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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

35:16

Ag residue and carbon removal

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/09/25

Agricultural byproducts like corn stover, wood chips, and soybean husks typically get left to decompose and release carbon dioxide. Don’t call them “waste” though; some farmers use these byproducts as field cover to improve soil health. And industry uses a fraction of this biomass as feedstock for valuable products like ethanol, electricity, and heat. Theoretically, it’s a vastly underutilized resource. The problem is that agricultural residue is really hard to collect. The economics of gathering,

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41:01

Is now the time for DERs to scale?

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/09/18

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,

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36:32

When to colocate data centers with generation

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/09/12

The idea of colocating data centers with behind-the-meter generation is picking up steam, including large projects in Memphis, Texas, and Utah developing significant on-site capacity, mostly from combined-cycle gas plants. The main argument is speed to power. Building your own generation allows data centers to sidestep the challenges involved in grid upgrades, transmission, and permitting. But when does a good idea jump the shark? In this episode, Shayle brings Brian Janous back on the show to

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42:06

AMA: Geoengineering, nuclear, power prices, and more

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/09/04

You sent in great questions, and today we’re answering them. In this episode, Shayle hands it over to Lara Pierpoint, the managing director of Trellis Climate at the Prime Coalition and host of The Green Blueprint. Together they cover topics like:Whether solar radiation management will remain the “black sheep” of climate technologies What technologies will excel in a world of rising power prices Whether the nuclear renaissance is finally here Why Lara and Shayle are more bullish on

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36:07

The mechanics of data center flexibility

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/08/28

Adding flexibility to data center loads could ease strain on the grid and reduce the need for costly new generation. And, according to one study, shaving off just a few megawatts during peak hours could also unlock unused capacity —as many as 98 gigawatts in the U.S — if those facilities reduced load by just 0.5% each year. The problem: data centers promise near-perfect reliability, often “five nines” (99.999% uptime) in service-level agreements with customers. That leaves little room to adjust

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35:45

The Green Blueprint: Terrawatt Infrastructure’s...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/08/21

Editor's note: With the Trump administration's efforts to roll back California's electric trucking rules, there's new attention on heavy duty transport right now. So we're bringing you a deep dive into the industry, an episode of The Green Blueprint on Terawatt Infrastructure's $1 billion strategy to build charging depots.In 2021, Neha Palmer co-founced Terrawatt Infrastructure with a bold mission: create the backbone for America's electric trucking revolution. Within its first year,

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45:36

The case for sodium-ion

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/08/14

Our first episode covering sodium-ion batteries featured a cautious take on the chemistry: Back in February Adrian Yao, founder of Stanford’s STEER program, explained the challenges of reaching competitive energy density and costs, especially given the falling price of LFP. Still, sodium-ion chemistries are picking up steam, thanks largely to growing deployments in stationary storage and small-scale mobility in China.So what’s a more bullish take on sodium-ion? In this episode, Shayle talks to

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42:01

Explaining the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/08/07

Editor’s note: The uncertainties of data center construction — like when, where, and how much to build — are as pressing as ever. So we’re revisiting a conversation with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer at data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure. In this episode, he explains his theory of the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’, which offers insightful heuristics for understanding how data centers are driving change in the power sector.Every data center company is after one thing right

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33:43

PJM and the capacity crunch

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/07/31

The PJM capacity auction this month broke records with sky-high wholesale power prices — and that was by design. Under PJM’s auction rules, tight supply raises prices, incentivizing the development of new generation and encouraging existing generation to stay online. The big driver of that tight supply? Data-center driven load growth. The independent system operator covers Virginia, one of the densest and fastest-growing regions for data center development.So will higher wholesale prices

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29:35

Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/07/24

The job of an EV battery is unforgiving. If its performance slips too far — say, lost acceleration or range — it's probably off to the recycling heap. That’s even though it may have plenty of usable life, if only for something less demanding than powering a vehicle.Grid storage is theoretically a gentler job, involving slower discharging and more careful management. Still, repurposing isn’t easy. It requires dealing with a mishmash of various makes, models, and levels of quality. And it means

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46:19

Five big questions emerging from the OBBB

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/07/17

The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) complicates things. Together with a related executive order, it dismantled key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, while also injecting uncertainty into tax credit eligibility. The uncertainty in particular throws a wrench into project planning and leaves big questions about the impact across climate tech. So what do we know about the complexities of the new policy landscape? And what questions still need answers? In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague

