Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Every data center company is after one thing right now: power. Electricity used to be an afterthought in data center construction, but in the AI arms race access to power has become critical because more electrons means more powerful AI models.

But how and when these companies will get those electrons is unclear. Utilities have been inundated with new load requests, and it takes time to build new capacity.

Given these uncertainties, how do data center companies make the high-stakes decisions about how much to build? How sustainable is the rate of construction? And how much will these data center companies pay for electricity?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer at data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Brian recently explained how he thinks about these questions in a LinkedIn post titled “The Watt-Bit Spread,” which argues that the value of watts is incredibly high right now, and the cost of those watts is too low. Shayle and Brian cover topics like:

• The unclear data center demand and high costs that are making data center companies hesitant to build
• How the skills required for data center development have shifted from real estate and fiber to energy
• Why higher power prices are needed to incentivize new generation
• Potential solutions for better pricing electricity and speeding up the construction of new generation

Recommended resources

• Latitude Media: AES exec on data center load: 'It's like nothing we’ve ever seen'
• Latitude Media: Mapping the data center power demand problem, in three charts
• Latitude Media: Are we thinking about the data center energy problem in the right ways?
• Catalyst: Can chip efficiency slow AI's energy demand?
• Catalyst: Under the hood of data center power demand
• Sequoia Capital: AI’s $600B Question

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

In the next five years, Arizona Public Service estimates peak demand will grow by 40%. In order to meet that peak, the utility is increasingly turning to demand-side flexibility. 

A few years ago, APS started working with EnergyHub to experiment with smart thermostats as a resource to manage peak demand. The initial resource was modest – a few megawatts, and then 20 megawatts. 

That program eventually turned into a 190-megawatt virtual power plant made up of smart thermostats, behavioral demand response, commercial and industrial demand response, and some batteries. And the APS operations team now treats the VPP as a valuable resource.

“We had to really build trust in this as a real resource. As it got bigger and you could see a noticeable difference when we called on these devices, that trust really began to build,” explained Kerri Carnes, director of customer-to-grid solutions at APS.

This week, we’re featuring a conversation about the value of VPPs with APS’ Kerri Carnes and Seth Frader-Thompson, co-founder and president of EnergyHub. It was recorded as part of Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum series. 

What does APS’ experience tell us about what is working in VPP program design? How do we convince utilities that VPPs are reliable? And what is their role as load growth rises? 

“A VPP is actually more capable in some ways than a traditional power plant,” explained Frader-Thompson. “My guess is that over the next few years we'll probably come up with some more nuanced things to call VPPs.”

This is a partner episode, produced in partnership with EnergyHub. This is an edited version of the conversation. You can watch the full video here that includes audience questions about VPP design and implementation.

Editor’s note: In honor of all the frying oil used this Thanksgiving, we’re revisiting an episode with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, on the possibilities and perils of using biowaste for biofuels. Since it was published in June 2022, there has been increasing investment in biofuels from oil majors, especially for sustainable aviation fuel.

Biomass. It's the organic matter in forests, agriculture and trash. You can turn it into electricity, fuel, plastic and more. And you can engineer it to capture extra carbon dioxide and sequester it underground or at the bottom of the ocean. 

The catch: The world has a finite capacity for biomass production, so every end use competes with another. If done improperly, these end uses could also compete with food production for arable land already in tight supply.

So which decarbonization solutions will get a slice of the biomass pie? Which ones should?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. They cover biomass sources from municipal solid waste to kelp.

They also survey the potential end-uses, such as incineration to generate power, gasification to make hydrogen, and pyrolyzation to make biochar, as well as fuel production in a Fischer-Tropsch process. 

In a report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Julio and his co-authors propose a new term called biomass carbon removal and storage, or ‘BiCRS’, as a way to describe capturing carbon in biomass and then sequestering it. Startups Charm Industrial and Running Tide are pursuing this approach. Julio and his co-authors think of BiCRS as an alternative pathway to bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS). 

They then zoom in on a promising source of biomass: waste. Example projects include a ski hill built on an incinerator in Copenhagen and a planned waste-to-hydrogen plant in Lancaster, California. 

Shayle and Julio also dig into questions like:

• How to procure and transport biomass, especially biowaste, at scale? 
• How to avoid eco-colonialism, i.e. when wealthy countries exploit the resources of poorer countries to grow biomass without meaningful consent?
• If everyone wants it, when is biowaste no longer waste? And when there’s a shortage of waste—like corn stover, for example—what’s the risk of turning to raw feedstocks, like corn?
• How to pickle trees? (yes, you read that right)

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

Shayle and his team at Energy Impact Partners (EIP) review a lot of climate-tech pitches. The best kind of pitch uses a solid techno-economic analysis (TEA) to model how a technology would compete in the real world. In a previous episode, we covered some of the ways startups get TEAs wrong — bad assumptions, false precision, focusing on parts instead of the system, etc.

So what does a good TEA look like? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleagues, Dr. Melissa Ball, EIP’s associate director of technology, and Dr. Greg Thiel, director of technology. They apply their TEA chops to two technology pathways — green ammonia and synthetic methane. EIP hasn’t invested in either area yet because both struggle with challenging economics. Shayle, Greg, and Melissa talk about what would have to change to make those economics work, covering topics like:

• The basics of ammonia and methane production
• The cost stack of ammonia production and the surprisingly large role transportation plays
• The challenges of integrating ammonia production with renewables, like buffering hydrogen
• Novel approaches to ammonia synthesis, including scaling down the existing process, lower temperature, and pressure

Recommended resources

U.S. Department of Energy: Clean Hydrogen Commercial Liftoff

Catalyst: Ammonia: The beer of decarbonization

Catalyst: Climate tech startups need strong techno-economic analysis

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

Oh, the heat pump — a climate tech darling that still hasn’t hit the big time yet. One challenge for heat pumps is that the customer experience can be difficult, involving a complex installation process, poor installation jobs, and even technicians that don’t want to sell you one.

