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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

37:48

ERCOT batteries: boom, bust, or rebound?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/10/01

It’s been a wild few years for grid-scale batteries in Texas. At the start of the decade, the Lone Star State was home to roughly 200 megawatts of battery capacity. Today, that number has skyrocketed to seventeen gigawatts…with at least five more gigawatts expected to come online by the end of 2026.But this rapid buildout quickly led to market saturation. In the past year alone, revenues plummeted by more than 80%, far below the threshold needed for fleet operators to stay in the black. The

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31:23

The rush for clean, on-site power [partner content]

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/09/28

This is a partner episode, brought to you by Bloom Energy.Long interconnection queues, fragile supply chains, and a lack of grid capacity are pushing a wide range of C&I customers to invest in distributed, on-site power. But as data centers and other industrial facilities build more power behind the meter, new challenges have emerged. Air quality, noise, and water use are top concerns for local communities, making cleaner solutions like fuel cells much more attractive. This shift within the data

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32:17

Anduril's vision for powering maritime defense

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/09/24

Dual-use technologies and the rise of defense tech are having a moment. But how does the defense sector approach innovations in energy that may be necessary to optimize its fleets?To help answer that question, Shayle turns to the maritime sector to explore how advanced batteries, nuclear propulsion, and autonomous capabilities are shaping the future of defense. Unlike conventional EVs, maritime vehicles and drones must compete with the challenges presented by the sea in order to complete

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23:21

AMA: Fuel cells, geopolitics, and the solar growth curve

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/09/17

As we head into the final quarter of this pivotal and dramatic year for the energy sector, Catalyst host Shayle Kann takes stock of 2026 so far – and considers what’s to come – in this AMA-style episode. He discusses the year’s biggest stories, the trends that have surprised him the most, and his hot takes on the current energy landscape.Shayle dives into topics including: - The data center backlash and why it has become more bipartisan than he expected - The impacts of the war in Iran on global

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42:18

Do data centers actually increase electricity prices?...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/09/10

You don’t have to look far to see the vitriol and backlash ignited by the rapid expansion of hyperscaler data centers. While critics and activists tend to focus their ire on resource consumption and residents’ electricity bills, the reality of data center economics is far more complex.In this episode of Catalyst, host Shayle Kann sits down with Andy Lubershane, head of research at Energy Impact Partners, to unpack the nuances. They crunch the numbers behind utility rate structures, consider the

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47:34

What comes after the data center backlash?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/09/03

In their early days, data centers were largely welcomed by communities who saw their arrival as an economic boost. Today as concerns around noise levels, power prices, water use, and AI grow, they face fierce opposition.In this episode, Shayle speaks to Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer of Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Together, they unpack the data center backlash and explore how the industry can approach the problem differently. Shayle and Brian dive into specifics like: -

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40:29

The rise of metal fuels

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/08/27

Diesel generators remain ubiquitous because they offer an unusually powerful combination of low cost, high energy density, long-duration storage, and reliable off-grid power. But their pollution, noise, maintenance requirements, permitting challenges, and growing footprint are becoming increasingly problematic as data centers drive demand for backup generation.In this episode of Catalyst, Shayle Kann talks with Richard Wang, co-founder and CEO of Voya Energy, about the company's effort to replace

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39:11

Can AI revolutionize grid operations?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/08/20

Everyone loves to talk about the “broken grid.” But if you look inside a utility’s planning and operations functions, a different picture emerges: infrastructure that is remarkably reliable, built and run by engineers solving impossibly complex problems with often outdated tools.In this episode, Shayle Kann sits down with Josh Wong, CEO and founder of ThinkLabs AI, a company building physics-informed AI for utility planning and operations. They break down how utility studies get built today, the

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42:21

Is now the time for DERs to scale?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/08/13

A decade ago, DERs were hot. The hype was that things like batteries, smart devices, and other distributed energy technologies would offset the need for expanding traditional grid infrastructure.But DERs never took off, at least not at the scale that many hoped for. They had high price tags and short track records compared to the existing substations, transmission lines, and generation options that utilities were familiar with. In short, the market didn’t need them yet. Fast forward 10 years, and

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31:21

Critical Capital: Senator Tillis' case for...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/08/11

