Catalyst with Shayle Kann

It’s time to get specific. In the power industry “long-duration energy storage” could mean anything from 4 to 10 to 100 hours of energy. But Form Energy’s Mateo Jaramillo argues that batteries in the ballpark of 100 hours hit a sweet spot, and that sweet spot deserves its own term: multi-day storage.

In the 15 minute to 12 hour range, lithium-ion batteries shine, effectively displacing natural gas peaker plants that run less than 5% of the year. But they don’t displace higher-capacity generation. Nor do they meet the needs of the grid during significant weather events, like heat domes, Nor'easters and freak Texas winter storms that can last upwards of 75 hours. And for that, Mateo says we need multi-day storage. 

Form Energy’s iron-air batteries made headlines back in 2021 for promising to deliver tens of hours of storage at a low cost per kilowatt hour. (Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle is a partner, invests in Form Energy.) So what role could multi-day storage play on the grid?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Mateo about real-world examples from Form’s experience with utilities like Xcel and Georgia Power. They also cover topics like:

Recommended Resources:

If you want more news and analysis like this in your inbox, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter and Canary Media's newsletter.

Catalyst is a co-production of Latitude Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is brought to you by BayWa r.e., a leading global renewable energy developer, service supplier, and distributor. With over 22GW in their project pipeline, BayWa r.e. is rethinking energy every day and at every level. Committed to being a solid partner for the long run, BayWa r.e. wants to work with you to help shape the future of energy. Learn more at bay.wa-re.com.

Catalyst is brought to you by Sungrow. Now in more than 150 countries, Sungrow’s solutions include inverters for utility-scale, commercial, and industrial solar, plus energy storage systems. Learn more at us.sungrowpower.com.

The U.S. Treasury proposed guidance last Friday that would significantly restrict what battery parts and materials can qualify for incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act. The rules label China and several other countries as “foreign entities of concern.” These rules will prevent materials and parts sourced from those countries, starting in the next few years, from counting toward the IRA’s electric vehicle tax credits.

The new rules are meant to push battery companies to develop supply chains outside the control of Chinese officials and companies, which control much of the world’s battery industry. They come following a first batch of guidance released this year by the Treasury, which the IRA tasked with developing specific rules for implementing the law.

So what does the new guidance mean for battery supply chains?

This episode features two conversations with Sam Jaffe, senior director of business development at Addionics. The first is a short update on last week’s proposed rules. The second is a longer conversation Shayle had with Sam in April about the first batch of rules, which focused on which battery ingredients count as “constituent materials” under the IRA. Both discussions are relevant to understanding what’s happening now.

In this update they cover topics like:

Recommended Resources:

Sign up for Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum on January 31, featuring Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, who will break down the budding market for clean energy tax credits. We’ll dissect current transactions and pricing, compare buyer and seller expectations, and look at where the market is headed in 2024.

Catalyst is brought to you by BayWa r.e., a leading global renewable energy developer, service supplier, and distributor. With over 22GW in their project pipeline, BayWa r.e. is rethinking energy every day and at every level. Committed to being a solid partner for the long run, BayWa r.e. wants to work with you to help shape the future of energy. Learn more at bay.wa-re.com.

Catalyst is brought to you by Sungrow. Now in more than 150 countries, Sungrow’s solutions include inverters for utility-scale, commercial, and industrial solar, plus energy storage systems. Learn more at us.sungrowpower.com.

For those of us in the U.S., Europe's strong electric vehicle market might offer a glimpse into the future of EV charging. In 2022 the electrification haven of Norway had a whopping 166 plugin-in electric vehicles per 1,000 residents. Germany had 20 per 1,000 residents and Europe’s largest fleet, based on reporting by Euronews. That’s far ahead of the U.S., which averaged 8.6 in 2022, according to Argonne National Laboratory.

So, it stands to reason that these countries must have insights into how to get all these vehicles charged. And Europe does indeed have a lot to teach the U.S. — but it turns out the lessons might actually go both ways. 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Nick Woolley, CEO and co-founder of charging management company ev.energy, which operates in both the U.S. and Europe. (Shayle’s firm Energy Impact Partners is also an investor in ev.energy.)