What’s it going to take to get heat pumps right? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Paul Lambert, founder and CEO of the heat-pump company Quilt. They talk through the nuts and bolts of the customer experience and how to improve it. (Shayle and Energy Impact Partners invest in Quilt). They cover topics like:

• Why many technicians are ambivalent or resistant to selling heat pumps
• The cost stack for heat pumps, including the surprising cost of materials
• The complex labor involved that ratchets up the total price of installation
• Lessons from other industries, such as solar and auto
• Whether users actually save money on heat pump installations
• The challenges of vertical integration of the value chain

Recommended resources

Latitude Media: We have more data on the energy benefits of heat pumps — and they’re big

Catalyst: Ramping up the pace of home electrification

Catalyst: Unleashing the magic of heat pumps

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.=

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

The bad news: The refrigerants we use in air conditioners, fridges, and vehicles absorb hundreds to thousands of times more heat than carbon dioxide does. The good news: We’re in the middle of a global effort to replace them with lower impact alternatives. 

Will we replace them fast enough to hit climate targets? And in the meantime, can we prevent them from leaking into the atmosphere?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Ian McGavisk, senior advisor at RMI for carbon-free buildings. An industry veteran, he recently co-authored a report on recovering residential AC refrigerants in the U.S., which have the carbon equivalent of 1.7 million cars. (Ian also works in business development at Transaera. Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle works, invests in Transaera.). Shayle and Ian cover topics like:

• The sources of emissions in the refrigerant lifecycle 
• The economics of recovering and reclaiming refrigerants
• Alternatives with low global warming potential and their tradeoffs, such as efficiency, flammability and concerns about forever chemicals

Recommended resources

RMI: Refrigerant Reclamation

Project Drawdown: Refrigerant Management

Project Drawdown: Alternative Refrigerants

EPA: Transitioning to Low-GWP Alternatives in Commercial Refrigeration

UN Environmental Programme: Montreal Protocol On Substances That Deplete The Ozone Layer, Report Of The Technology And Economic Assessment Panel, May 2024 

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

This might be our wonkiest topic yet: Techno-economic analysis, or TEA. 

Before a startup proves its technology is commercially viable, it models how a technology would work. These TEAs include things like assumptions about inputs, prices, and market landscape. They help investors and entrepreneurs answer the question, will this technology compete?

TEAs are important to the success of an early-stage climate-tech company. And a lot of startups get them wrong. As an investor at Energy Impact Partners (EIP), Shayle and his team see a lot of TEAs—and have some pet peeves.

So what can startups do to improve their TEAs?

This episode is a re-run from October 2023. We’re making a new episode on TEAs soon – stay tuned. But to start, we’re running this episode as a way to set up our next one.

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleagues Dr. Greg Thiel, EIP’s director of technology, and Dr. Melissa Ball, EIP’s associate director of technology. They cover topics like:

• Bad assumptions about things like levelized cost of production 
• Focusing on a component instead of a system
• Focusing on unhelpful metrics
• Using false precision—something Shayle calls “modeling theater”

Recommended Resources:

• Activate: Techonomics: Establishing best practices in early stage technology modeling
• Department of Energy: Techno-economic, Energy, & Carbon Heuristic Tool for Early-Stage Technologies (TECHTEST) Tool
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Techno-Economic Analysis

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

We capture concentrated methane emissions from point sources like dairy barns, landfills, and coal mines. Mitigating methane emissions is essential to hitting net-zero targets, but could we capture diluted gasses straight from the atmosphere, too? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Gabrielle Dreyfus, Chief Scientist at the Institute For Governance & Sustainable Development, about a National Academy of Sciences report on the unexplored area of methane removal. Gabrielle chaired the committee behind the report. Shayle and Gabrielle cover topics like:

• Why methane removal may be critical to addressing methane from hard-to-abate sources, like enteric emissions and tropical wetlands
• Key differences between methane removal and carbon dioxide removal
• How reducing methane in the atmosphere may also reduce its atmospheric lifetime 
• Technological pathways, including reactors, concentrators, surface treatments, ecosystem uptake enhancement, and atmospheric oxidation enhancement
• The potential for combining methane and carbon dioxide removal in direct air capture

Recommended resources

Catalyst: Why are we still flaring gas?

Catalyst: Mitigating enteric methane: tech solutions for solving the cow burp problem

Catalyst: Why methane matters

Latitude Media: A look under the hood of EDF’s methane detection satellite

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

AI is enabling a multitude of solutions across power, industry, and transportation. But AI energy demands are increasingly stressing the electric grid — creating a bottleneck for growth and new challenges for clean energy supply.

The mounting tension highlights the need for an energy-first approach to computing. 

Developer Crusoe is building AI infrastructure that takes advantage of clean energy to power workloads for AI modeling. Likewise, Nvidia, Crusoe’s primary GPU supplier, has been consistently improving the energy efficiency of its GPUs. Both demonstrate the innovation that’s happening in the marketplace to create a 'climate-aligned cloud' for customers.   

In the AI era, how do you build data centers with an energy-first approach?

In this Frontier Forum, Stephen Lacey explores all sides of the AI-energy nexus with talks with Chase Lochmiller, the co-founder and CEO. They discuss innovations in data center design, why the energy demands of AI could be higher than projected, and why that shouldn't scare us.

Chase Lochmiller will be speaking at Latitude Media’s Transition-AI conference on December 3rd in Washington, DC. Get your tickets here.

Getting the construction industry to try a novel form of cement is like turning a giant ship. It’s hard to redirect the immense momentum behind existing ways of doing business, especially involving cement, the most energy-intensive ingredient in concrete. Industry insiders point to tight margins, concerns about messing with the ingredients that literally hold up buildings, and the long list of stakeholders will agree to try a new material. 

So how do you get a risk-averse construction supply chain to try decarbonized cement?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Leah Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company that recently landed its first commercial deployment of decarbonized cement. (Shayle is an investor in Sublime). Shayle and Leah cover topics like:

• The long list of parties involved in a single pour of concrete
• Why the green premium is a burden for margin-squeezed contractors but “budget dust” for the building buyer
• How to align stakeholders, once there's buy-in from financers
• How a book-and-claim system could work for decarbonized cement
• How major concrete consumers, like governments, can create demand 
• Why the boom in data center construction creates a window of opportunity for decarbonized construction materials

Recommended resources

Catalyst: Pathways to decarbonizing steel

Catalyst: Fixing cement’s carbon problem

Latitude Media: With climate venture capital down, industrial investments had a ‘breakout year’ in 2023

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

Chinese battery companies are manufacturing the cheapest cells in the world right now, and it’s not just because of cheap labor and state subsidies. They’ve streamlined the process in a way that has industry experts wondering how international competitors can ever catch up.

