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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

67:26

The many pathways to decarbonizing chemicals

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/01/24

Chemicals might be the most daunting industrial sector to decarbonize. Unlike concrete and steel, where the end products are largely uniform, refineries spit out thousands of different chemicals through a dizzyingly complex set of processes. These end products are, in turn, used in everything from plastics to fertilizers to pharmaceuticals to clothing. The International Energy Agency predicts that chemicals will be the largest source of demand growth for oil through 2050. A wide range of

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43:42

Microbes, meat and materials: biotech meets climatetech

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/01/18

Biotech has enormous potential across a wide array of climate solutions. It can be used to create alternative proteins, remove carbon from the atmosphere, clean up fertilizer, or to create renewable fuels. But it also comes with some scaling challenges. This week, Shayle talks about the intersection of biotech and climatetech with Arye Lipman. Arye is a biologist and a general partner at MarsBio, a bio-focused early-stage fund. He also writes a Substack newsletter on biotech called The Last Great

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49:43

Inside the Energy Department's loan deal to back...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2022/01/10

First-of-a-kind projects are, by definition, unproven. Despite the abundance of capital in climate tech these days, the valley of death for new technologies still exists. But there are solutions. And this week on Catalyst, we have a case study of one of them. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office has $40 billion of capacity to help solve this exact kind of problem. It just announced its first conditional commitment for a $1 billion loan guarantee to help Monolith scale up its first

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47:34

Is nuclear fusion getting close?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2021/12/23

The common trope about fusion is that it has always been – and will always be – a decade away. So is something different happening now? Recently, we’ve seen technical achievements in fusion, like near ignition at the National Ignition Facility in August, yielding “a record 1.3 MJ in fusion energy, releasing, for the first time, more energy than the fuel capsule absorbed.” Fusion startups have also enjoyed a recent barrage of mega-funding. First, General Fusion raised $130 million. Then Helion Energy

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51:18

Quantum computing could be a critical climate solution

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2021/12/16

What exactly counts as “climate tech”? Basically all human activity is responsible for emissions, directly or indirectly. So nearly every new technology trend or capability has at least some role to play in curbing those emissions. Robotics? Sure. Artificial intelligence and machine learning, of course. Synthetic biology? Definitely. But here's a really interesting one: quantum computing. Mark Cupta is convinced it may actually be one of the most important technologies we'll invent to mitigate

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46:45

The future of natural gas

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2021/12/09

There are many pathways to decarbonize natural gas. Do we replace it, full stop? If so, with what? Or do we blend natural gas with alternatives, or rip up the old infrastructure and replace it with something new? There's a lot to unpack here. But also a lot of opportunities for innovators in the climatetech world. To dig into it, Shayle turns to Andy Lubershane, the senior vice president for research & strategy at Energy Impact Partners. Andy and Shayle talk about natural gas’ existential threat:

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50:28

A bumpy ride toward decarbonizing aviation

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2021/12/02

Aviation represents 2-3% of global GHG emissions. If the aviation sector were a country, its emissions would rank around 6th in the world, somewhere between Japan and Germany. If you add the additional warming impacts of aircraft contrails and estimates are that aviation contributes something like 3.5% of total anthropogenic warming. It's also another one of those notoriously tough-to-abate sectors. Jet fuel (a.k.a. kerosene) is pretty magical. It has enabled the movement of people and the

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39:15

Kickstarting a $1 trillion market for carbon removal

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2021/11/18

Stripe, a fintech startup worth $100 billion, is trying to kick-start a $1 trillion market for carbon removal. The company is being extremely transparent about its processes, which means we get a window into the exciting, messy, often very experimental world of removing gigatons of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. Traditionally, carbon removal has involved planting lots of trees. There have also been a select few companies toiling away at expensive-but-promising direct-air capture. But it turns

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51:23

Can 'deeptech' venture capital solve climate change?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2021/11/11

Can investors win by betting on early-stage innovations in hard-to-decarbonize sectors such as energy, transportation, agriculture and heavy industry? The answer doesn’t matter only to venture capitalists. If you believe that we need fundamental science and engineering innovation to climb our way out of the climate crisis, it's an important question. Plenty of reasonable observers say the answer is no. Case in point: The 2016 MIT report Venture Capital and Cleantech: The Wrong Model for Clean

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1:25

Introducing: Catalyst w/ Shayle Kann

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2021/11/02

Shayle Kann has been thinking about the technology and market fixes for climate change for almost two decades. On Catalyst, he brings on the smartest people in climate tech to think through those hard problems. This show is about how we overcome the climate challenge. Not just at a theoretical level, but using actual technologies, tackling actual market structures, and accounting for the biggest variable of them all -- money. Subscribe everywhere. The show is a co-production of Canary Media and Post

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250 results

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