They discuss topics like:

Recommended Resources:

Sign up for Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum on January 29, featuring Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, who will break down the budding market for clean energy tax credits. We’ll dissect current transactions and pricing, compare buyer and seller expectations, and look at where the market is headed in 2024.

Catalyst is brought to you by BayWa r.e., a leading global renewable energy developer, service supplier, and distributor. With over 22GW in their project pipeline, BayWa r.e. is rethinking energy every day and at every level. Committed to being a solid partner for the long run, BayWa r.e. wants to work with you to help shape the future of energy. Learn more at bay.wa-re.com.

Catalyst is brought to you by Sungrow. Now in more than 150 countries, Sungrow’s solutions include inverters for utility-scale, commercial, and industrial solar, plus energy storage systems. Learn more at us.sungrowpower.com.

Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. Recent estimates put it 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 small modular reactor before it got built.

On the other hand, 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:

If you want more news and analysis like this in your inbox, subscribe to Latitude Media's newsletter and Canary Media's newsletter.

Catalyst is a co-production of Latitude Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is brought to you by BayWa r.e., a leading global renewable energy developer, service supplier, and distributor. With over 22GW in their project pipeline, BayWa r.e. is rethinking energy every day and at every level. Committed to being a solid partner for the long run, BayWa r.e. wants to work with you to help shape the future of energy. Learn more at bay.wa-re.com.

Catalyst is brought to you by Sungrow. Now in more than 150 countries, Sungrow’s solutions include inverters for utility-scale, commercial, and industrial solar, plus energy storage systems. Learn more at us.sungrowpower.com.

It’s about that time again. You sent in great questions for Shayle, and in this episode we’re tackling them with the help of Sarah Golden, vice president of energy at GreenBiz. Together Shayle and Sarah cover topics like:

Plus: volcanoes, Frankenstein, and Shayle’s childhood with geodes.

Recommended Resources:

Sign up for Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum on January 29, featuring Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, who will break down the budding market for clean energy tax credits. We’ll dissect current transactions and pricing, compare buyer and seller expectations, and look at where the market is headed in 2024.

Some technologies grab the spotlight even beyond #energytwitter, and some fly under the radar. Which ones are getting more attention than they deserve, and which aren’t getting enough?

This is the episode you never knew you needed: Shayle talks to Volts host David Roberts about the most underhyped and overhyped trends in climatetech right now. David has written about clean technology for the past two decades, first at Grist and then at Vox. He now writes a newsletter and hosts a podcast of the same.

Together, Shayle and David cover topics like:

We want your climatetech questions for Shayle’s Ask Me Anything episode! Email questions to us at [email protected]. You can also tag us on Twitter or LinkedIn with the hashtag #AskCatalyst. Or you can leave us a voicemail at 919-808-5832.

Recommended Resources:

Subscribe to our newsletters:

Sign up for Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum on January 29, featuring Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, who will break down the budding market for clean energy tax credits. We’ll dissect current transactions and pricing, compare buyer and seller expectations, and look at where the market is headed in 2024.

Catalyst is brought to you by BayWa r.e., a leading global renewable energy developer, service supplier, and distributor. With over 22GW in their project pipeline, BayWa r.e. is rethinking energy every day and at every level. Committed to being a solid partner for the long run, BayWa r.e. wants to work with you to help shape the future of energy. Learn more at bay.wa-re.com.

We want your climatetech questions for Shayle’s Ask Me Anything episode! Email questions to us at [email protected]. You can also tag us on Twitter or LinkedIn with the hashtag #AskCatalyst. Or you can leave us a voicemail at 919-808-5832.

The electrification gauntlet is this: The more we electrify, the more we ask of the grid. New demands on the grid are coming right as it’s facing some of its biggest challenges, like interconnection delays, transmission congestion, and extreme weather.

But there’s a way to take some of the strain off the grid when it doesn’t deliver what you need – Build your own! Microgrids, as they’re called, are electrical networks that can function independent of the larger grid.