In this episode, Shayle talks to James Frith, principal at the battery investment firm Volta Energy Technologies. He argues that there are multiple factors behind Chinese manufacturers’ efficiency and speed, like the know-how to operate plants with high yields, easy access to suppliers, and ability to squeeze margins to near zero. Shayle and James cover topics like:

• The confluence of overcapacity, softening demand, and low commodity prices that could result in a “bloodbath” of market consolidation in China
• Why the low cell prices on the spot market hit stationary storage harder than EVs
• Cost drivers of cell manufacturing, like labor, power, and environmental regulations
• What Western companies can learn from China’s cheap prices
• Why James is bullish on partnerships between Chinese and Western companies 

Recommended resources

Latitude Media: How Northvolt’s bet on lithium metal batteries fell apart

Latitude Media: A summer of ups and downs in the battery sector

Latitude Media: DOE designates $3 billion for the advanced battery supply chain

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

Tannice McCoy grew up in a mining family, but she never imagined herself in the mining business. Today she’s the president and general manager of NewRange Copper Nickel.

Jenna Lehti never imagined herself in the mining industry either. She’s a member of the Bois Forte band of the Ojibwe tribe in Northern Minnesota, and grew up on a reservation adjacent to the Iron Range, a collection of mining districts around Lake Superior. Today, she’s the tribal relations advisor for NewRange.

Together, they’re taking a proactive approach to harnessing tribal support for the critical minerals boom.

NewRange is a Minnesota company pursuing a new copper, nickel, and cobalt mine in the northeastern part of the state, called NorthMet. It would supply minerals for a wide range of clean energy technologies.

But under a previous owner, the project faced setbacks – in part because of a lack of engagement with local tribes. 

“I think part of that came from a lack of understanding of the tribe's sovereignty and their water quality standards,” said McCoy.

In this episode, produced in collaboration with NewRange, Tannice McCoy and Jenna Lehti sit down with Stephen Lacey. They explain what has changed with the NorthMet project, the importance of working with tribes, and the future of critical minerals mining in America.

“It's really about how we are partnering with the tribes to move forward and progress,” said Lehti.

This episode was produced in collaboration with NewRange Copper Nickel.

The world’s first large-scale, commercial direct-air capture (DAC) plants are coming online – or are about to. How soon will we see a boom in high-quality, durable DAC supply? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Andreas Aepli, chief financial officer of Climeworks, the world’s largest provider of DAC. They talk about Climeworks’ challenges with its two commercial plants – the kinds of challenges Andreas argues the industry needs to be transparent about in order to earn the trust of skeptical buyers. Shayle and Andreas also cover topics like:

• The real-world challenges of building a DAC plant, like extreme weather, supply-chain quality issues, CO2 purity, and more
• Why Andreas advocates a step-by-step scale-up of progressively larger deployments
• How to set pricing and and structure a carbon removal contract
• How to build a capital stack for a carbon removal plant
• Why Andreas believes the market will become even more supply-constrained in the next few years

Recommended resources

Latitude Media: Google says it's the first to purchase direct air capture for $100 per ton

Latitude Media: Can a new generation of DAC companies overcome the tech’s big challenges?

Latitude Media: Climeworks begins to offer “PPAs” for carbon removal

Catalyst: Fixing the messy voluntary carbon market

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.

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, learn how Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid at kraken.tech.

On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here!

Editor’s note: There’s some big money flowing into low carbon ammonia right now. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $1.56 billion conditional loan guarantee for Wabash Valley Resources, an Indiana low-carbon ammonia facility. In August, oil and gas producer Woodside Energy spent $2.35 billion on a low-carbon ammonia plant in Texas. Both of these facilities will produce low-carbon ammonia while using carbon capture and storage. We thought it would be a good time to revisit an episode with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. He explains how ammonia could be used as a low-carbon fuel in everything from ships to heavy industry. 

The irony of ammonia is that it accounts for a whopping 2% of global emissions, but it could also become an important low-carbon fuel. 

It’s the primary ingredient in agricultural fertilizer. But when combusted, it also emits no carbon, making it a promising low-carbon fuel, too — for ships, heavy industry, and even thermal power plants. 

But making the stuff takes massive amounts of energy, and ammonia’s feedstocks – hydrogen and nitrogen – also require energy.

So what would it take to slash emissions from ammonia production? And how would we actually use ammonia as a low-carbon fuel?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. Julio and a team of colleagues just co-authored a report on low-carbon ammonia for the Innovation for Cool Earth Forum.

They cover topics like:

• Why some countries like Japan, Singapore, and Korea are especially interested in developing ammonia infrastructure
• How ammonia compares to other low-carbon fuels like methanol and hydrogen
• How we would need to retrofit coal and gas power plants to co-fire with ammonia
• Addressing ammonia’s corrosion and toxicity issues
• The areas that need more research, such as ammonia’s impact on air quality and radiative forcing
• Key constraints like human capital and infrastructure

Recommended Resources:

• Innovation for Cool Earth Forum: Low-Carbon Ammonia Roadmap
• Canary: Watch this TED talk to get up to speed on green ammonia and shipping
• Canary: The race is on to build the world’s first ammonia-powered ship
• Chemical & Engineering News: Will Japan run on ammonia?

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, 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 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.

The U.S. and U.K. could see 500 gigawatts of distributed resources hitting the power system in the next few years. 

But after years of watching DERs grow quickly, utilities and grid operators are still figuring out how to utilize them. Are we finally reaching an inflection point?

“When you move to a world where you have millions and millions of generators, that whole system falls apart. And that's where you need not only digitalization, but also automation. They're the two things that we can't do the energy transition without,” says Charlotte Johnson, global director of markets at Kraken, which has 40 GW of DERs under management.

In this episode, Charlotte Johnson sits down with Stephen Lacey to talk about the state of connected distributed energy resources – and why Kraken is so focused on expanding into the U.S. market.

This episode was produced in partnership with Kraken. Kraken's end-to-end platform offers full network intelligence, DER controls, asset health, and reporting for power providers around the world. To learn more about Kraken's capabilities, go to kraken.tech.

AI is working its way across climate tech, helping companies discover giant lodes of ore, catch battery defects, and monitor energy infrastructure. Could it help us find revolutionary new materials, too?

