Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Cutting emissions is essential to avoiding the worst of climate change, but we also have to deal with the impacts of climate change happening now. Fortunately, there’s a growing list of technologies that could help us adapt — and potentially turn a profit for investors, too. Will these emerging adaptation and resilience (A&R) technologies take off as an investment category?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Katie MacDonald, co-founder and managing partner at Tailwind. They talk about the areas of application – like wildfire prevention, air filtration, health monitoring, and more – that are attracting the attention of governments, corporations, and investors. But the space is young and still needs metrics and definitions, which is why Tailwind developed a taxonomy of A&R themes and sectors and plans to release an “innovation playbook” with market insights in the fall. 

Shayle and Katie cover topics like:

Tailwind: Taxonomy for Climate Adaptation and Resilience Activities

S&P Global: Risky Business: Companies' Progress On Adapting To Climate Change

Bloomberg Law: States Forge Ahead on Climate Disclosures as SEC’s Plan Drags on

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude 

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

Oil producers waste a lot of natural gas. Last year they flared 150 billion cubic meters of associated gas into the atmosphere, equivalent to about half the global carbon emissions of aviation over a 30-year period.

So why are oil producers burning a valuable commodity like gas?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Tomás de Oliveira Bredariol, an energy and environmental policy analyst focused on methane at the IEA. So far, multiple major global initiatives haven’t made a dent in flare volumes, which have remained largely flat since 2010. Shayle and Tomás talk about the reasons why and the potential solutions, covering topics like:

International Energy Agency: Curtailing Methane Emissions from Fossil Fuel Operations

National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Stranded Natural Gas Roadmap

World Bank: Global Gas Flaring Data

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude 

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

Hydrogen has two big problems: cost and supply. As a low-carbon feedstock, it could decarbonize planes, industry, and power plants. It could even replace the oil in plastics and chemicals.

But the leading contenders for low-carbon hydrogen production — like using zero-carbon power for electrolysis and methane pyrolysis — just haven’t cut it yet. So far, the price points are too high and the scale of production is too low to spur a hydrogen revolution.

But instead of synthesizing hydrogen, what if we pumped naturally-occurring hydrogen reservoirs out of the ground, just like we drill for oil and natural gas?

In this episode, Shayle talks about geologic hydrogen with Pete Johnson, CEO of Koloma. Early estimates suggest vast quantities of the gas could be tapped for far cheaper than other production methods. That is, if some major challenges are solved, like finding economically viable reserves, managing leakage, and building infrastructure. In these early days, those are all big ifs. 

A handful of startups are exploring geologic hydrogen, and Koloma, which has raised $300 million, is the most prominent in the space. (Shayle invests in Koloma and serves on its board. Prelude Ventures, which led Latitude Media’s fundraising round, also invests in Koloma.) Shayle and Pete cover topics like:

Latitude Media: Should we be paying more attention to geologic hydrogen?

US Geological Survey: The Potential for Geologic Hydrogen for Next Generation Energy

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude 

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

Editor’s note: There’s new interest in nuclear power from electric utilities, the White House, and the public. While NuScale’s deal to build a small modular reactor failed last year, TerraPower is currently building the U.S.’s first advanced non-light water reactor in Wyoming. So we’re revisiting an episode from last November with The Good Energy Collective’s Dr. Jessica Lovering unpacking one of nuclear’s biggest challenges: cost.

Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. Recent estimates put the cost of building conventional nuclear reactors at more than $6,000 per kilowatt, as measured by overnight capital cost. But high costs are a problem for new small modular reactors (SMRs) too, killing what was going to be the country’s first SMR before it got built.

Meanwhile, South Korea has some of the lowest costs in the world. Estimated overnight capital costs for reactors in South Korea are closer to $2,200 per kilowatt.And then there are countries like China, France, and the United Arab Emirates that fall between those extremes.

So why the wide range in costs? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director at the Good Energy Collective, a non-profit that researches and promotes policies that support nuclear power. A former director of energy at the Breakthrough Institute, she also authored a comprehensive study of nuclear construction costs in 2016. 

Shayle and Jessica talk about things like:

Recommended Resources:

Latitude Media: Is large-scale nuclear poised for a comeback?

Energy Policy: Historical construction costs of global nuclear power reactors

National Academy of Engineering: Chasing Cheap Nuclear: Economic Trade-Offs for Small Modular Reactors

Joule: Evaluating the Role of Unit Size in Learning-by-Doing of Energy Technologies

Science: Granular technologies to accelerate decarbonization

Canary: Future of small reactors at stake as NuScale deal flops

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a revolutionary platform enabling solar and energy storage equipment buyers and developers to save time, increase profits, and reduce risk. Instantly see pricing, product, and counterparty data and comparison tools. Learn more at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude.

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

America’s green bank – officially known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – is ramping up.

Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government is sending $27 billion to a network of non-profit organizations, state green banks, and local private lenders to fund distributed energy projects. 

The pressure is on to invest those dollars quickly and efficiently. The GGRF won’t be considered successful if it only deploys that $27 billion – it will be successful if it catalyzes 5x more in capital deployment. 

That means building a transparent market with uniform lending standards for CDFIs and local banks – lenders that may be touching solar, storage or other distributed energy deals for the very first time. 

The money is headed out the door. Are lenders ready to deploy it? 

