It’s a new year, which means the veteran energy analyst Nat Bullard has dropped another annual, data-rich presentation on the state of energy and decarbonization.

And per what has become tradition, Nat is back on Catalyst – for the fourth time – to discuss some of Shayle’s favorite slides, cherry-picked from the 200-page deck. 

In part one of their two-part conversation, they cover topics like:

The significance of China’s rapid electrification

Why the proportion of GDP spent on electricity has remained flat while oil has proven volatile

The massive backlog and rising capital costs for gas turbines

How current tech CapEx compares to past large-scale endeavors like the Manhattan Project and broadband build-out

The extraordinary explosion of large load interconnection requests in Texas

The divergence in load forecasting between grid operators and transmission providers

Global drivers of electricity demand growth beyond data centers

Resources

Nat Bullard's 2026 presentation deck

Catalyst: 2025 trends: aerosols, oil demand, and carbon removal

Catalyst: 2024 trends: batteries, transferable tax credits, and the cost of capital

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

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