Turns out, it’s complicated. 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Ekin Dogus Cubuk, or Dogus, a researcher focused on materials at Google DeepMind. DeepMind is one of several players, including Microsoft, trying to discover new materials that could be used in things like better battery chemistries, powerful carbon-capture sorbents, and room-temperature superconductors. But so far, Dogus says AI-powered approaches haven’t actually yielded any commercially-deployable materials.

Shayle and Dogus cover topics like:

• Existing approaches to materials discovery, like experimentation and density functional theory, and how AI could complement those techniques
• Why AI may actually require a lot more lab work – and larger datasets – before it becomes useful for material discovery
• The types of material properties that AI may be especially useful for, such as optical or electric qualities

Recommended resources

Latitude Media: Armed with AI, Microsoft found a new battery material in just two weeks

Google DeepMind: Millions of new materials discovered with deep learning

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, 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 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.

Deploy or innovate? Scale up an existing technology or develop a breakthrough? Build, build, build, or invent a better mousetrap?

The question isn’t which strategy to follow; it’s which strategy to use in which sector. Virtually no one thinks that solar needs brand new tech breakthroughs to scale. Crystalline silicone took the lion’s share of the market years ago from cadmium telluride, amorphous silicon, CIGS and other early solar technologies.

But in carbon removal, batteries, nuclear, and other industries — should we develop new technologies, or scale up a promising few?

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane about the better mousetrap fallacy in climate tech. Andy is the head of research and a partner at Energy Impact Partners. He argues that, in certain industries, investing in building a better mousetrap is a bad use of capital, and that too many options causes analysis paralysis for would-be customers. 

Shayle and Andy cover topics like:

• How scaling up technologies – as Chinese manufacturers have scaled up solar and batteries – drives down cost
• Why new technologies that aren’t five or 10 times better than an incumbent may fail to beat the cost curve
• Whether batteries need breakthroughs, and how Andy thinks about lithium-iron-phosphate, sodium-ion, thermal, and iron-air
• Why Andy thinks that the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions should license more new projects than new technologies
• The challenge of having more direct air capture technologies than buyers

Recommended resources

• Catalyst: The cost of nuclear
• Latitude Media: Is large-scale nuclear poised for a comeback?
• Catalyst: Seeking the holy grail of batteries
• Catalyst: Growing the carbon dioxide removal market

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, 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 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.

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:

• Defining the scope of A&R 
• Attracting resilience-curious investors to the space
• The co-benefits with mitigation
• How to measure the success of A&R
• Growing demand signals from governments, such as California’s climate risk disclosure requirements

Recommended resources

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:

• The nine countries responsible for about three quarters of flare volumes
• Why we don’t just build more pipelines
• Why oil wells may choose expensive diesel instead of powering their equipment with associated gas
• Converting gas into more valuable forms, like compressed natural gas, liquid natural gas, or methanol
• The potential for regulation and financial incentives to push producers to cut flare volumes

Recommended resources

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:

• The key factors that lead to reservoirs of geologic hydrogen, like water, iron-rich rock, traps, and seals
• Why geologic hydrogen could become the cheapest form of hydrogen, if found in large, economically viable reservoirs
• The greenhouse gas impact of hydrogen, which interferes with the breakdown of methane in the atmosphere
• Why Pete thinks that economically viable wells will attract new infrastructure, like clean ammonia plants, the way Houston attracted oil infrastructure
• Stimulating geologic hydrogen production by injecting water into rock
• What sort of watershed moment would prove the viability of geologic hydrogen

Recommended resources

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:

• What goes into the cost of construction and South Korea’s secret sauce for low-cost nuclear reactors
• Why Jessica thinks we should manufacture and regulate reactors like large aircraft
• Driving down costs with modularity, small reactors, passive safety features, and more construction 
• Why changing regulations might be necessary, but not a silver bullet 
• Why the pro- and anti-nuclear camps talk past each other — and why Jessica says she’s somewhere in between 

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:

• The history of transmission buildout in the U.S.
• The three P’s of transmission challenges: planning, permitting, and paying
• How congestion costs might shoot up over the next few years as grid capacity lags behind generation, causing new generation to slow and retail electricity prices to go up
• Reforming the slow, complex, and expensive approval process for interconnection at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• How the backed up interconnection queue leads developers to submit speculative projects, hoping for one project, but filing six to see what they get
• Where local opposition fits into transmission’s larger problems

Recommended Resources:

• Grid Strategies: Transmission Congestion Costs in the U.S. RTOs
• Grid Strategies: Fewer New Miles: The U.S. Transmission Grid in the 2010s
• E&E News: Senators line up to support permitting package

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:

• How steelmaking generates emissions from both heat and the production process itself
• Why coal is so useful for blast furnaces, and why natural gas can’t fully replace it
• Why recycling cuts emissions but hits a ceiling
• Direct reduced iron, which uses methane or hydrogen and requires high-quality ore
• Less-developed but promising alternatives: molten oxide electrolysis and aqueous electrolysis, which can use low-quality ore
• The limits of carbon capture and storage and material substitution
• The major players building DRI facilities, like SSAB, ThyssenKrupp, and Salzgitter

Recommended resources

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:

• How high-performance cells can lead to lower-cost batteries
• Why Gene says lithium-iron-phosphate may hit a ceiling in the market
• The potential of sodium-ion batteries
• Who can take advantage of production overcapacity
• The limitations of the Inflation Reduction Act in the face of weak demand 
• How manufacturing is competing with other major loads, like data centers, for electricity 
• Solving the challenges of vehicle-to-grid

Recommended resources

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:

• Whether chip efficiency improvements will lead to energy savings or just more powerful computing
• The upper limits of Moore’s Law
• Energy, labor, and other big constraints on AI growth
• Changing computing architecture to find energy savings
• Enlisting data centers in integrated, or compulsory, demand response
• Using AI to improve chip design 

Recommended resources

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.

While aviation may be converging on one main pathway to decarbonization — sustainable aviation fuel — maritime shipping may require a more diverse set of solutions: a portfolio of fuels, energy efficiency, and on-board carbon capture and storage.