This week, we're featuring a conversation with Amanda Li of Banyan Infrastructure and Billy Briscoe of the Clean Energy Fund of Texas. It was recorded live as part of Latitude Media's Frontier Forum series. 

We'll unpack the details, the urgency, any potential gaps, and the stakes for building a market.

This episode was produced in collaboration with Banyan Infrastructure. Read more of Banyan’s insights into the GGRF here.

Editor’s note: There’s momentum behind permitting reform in the U.S. Congress right now. It could mean unstopping a serious bottleneck in climate tech — transmission. So we’re revisiting an episode from last May with Grid Strategies’ Rob Gramlich to understand how we got here, the impacts on climate tech, and the potential fixes. 

The U.S. power grid is clogged, and it’s holding back the energy transition. 

Solar and wind farms are waiting four or more years to connect to the grid. Rising congestion costs are driving up retail electricity prices while hurting generator revenues. And the process of approving projects for interconnection is so complicated and expensive that it’s forcing developers to abandon the projects they were planning to build. 

We need much more transmission capacity and a better process for connecting projects. And we need it now more than ever. Demand for power will skyrocket as we connect EVs, heat pumps and other new loads to the grid. But Rob Gramlich, our guest today, comes with good news: We did it before. We can do it again. 

Rob is the founder and president of Grid Strategies. In this episode, Shayle and Rob talk through the three major challenges of transmission – congestion, interconnection, and buildout. And Rob explains how we’ve built out transmission in the past with efforts like ERCOT’s Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) and MISO’s Multi-Value Projects (MVPs).

They also cover topics like:

Recommended Resources:

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude 

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

Little-known fact: The primary product of steel mills is CO2.

A conventional blast furnace produces almost two tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of steel. And with almost two billion tons of steel produced annually — roughly 500 pounds for every human, every year — that’s a lot of carbon: about 8% of global energy system emissions. And yet, steel is vital for vast parts of the economy, including the energy transition itself. 

So why does steel production emit so much CO2? And what are the pathways to fixing it?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Rebecca Dell, senior director of the industry program at the Climateworks Foundation. They cover topics like:

Canary Media: US pledges up to $1B for two pioneering ​‘green steel’ projects

Latitude Media: H2's $5B fundraise is a 'test case' for financing green steel

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude 

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

Automakers got ahead of their skis. EV sales are up globally and in the U.S., but growth has been slower than expected and uneven. After enjoying a wave of growth driven by early adopters, automakers overestimated demand of more cautious consumers and ended up producing more than buyers wanted. Now auto dealers are slashing prices to move cars off the lot.

So how did the market get here? And how can EVs appeal to the next wave of consumers?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of anode material manufacturer Sila Nanotechnologies. Shayle and Gene cover topics like:

Bloomberg: The Slowdown in US Electric Vehicle Sales Looks More Like a Blip

The Wall Street Journal: EVs Are Cheaper Than Ever. Can Car Buyers Be Won Over?

Catalyst: What’s really happening in the US EV market?

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude 

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

In March, Nvidia announced a new microchip designed for AI that is 25 times more energy efficient than its predecessor. Two months later, Google announced one with a 67% efficiency improvement. Today, the rest of the semiconductor industry is hyper focused on efficiency gains.

Will they save us from ballooning data center energy demands?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Christian Belady, former Microsoft vice president now focusing on data center advanced development. They unpack concerns about this new surge of demand and whether it’s different from the energy scare two decades ago. Back in 1999, researchers predicted that data centers could end up consuming half of U.S. electricity. But instead, demand remained largely flat at about 4% as cutting-edge hyperscale cloud computing displaced inefficient, on-premises servers.

And yet, driven by the AI boom, energy concerns are back. The Electric Power Research Institute predicts that data center loads could consume 9% of U.S. power generation by 2030. Demand is already rising fast, with emissions at both Google and Microsoft up significantly. 

Shayle and Christian examine the factors driving those trends and what we can do about it, covering topics like:

Fierce Electronics: Power-hungry AI chips face a reckoning, as chipmakers promise ‘efficiency’

Latitude Media: The data center of the future looks like a massive virtual power plant

Latitude Media: Enchanted Rock is selling utilities on flexible data center connection

Latitude Media: Energy is now the ‘primary bottleneck’ for AI

Catalyst: Under the hood of data center power demand

Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

While we were all at home during Covid desperately trying to get our hands on toilet paper, exercise equipment, and home furnishings, solar executives like Dan Shugar were trying to get steel and power electronics to massive PV farms under development.

As equipment and workforce disruptions spiraled due to lockdowns, the cost of installed solar started going up for the first time in nearly a decade.

“Costs just skyrocketed. And so at this point in my career. I wasn't going to proceed like that,” explained Shugar, the CEO of Nextracker, the world’s top solar tracking company.

It became very obvious that Nextracker had to build more US manufacturing to serve local markets, where utility-scale PV was still booming. And within a couple years, they built a large network of factories.

“We've catalyzed over 20 factories across the United States with over 30 gigawatts of major components being manufactured here and shipping finished goods today. That's just a huge retooling of the supply chain,” explained Shugar.

To date, Nextracker has shipped 100 gigawatts of trackers. More and more of them are being produced in key locations around the US.

In this episode, produced in collaboration with Nextracker, Stephen Lacey speaks with Dan Shugar about progress in onshoring, innovations in tracker technology, and where the solar industry is headed next.

Learn more about Nextracker’s efforts to bolster domestic content for solar power generation in the US.