So how do they scale? And what counts as a microgrid, anyway?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Tim Hade, co-founder and chief development officer at Scale Microgrids. (Scale was a launch sponsor of Latitude Media, which co-produces this show. This interview is independent of that sponsorship and was scheduled prior to Scale becoming a sponsor). 

Tim and Shayle talk about the state of the microgrid market. They discuss topics like:

Recommended Resources:

Sign up for Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum on January 29, featuring Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, who will break down the budding market for clean energy tax credits. We’ll dissect current transactions and pricing, compare buyer and seller expectations, and look at where the market is headed in 2024.

Heat pumps in 140 million U.S. homes by 2050 — that’s the goal laid out in Rewiring America’s recent report on the pace of home electrification. It’s a daunting target for a country that had heat pumps in only 17 million homes in 2020.

But we’re not that far off. According to Rewiring America, the U.S. is currently on track to install about five million heat pumps by 2025, only about two and a half million short of the pace we need to reach 140 million homes by midcentury.

So what can we do to close the gap? What about other major categories of home electrification like water heaters and induction stoves — are we on pace to reach net-zero targets there?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Stephen Pantano, head of market transformation at Rewiring America, about the organization’s Pace of Progress report. They cover topics like:

Recommended Resources:

Sign up for Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum on January 29, featuring Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, who will break down the budding market for clean energy tax credits. We’ll dissect current transactions and pricing, compare buyer and seller expectations, and look at where the market is headed in 2024.

Catalyst is brought to you by BayWa r.e., a leading global renewable energy developer, service supplier, and distributor. With over 22GW in their project pipeline, BayWa r.e. is rethinking energy every day and at every level. Committed to being a solid partner for the long run, BayWa r.e. wants to work with you to help shape the future of energy. Learn more at bay.wa-re.com.

Catalyst is brought to you by Sungrow. Now in more than 150 countries, Sungrow’s solutions include inverters for utility-scale, commercial and industrial solar, plus energy storage systems. Learn more at us.sungrowpower.com.

In climatetech circles, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was a big deal. The expectation was that, combined with other parts of U.S. industrial policy like the CHIPS and Science Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the IRA would transform the American economy and ultimately slash U.S. carbon emissions. 

We can’t see the impact on carbon emissions yet, but we can measure the initial effects on the economy. So how’s it going so far?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Trevor Houser, partner at the Rhodium Group, about the organization’s new Clean Investment Monitor, a database of climatetech investments developed with the MIT Center on Energy and Environmental Policy Research. Trevor highlights three different categories of policy impacts:

They discuss the drivers behind these trends and cover topics like:

Recommended Resources:

Sign up for Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum on January 29, featuring Crux CEO Alfred Johnson, who will break down the budding market for clean energy tax credits. We’ll dissect current transactions and pricing, compare buyer and seller expectations, and look at where the market is headed in 2024.

Catalyst is brought to you by Sungrow. Now in more than 150 countries, Sungrow’s solutions include inverters for utility-scale, commercial and industrial solar, plus energy storage systems. Learn more at us.sungrowpower.com.

This is a partner podcast episode, brought to you by DNV.

Wes Whited and Angie Ziech-Malek work for DNV designing efficiency, electrification, and decarbonization programs for utilities. And lately, they’ve been paying attention to electric forklifts.

There are 1.5 million forklifts sold in the U.S. every year. And converting that vast fleet to run on lithium-ion batteries could be a cost-effective way to boost electrification – and add a helpful resource for demand management to the grid.

Speeding up adoption means getting the utility involved in the education and promotion process. The forklift example is one of many creative approaches to program design that are emerging in the wake of the Inflation Reduction Act, which expanded incentives for a wide range of clean energy technologies.

In this episode, Wes and Angie talk with Stephen Lacey about how technology progress, creative thinking, and the Inflation Reduction Act are all aligning in transformative ways.

After you listen to the episode, make sure to read DNV’s Energy Transition Outlook North America.