But each technology has operational and capital challenges. So what will it take to scale them up?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Lynn Loo, CEO of the Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation. Ocean-going shipping consumes about 300 million tons of fuel per year, accounting for 3% of global emissions. But with significant regulatory pressure from bodies like the International Maritime Organization, shipping companies are exploring a range of options. Shayle and Lynn cover topics like:

• Conventional fuels, like heavy fuel oil and marine gas oil
• The inadvertent climate impact of cutting sulfur emissions
• The pros and cons of lower-carbon fuels, like LNG, biofuels, methanol, and ammonia
• The challenges for infrastructure and operations, especially involving the low volumetric energy density of new fuels 
• On-board carbon capture and storage
• How energy efficiency reduces the impact of low volumetric energy density

Recommended resources

International Maritime Organization: Fourth Greenhouse Gas Study 2020

Catalyst: Heavy duty decarbonization

Catalyst: Putting a halt to geoengineering — by accident

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, learn how Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid at 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.

Investment is on the rise in geothermal, where advances in drilling techniques are driving down the cost of generation right as the grid needs more clean, firm, dispatchable power to meet rising load growth. And enhanced-geothermal startup Fervo is leading the pack of entrants, signing agreements to provide power to Southern California Edison and Google. 

So how ready are these next-generation geothermal technologies to scale?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Roland Horne, professor of earth sciences at Stanford, where he leads the university’s geothermal program. Shayle and Roland cover topics like:

• Geothermal’s historical challenges of limited geography and high up-front costs
• Three pathways of next-generation geothermal: enhanced, closed-loop, and super-deep (also known as super-critical)
• Knowledge transfer from the oil and gas industry
• Advances in drilling technology that cut across multiple pathways 

Recommended resources

U.S. Department of Energy: Pathways to Commercial Liftoff: Next-Generation Geothermal Power

Latitude Media: Fervo eyes project-level finance as it plans for geothermal at scale

Make sure to listen to our new podcast, Political Climate – an insider’s view on the most pressing policy questions in energy and climate. Tune in every other Friday for the latest takes from hosts Julia Pyper, Emily Domenech, and Brandon Hurlbut. Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Be sure to also check out Living Planet, a weekly show from Deutsche Welle that brings you the stories, facts, and debates on the key environmental issues affecting our planet. Tune in to Living Planet every Friday on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Want to win Catalyst merch? Tell your friends about the show. We’ll give you a unique link that you can share. For every friend who signs up with your link, you’ll get a chance to win. Sign up here.

New electric vehicles — including both battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles — make up nearly half of new car sales in China. Compared to slowing EV sales in Europe and the U.S. the Chinese market is booming. 

So what’s going on?

In this episode, Shayle talks to TP Huang, who writes a Substack about EVs, clean energy, and other tech focused on China. (Editor's note: TP Huang is a pseudonym, used for family reasons.) Shayle and TP cover topics like:

• How EVs became extremely cost competitive with internal combustion engines in China where EV prices dip as low as $10,000 USD
• Chinese consumer preferences for vehicles packed with features ranging from voice commands to fridges
• The ubiquity and interoperability of fast charging, plus battery swapping
• The rapid pace of electrification in heavy-duty trucking 
• Chinese exports to Europe, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere (although not the U.S.)

Recommended Resources:

TP Huang: What's going in the Chinese automotive market

CNN: A brutal elimination round is reshaping the world’s biggest market for electric cars

Bloomberg: Why Europe Is Raising Tariffs on China’s Cheap EVs

Make sure to listen to our new podcast, Political Climate – an insider’s view on the most pressing policy questions in energy and climate. Tune in every other Friday for the latest takes from hosts Julia Pyper, Emily Domenech, and Brandon Hurlbut. Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Be sure to also check out Living Planet, a weekly show from Deutsche Welle that brings you the stories, facts, and debates on the key environmental issues affecting our planet. Tune in to Living Planet every Friday on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Driven by the AI boom, data centers’ energy demand could account for 9% of U.S. power generation by 2030, according to the Electric Power Research Institute. That's more than double current usage.

So how do we meet that demand? And what impacts will it have on the grid and decarbonization?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Brian Janous, former vice president of energy at Microsoft and current co-founder of Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Brian talks through the options for meeting data center demand, including shaping computational loads to avoid system peaks and deploying grid-enhancing technologies. He and Shayle also cover topics like:

• Why AI-driven demand will be big, even with “zombie requests” in the interconnection queue
• How hyperscalers are “coming to grips” with the reality that they may not hit decarbonization targets as quickly as planned
• Why Brian thinks efficiency improvement alone “isn’t going to save us” from rising load growth
• Why Brian argues that taking data centers off-grid is not a solution 
• Options for shaping data center load, such as load shifting, microgrids, and behind-the-meter generation
• How hyperscalers could speed up interconnection by shaping computational loads

Recommended Resources:

Electric Power Research Institute: Powering Intelligence: Analyzing Artificial Intelligence and Data Center Energy Consumption

The Carbon Copy: New demand is straining the grid. Here’s how to tackle it.

Federal Regulatory Energy Commission: Report | 2024 Summer Energy Market and Electric Reliability Assessment

Make sure to listen to our new podcast, Political Climate – an insider’s view on the most pressing policy questions in energy and climate. Tune in every other Friday for the latest takes from hosts Julia Pyper, Emily Domenech, and Brandon Hurlbut. Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Be sure to also check out Living Planet, a weekly show from Deutsche Welle that brings you the stories, facts, and debates on the key environmental issues affecting our planet. Tune in to Living Planet every Friday on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Tesla’s Master Plan Part 3 lays out the company’s model for a decarbonized economy — and makes the case for why it's economically viable. It outlines a vision for extensive electrification and a reliance on wind and solar power. 

In this episode, Shayle talks to one of the executives behind the plan, Drew Baglino, who was senior vice president for powertrain and energy at Tesla until April when he resigned. In his 18 years at Tesla he worked on batteries, cars, and even Tesla’s lithium refinery. Shayle and Drew cover topics like:

• Why Drew isn't sure that AI-driven load growth “is going to be as dramatic as people think”
• Drew’s optimism about the U.S.’ ability to build out enough transmission for decarbonization
• How to deal with the high rates of curtailment and what to do with that excess power
• Meeting the material requirements of decarbonization and Drew’s experience with permitting Tesla facilities 

Recommended Resources:

Tesla: Master Plan Part 3

CNBC: Tesla execs Drew Baglino and Rohan Patel depart as company announces steep layoffs

The Carbon Copy: AI's main constraint: Energy, not chips

Catalyst: Understanding the transmission bottleneck

Utility rates could make or break the energy transition – so how do we do it right? On June 13, Latitude Media and GridX are hosting a Frontier Forum to examine the importance of good rate design and the consequences of getting it wrong. Register here.