This week, we’re presenting an episode of Critical Capital, a new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios.Energy policy has become increasingly polarized just as the U.S. faces record electricity demand, a rapidly expanding AI economy, and growing competition from China. In this episode, Alfred Johnson speaks with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis about why the country's biggest energy challenge is the inability to build durable, bipartisan policy that survives changes in political

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34:39

The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/08/06

The race to build AI infrastructure is often framed around the availability of power, chips, and capital. But another critical constraint is becoming impossible to ignore: skilled labor. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Raymond Hawkins, chief customer officer at Compass Datacenters, about why a shortage of qualified electricians has emerged as one of the biggest bottlenecks to data center construction, and how the industry is responding. Hawkins explains that labor shortages aren't preventing

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44:18

The commercial battery comeback

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/07/30

Commercial and industrial (C&I) battery storage has long been the missing middle of the energy storage market. It’s been too complex and expensive to scale like residential systems, but too small to compete with utility-scale projects.That may finally be changing. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Tim Hade, senior vice president at Voltus and founder of Brightfield Infrastructure, to discuss why C&I storage has historically struggled, why the economics are shifting dramatically, and why the

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34:53

The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/07/23

Most electric vehicles spend nearly all of their lives parked, doing nothing. But under the hood of those idle cars, a massive store of energy sits untapped. The Kia EV9, for instance, holds a 100-kilowatt-hour battery—which is equivalent to about seven home backup batteries—just waiting to be utilized.Yet despite this enormous potential, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology has remained mostly limited to small-scale pilot programs for decades. But with advanced tech hitting the market, that could

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40:09

When will quantum computing have its breakout moment?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/07/16

Over the course of the past decade, quantum computing (or the concept thereof) has ridden hype cycles, just like AI or the internet writ large. In the past year, however, as governments across the globe have committed north of $50 billion to the sector, and billions more have poured into quantum startups, the technology is finding itself in the midst of a particularly dramatic hype wave. Yet even as the money pours in, quantum remains a nascent technology that hasn’t seen any use in the real

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43:31

Inside the AI power wars

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/07/09

For those steeped in the world of AI development, the major differences between tech giants’ chip strategies are easy enough to see: the speed of Google’s TPUs, the affordability of Amazon’s Trainium, and Nvidia’s market dominance. But those same companies’ respective energy strategies often fly under the radar. As data center buildouts surge across the U.S., the tech industry is hitting a massive wall: a power grid that can’t move fast enough to support them. In this episode, Shayle sits down with

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37:46

Inside the most sophisticated plan for solar...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/07/01

One of the biggest challenges with technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that they require mass adoption. Solar radiation management (SRM) has the opposite problem. By Stardust Solutions’ estimate, dispersing three million tons of reflective particles into the stratosphere could cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius for the relatively small price of $30 billion; that's less than the cost of a single hyperscale data center. Despite concerns about such an endeavor, the company is

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30:35

How data centers are complicating transmission expansion

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/06/25

Electric transmission development is notoriously difficult, and these days, NIMBYism gets the brunt of the blame. But as data center loads surge and electricity prices climb, there’s a new roadblock – the messy world of multi-state cost allocation. The Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link (MARL) — a planned 100-mile, $960 million transmission line stretching across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia — was approved by PJM in 2022 under standard rules that spread costs across the entire

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36:02

Enter the electric supercycle

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/06/18

While many energy insiders remain focused on the staggering demand coming from AI and data centers, a much larger and far-reaching shift is happening. We are entering what Energy Impact Partners’ head of research Andy Lubershane calls the "electric supercycle" — a series of interlocking technological flywheels that are accelerating the clean energy transition faster than many may realize.In this episode, Shayle sits down with Andy to map out the interconnected nature of the "electric stack.” They

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34:12

How China is reshaping the global auto market

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2026/06/11

In 2020, China exported about a million cars a year. Now, it’s tracking somewhere around twelve million — surpassing the historic peaks of giants like Japan and Germany. Yet this massive global shift feels nearly invisible in the U.S. A 100% tariff on Chinese vehicles, combined with strict rules keeping Chinese hardware and software off American roads, has effectively built a regulatory wall around the domestic market. But in virtually every other corner of the globe, Chinese automakers are

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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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