McAulay was working in solar, he discovered one major roadblock to scaling up climate tech. Solar developers didn’t have the right kind of insurance to cover their risks. So Jeff co-founded Energetic Insurance. Turns out, insurance solves problems beyond solar. Jeff says there are unaddressed risks associated with many new climate technologies that can prevent developers

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21:53

The Carbon Copy: The lithium land grab in California

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/02/10

This week, we're featuring an episode of The Carbon Copy. Batteries are everywhere. In our electronics, our power tools, our electric grid, and in our cars. And almost all those batteries use a lithium-ion chemistry. The Imperial Valley in southern California is home to the Salton Sea, a land-locked body of water that contains vast reserves of lithium. California Governor Gavin Newsom called the region the "Saudi Arabia of Lithium." If mined, it could completely reshape the global supply chain. This

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47:14

The future of the home solar market

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/01/31

There’s momentum building for electrification. But when will electrification take off as a mainstream movement? And what companies can provide electrification solutions to consumers at scale? One strong candidate is Sunrun. It’s the leading residential solar company in the U.S., after SolarCity years ago, and acquiring its next-biggest competitor Vivint solar more recently. Sunrun has also become a major player in residential batteries. And it started to push its way into the residential EV charging

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