And make sure to listen to our new podcast, Political Climate – an insider’s view on the most pressing policy questions in energy and climate. Tune in every other Friday for the latest takes from hosts Julia Pyper, Emily Domenech, and Brandon Hurlbut. Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Batteries are making their way into more passenger cars and commercial vehicles than ever before, but the limits of electrification mean that we’ll likely need alternative fuels to decarbonize heavy transport like ships, planes, and trucks. 

So what are those fuels and what modes of transport do they suit best?

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. They talk through the limits of electrification and the alternatives for decarbonizing trucks, ships, and planes, drawing on Andy’s recent blog post, “How will we move the big, heavy things?”. They cover topics like:

• The main limitations of batteries: density and infrastructure
• Volumetric and gravimetric density, and why they matter for different types of vehicles
• How fossil fuels would beat out even a theoretical “uber-battery” multiple times denser than current batteries
• Why upgrading “always-on” grid infrastructure can be lengthy, expensive, and disruptive 
• The alternatives to electrification: biofuels, hydrogen, and e-fuels
• The advantages and limitations of each for different modes of transport

Recommended Resources:

Port of Long Beach: Our Zero Emissions Future

Enterprise Mobility: Electrifying Airport Ecosystems by 2050 Could Require Nearly Five Times the Electric Power Currently Used

Catalyst: Understanding SAF buyers

Utility rates could make or break the energy transition – so how do we do it right? On June 13th, Latitude Media and GridX are hosting a Frontier Forum to examine the imperative of good rate design, and the consequences of getting it wrong. Register here.

And make sure to listen to our new podcast, Political Climate – an insider’s view on the most pressing policy questions in energy and climate. Tune in every other Friday for the latest takes from hosts Julia Pyper, Emily Domenech, and Brandon Hurlbut. Available on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This week, we’re featuring a crossover episode of With Great Power, a show produced by Latitude Studios in partnership with GridX. Subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts.

Ahmad Faruqui has been researching electricity pricing since the mid 1970’s, when the cost of a kilowatt-hour was flat. But in the 80’s and 90’s, he started working on dynamic pricing – pioneering the concept of time-of-use rates.

The big breakthrough for time-of-use rates came during the fallout from the California energy crisis. Later, thanks to the rollout of smart meters, more power providers started experimenting with dynamic rates.

Now, new technology is making time-of-use rate design more transparent. This week, Ahmad talks with Brad about why dynamic pricing is gaining momentum among electric utilities – and what makes for good rate design. 

On June 13th, Latitude Media and GridX will host a Frontier Forum to examine the imperative of good rate design – and the consequences of getting it wrong. Register at the link in the show notes, or go to latitudemdia.com/events. See you there!

The U.S. rooftop solar market has tanked. Residential applications in California, the largest market in the country, plunged 82% from May through November 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. Contractors are going bankrupt. The big culprits are high interest rates and California’s subsidy cuts. But there are some bright spots. Battery attachment rates in California have surged.

So what will it take to revive the U.S. rooftop solar market?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Jigar Shah, director of the Loans Programs Office at the U.S. Department of Energy. Jigar argues that the rooftop solar industry should reinvent itself, relying on batteries and virtual power plants (VPPs). He also argues that regulations should focus on system-level dispatchability. 

Shayle and Jigar cover topics like:

• The pros and cons of California’s latest regulations, new energy metering or NEM 3.0
• Learning from the mistakes of California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program (S-GIP)
• The role of VPPs and rooftop solar in meeting accelerating load growth
• Incentivizing system-level dispatchability 
• How VPPs complicate the sales pitch for rooftop solar
• How VPPs could help utilities increase the utilization of infrastructure
• How to make VPPs more reliable

Recommended Resources:

U.S. Department of Energy: Virtual Power Plants Commercial Liftoff

Latitude Media: Defining the rules of DER aggregation

Latitude Media: Unpacking the software layer of VPP deployment

CalMatters: What’s happened since California cut home solar payments? Demand has plunged 80% 

The Wall Street Journal: The Home-Solar Boom Gets a ‘Gut Punch’

Catalyst is supported by Origami Solar. Join Latitude Media’s Stephen Lacey and Origami’s CEO Gregg Patterson for a live Frontier Forum on May 30th at 1 pm Eastern to discuss Origami’s new research on how recycled steel can help reinvigorate the U.S. solar industry. Register for free on Latitude’s events page.

Airlines are lining up to buy as much sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) as they can, despite it costing two to three times more than conventional jet fuel, according to BloombergNEF. United Airlines has secured 2.9 billion gallons of SAF over, and others like Delta, Air France-KLM, and Southwest have secured around 1 billion gallons each. And yet to meaningfully decarbonize aviation, the SAF market needs to grow thousands of times larger than it is today. BloombergNEF estimates that global production capacity will grow 10-fold by 2030, but by then supply will still only meet 5% of jet fuel demand.

So how are airlines thinking about scaling up their procurement of SAF?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Amelia DeLuca, chief sustainability officer at Delta. They cover topics like:

• Who pays the green premium
• Infrastructure considerations, like SAF hubs and blending
• Technical pathways, like hydroprocessing, alcohol-to-jet, and power-to-liquids
• The role of incentives and regulation, like ReFuelEU
• Why airlines should procure SAF instead of buying carbon removal

Recommended Resources:

BloombergNEF: United Airlines Is Betting Big on a Pricey Green Aviation Fuel

The Verge: Delta Air Lines lays out its plan to leave fossil fuels behind 

Canary Media: Can corn ethanol really help decarbonize US air travel?

Canary Media: How hydrogen ​‘e-fuels’ can power big ships and planes

Catalyst: CO2 utilization

Catalyst is supported by Origami Solar. Join Latitude Media’s Stephen Lacey and Origami’s CEO Gregg Patterson for a live Frontier Forum on May 30th at 1 pm Eastern to discuss Origami’s new research on how recycled steel can help reinvigorate the U.S. solar industry. Register for free on Latitude’s events page.

This week, we have something a little different: a news quiz. 

We recently took the stage with four investors at the Prelude Climate Summit — armed with a bell, a buzzer, and four different categories of questions. We tested two teams of venture investors on their knowledge of the most recent industry news.