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36:34

Tumult in residential solar

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/07/10

Residential solar has had a rough couple of years. In 2024, the market contracted 31% and major companies like Sunpower and Titan went bankrupt. Now, only halfway through 2025, Sunnova and Mosaic have filed for bankruptcy, too. The market has suffered from low demand, high interest rates, and major policy changes like California’s cuts to net metering. So now that the One Big Beautiful Bill phases out key tax credits, what’s next for the battered industry? In this episode, Shayle talks with

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38:34

Fresh intel from state utility regulatory filings

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/07/03

You’ve probably heard about Nat Bullard’s massive decarbonization slide decks, filled with charts and insights into decarbonization drawn from climate and energy data. This time he's waded through piles of utility regulatory filings — countless PDFs that hint at the inner workings of utilities and large customers — to find clues about everything from gas plant costs to new large-load tariffs. In this episode, Shayle and Nat, cofounder of the climate tech market research firm Halcyon, cover

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38:35

GM's big new battery tech push

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/06/26

Lithium-manganese-rich (LMR) batteries could offer a rare combination in energy storage: high energy density at lower costs. They swap much of the expensive nickel for abundant, affordable manganese. But technical hurdles — like poor cycle life, voltage decay, and long formation time — kept them on the sidelines.Now GM says it’s solved these challenges. In May, it announced plans to mass produce LMR batteries starting in 2028. In energy density, the new chemistry would land between the two major

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33:06

The story of steam

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/06/19

Addison Stark thinks waste heat is a waste of time. The real opportunity, he argues, is decarbonizing industrial steam, which accounts for roughly 30% of industrial heat in the U.S. But doing that means deploying alternatives to the fossil fuel boilers industry currently relies on.So how do you clean up steam? And why does Addison think waste heat is overhyped? In this episode, Shayle talks with Addison Stark, the CEO — or as he likes to call himself, chief boiler maker — of industrial heat pump

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32:54

The state of play of data center development

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/06/12

The future of the grid increasingly hinges on where and how data centers get built. To forecast the kind of power infrastructure we need to meet AI’s growing appetite, we first need to understand a laundry list of variables: data center size, workload type, latency, reliability — even the variety of a data center’s coolant system. So what’s the state of play in data center development today — and how are the trends shaping grid needs? In this episode, Shayle talks to Chris Sharp, chief technology

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40:04

The gas turbine crunch

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/06/05

Demand for turbines is growing fast, but so are lead times — causing serious headaches for developers. In Texas, one of six projects that pulled proposals from consideration for a valuable financing program cited “equipment procurement constraints” as the reasons for its withdrawal.Lead times are stretching to four years and sometimes more. Costs are climbing. So what’s behind the bottleneck? In this episode, Shayle talks to Anthony Brough, founder and CEO of Dora Partners, a consulting firm

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33:01

How geothermal gets built

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/05/29

Geothermal seems to be nearing an inflection point. With rising load growth, clean, firm power is more valuable than ever. Next-gen geothermal players like Fervo Energy and Sage Geosystems are signing PPAs with major tech firms. Even U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright — a known critic of renewables — has praised the potential of geothermal. The size of the U.S. geothermal resource accessible through next-gen geothermal technologies like enhanced-geothermal systems is enormous — potentially

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37:04

What to make of Trump's deep-sea minerals push

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/05/22

In April, the Trump administration issued an executive order to accelerate the development of deep-sea minerals — part of its broader push for “energy dominance.” The world’s oceans hold vast, untapped deposits of critical minerals like nickel, copper, manganese, and rare earth elements — all essential to batteries and clean energy technologies.Despite decades of interest, no commercial deep-sea mining project has begun production. The reasons? Regulatory uncertainty, environmental concerns, and

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26:37

A former race car engineer on battery safety and...

Catalyst with Shayle Kann ·

2025/05/20

From his days as an IndyCar race engineer to his current role as chief product officer for a leading storage integrator, Tristan Doherty has always worked at the intersection of high performance and risk management. Today, he's applying that expertise at LG Energy Solution Vertech to build more resilient, domestically manufactured energy storage systems for America's evolving grid. LG Energy Solution Vertech is the US energy storage division of LG Energy Solution, which has committed $1.4 billion

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