Shayle Kann and Cassie Bowe, partners at venture firm Energy Impact Partners, are team High Voltage. 

Dr. Carley Anderson, principal at venture firm Prelude Ventures, and Matt Eggers, Prelude’s manager director, are team Shayle Gassed. (Prelude led fundraising for Latitude Media.)

Stephen Lacey, executive editor of this show and host of The Carbon Copy, quizzes the teams on the latest in climate tech news.

Which team will come out on top?

Catalyst is supported by Origami Solar. Join Latitude Media’s Stephen Lacey and Origami’s CEO Gregg Patterson for a live Frontier Forum on May 30th at 1 pm Eastern to discuss Origami’s new research on how recycled steel can help reinvigorate the U.S. solar industry. Register for free on Latitude’s events page.

The IPCC says that we likely need to capture hundreds of gigatons of CO2 if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. So what are we going to do with all that carbon?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. Julio says we will store the vast majority of that CO2. But the markets for using CO2 in things like concrete, fizzy water, and chemicals will play an important role in developing the carbon management economy. Shayle and Julio cover topics like:

• The roughly 50 carbon capture facilities operating today and how much carbon they capture
• Why we should recycle carbon at all when we could just store it 
• Current uses for CO2, like fizzy water, enhanced oil recovery, and concrete
• Emerging chemical uses, like jet fuel, ethanol, urea, and methanol
• Substituting glass and metal with products that use recycled carbon, like polycarbonate and carbon fiber
• The “over the horizon” stuff, like making space elevators from graphene
• Solving the challenge of local opposition to carbon infrastructure
• Who will pay the green premium for products made with recycled carbon

Recommended Resources:

Center on Global Energy Policy: Opportunities and Limits of CO2 Recycling in a Circular Carbon Economy: Techno-economics, Critical Infrastructure Needs, and Policy Priorities

Canary Media: US Steel plant in Indiana to host a $150M carbon capture experiment

NBC: Biden admin seeks to jumpstart carbon recycling with $100 million in grants

Are growing concerns over AI’s power demand justified? Join us for our upcoming Transition-AI event featuring three experts with a range of views on how to address the energy needs of hyperscale computing, driven by artificial intelligence. Don’t miss this live, virtual event on May 8.

Catalyst is supported by Origami Solar. Join Latitude Media’s Stephen Lacey and Origami’s CEO Gregg Patterson for a live Frontier Forum on May 30th at 1 pm Eastern to discuss Origami’s new research on how recycled steel can help reinvigorate the U.S. solar industry. Register for free on Latitude’s events page.

Rare earth elements (REEs) are essential ingredients in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and many electronics. As with most critical minerals, China controls the vast majority of the REE supply chain. And so when it banned the export of REE processing technology last December, it raised concerns about supply.

So what will it take to secure the supply of REEs? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO and cofounder of Cyclic Materials, a rare earth elements recycling company. (Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle is a partner, invests in Cyclic.) They cover topics like:

• The five high-value REEs used in the permanent magnets inside EVs, wind turbines, and other electronics
• The many steps in the supply chain, from extraction to end-of-life
• Building magnets without REEs
• Increasing production outside of China
• The role of recycling
• Why Ahmad is optimistic about developing a supply chain in North America

Recommended Resources:

MIT Technology Review: The race to produce rare earth elements

IEEE Spectrum: Who Will Free EV Motors from the Rare Earth Monopoly?

Are growing concerns over AI’s power demand justified? Join us for our upcoming Transition-AI event featuring three experts with a range of views on how to address the energy needs of hyperscale computing, driven by artificial intelligence. Don’t miss this live, virtual event on May 8.

A little-known U.S. law called the Jones Act shapes climate tech in weird ways — like hindering offshore wind deployment and pushing up energy prices.

The law, part of the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, requires all cargo shipped between U.S. ports to be carried by ships that meet strict standards. Those ships must be built in American shipyards, owned by an American company, registered in the U.S., and crewed by a majority American crew. As a result, building cargo ships in the U.S., and operating them between U.S. ports, is way more expensive than building and operating ships in other countries — and relatively few U.S. ships get built.

So what are the impacts on climate tech?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Colin Grabow, research fellow at the Cato Institute's Herbert A. Stiefel Center for Trade Policy Studies. They cover topics like:

• How the Jones Act increases the money and time required to deploy offshore wind turbines
• Why it costs less to ship U.S. oil and gas abroad than to domestic markets
• How it pushes domestic shipping to rely on trucks and trains instead of ships
• The history of the act and potential ways it could change

Recommended Resources:

• WIRED: The US Has Big Plans for Wind Energy—but an Obscure 1920s Law Is Getting in the Way
• Cato Institute: Jones Act Leaves New England Vulnerable to Wintertime Calamity
• Cato Institute: Environmental Costs of the Jones Act

Are growing concerns over AI’s power demand justified? Join us for our upcoming Transition-AI event featuring three experts with a range of views on how to address the energy needs of hyperscale computing, driven by artificial intelligence. Don’t miss this live, virtual event on May 8.

This week we’re bringing you a deep dive into battery supply chains — the season premier of The Big Switch, a show that Latitude Media makes in partnership with Columbia University’s SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy.

Across this five-episode documentary series, hosted by the acclaimed energy scholar Dr. Melissa Lott, we examine every step of the sprawling global supply chains behind lithium-ion batteries.

In this first episode, we break apart one of the battery cells that was in the original Tesla Roadster. Then we explore how critical minerals, like copper, lithium, and nickel, are becoming a major force in global geopolitics, especially involving China, which dominates battery supply chains.

The supply chain behind all those batteries could be worth nearly half a trillion dollars by 2030. Whoever controls that supply chain has enormous power — figuratively and literally. 

In this episode, we explore the stakes of the battery-based transition and ask whether critical minerals will look anything like oil.

To listen to the full five-part series, including episodes on mining, manufacturing and more, subscribe to The Big Switch on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The lithium-ion battery business is taking off, and the battery recycling business is close behind. Financiers are pouring over a billion dollars into recycling companies like Redwood Materials, Ascend Elements, and Li-Cycle. But success depends on a steady supply of used batteries, and with batteries lasting longer than expected — and the battery market still in its infancy — there just aren’t enough dying batteries to go around. 

As a result, a significant portion of recyclers’ feedstock is coming from manufacturer scrap, i.e. the waste that companies like SK On and Panasonic don’t turn into cells at the factory. But these battery makers are incentivized to minimize waste, which raises big questions about whether recyclers will be able to get enough used batteries to sustainably feed their operations.

So which technologies and business models will succeed in this chapter of the battery industry?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dan Steingart, chair of the earth and environmental engineering department at Columbia University. (Steingart’s lab gets funding from battery manufacturer Northvolt.) Shayle and Dan cover topics like:

• The steps in nickel-manganese-cobalt battery recycling and what Dan calls “zombie lithium”
• The differences between pyrometallurgy and hydrometallurgy
• Dan’s bet on solvent extraction as an under-appreciated technology
• Redwood Materials’ focus on winning the feedstock battle
• Ascend Elements’ hydro-to-cathode technology
• Li-Cycle’s focus on making inputs for cathode manufacturers
• How these recyclers want to compete downstream by producing cathode precursor and cathode material 
• Why Dan is surprisingly bearish on direct recycling for lithium-iron-phosphate

Recommended Resources:

Nature Sustainability: Examining different recycling processes for lithium-ion batteries

Latitude Media: What’s so hard about building a circular battery economy?

Are growing concerns over AI’s power demand justified? Join us for our upcoming Transition-AI event featuring three experts with a range of views on how to address the energy needs of hyperscale computing, driven by artificial intelligence. Don’t miss this live, virtual event on May 8.

The electricity gauntlet we covered last year has been having a moment in the national spotlight, with coverage of rising load growth in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post. 

On one side of the gauntlet, demand for electricity is rising, driven by new loads like EVs, data centers, and electrification. On the other side, electricity supply is slow to grow, bogged down by years-long interconnection queues, the immense challenges of building transmission, and other bottlenecks. And utilities are stuck in the middle, struggling to deliver enough power to meet that rising demand.

These challenges have been brewing for years, but the AI race is supercharging demand as big tech companies seek out power for their growing data center fleet. 

So what does all this mean for emissions and prices? And what tools do we have to make it through this electricity gauntlet?

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. Shayle and Andy cover topics like:

• Why utilities are building new natural gas plants and keeping coal plants open to meet load growth
• How technologies like nuclear, grid-enhancing technologies, geothermal, and multi-day storage could meet load growth with fewer emissions
• What utilities can do to prepare new gas plants for carbon-capture and storage
• What the gauntlet might do to electricity prices and which customers might be willing to pay higher premiums (data centers, cough cough)
• Whether the hype around rising power demand is overblown
• Plus, what medieval Swedish spearmen have to do with electricity 

Recommended Resources:

Andy Lubershane: The electricity gauntlet

S&P Global: NERC raises North American power system reliability flags as demand could outstrip supply

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like solar and electrification. Join in under 2 minutes at joinatmos.com/catalyst.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved new rules this month on what information companies must disclose about their greenhouse gas emissions and climate risks, but notably dropped more stringent requirements that the commission initially proposed. 

Despite being halted by lawsuits, the rules are a significant win for climate transparency. But they’re not as strong as existing climate disclosure regulations in California and the European Union, where many multinational corporations do business anyway.

So how big of a deal are the new SEC rules?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Mallory Thomas, risk advisory partner at consulting and accounting firm Baker Tilly US. The two talk about the details of the new rules and cover topics like:

• The rules’ requirements for disclosing greenhouse gasses and climate risks
• How the rules compare to European Union’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and California’s twin climate disclosure laws
• Which companies are required to comply and under what conditions
• How standardized reporting may help with comparability across companies 

Recommended resources:

Baker Tilly: SEC announces final rules for climate-related disclosures

Deloitte: A landmark ruling for ESG disclosure requirements

Reuters: US climate rule will boost sustainable accounting industry

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like solar and electrification. Join in under 2 minutes at joinatmos.com/catalyst.

Two major indicators of climate tech stocks – the S&P Clean Energy Index and the MAC Global Solar Index – are significantly trailing the overall market. They’ve been declining for months, down from their mid-pandemic highs when they performed far better than the rest of the economy.

So what happened to climate tech investments in the public markets? And what do these investments tell us about the coming year for climate tech?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Shanu Mathew, portfolio manager and research analyst at Lazard. They cover topics like:

• The macroeconomic factors behind this underperforming sector, like higher interest rates, election uncertainty, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine
• Trends in specific industries, like EVs, solar, and lithium
• Investors moving funds into (and paying more for) climate tech stocks with consistently higher performance 
• Analysts’ expectations for climate tech stocks in the the near- and long-term

Recommended Resources:

Shanu Mathew: Cleantech FY23 Recap And FY24 Outlook

Catalyst: How has US industrial policy impacted climatetech investment?

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like solar and electrification. Join in under 2 minutes at joinatmos.com/catalyst.

The first wave of digital grid infrastructure in the U.S. didn’t quite deliver on its promises. More than 100 million smart meters have rolled out across the country, buoyed initially by billions in federal funding. But instead of using them for exciting things like time-of-use pricing and automated demand response, utilities used them for more mundane things like automated billing, according to a whitepaper from Guidehouse. 

Could the new wave of AI-based grid tech be different?

In this episode, Shayle talks to David Groarke, managing director at the energy consultancy Indigo Advisory Group, who co-authored a forthcoming Latitude Intelligence report on utilities and AI.

David says that AI is showing promise so far. Unlike the first wave of hardware-focused advanced-metering infrastructure, AI leans heavily on relatively cheap software and data. He also says that AI’s capabilities are advancing quickly (“doing pressups” as the Irish say) by improving algorithms, handling more tasks, and improving efficiency. 

David and Shayle cover use-cases and other topics like:

• Wildfire management, using data from cameras, lidar, and satellites
• Customer propensity modeling, including detecting EVs to aid with infrastructure planning
• Automated and personalized communication with customers
• Predictive maintenance of substations and other grid infrastructure, using data from, for example, computer vision to detect corrosion and reduce downtime
• Optimizing transmission capacity by moving from static ratings of transmission lines to real-time ratings
• Whether incumbents or startups are leading the development of these AI-based solutions
• David’s take on whether AI’s impact on utilities will be revolutionary or incremental

Recommended Resources:

Latitude: Welcome to the smart meter’s second act

Latitude: AI is simplifying complex decisions for utilities

Latitude: Seven ways utilities are exploring AI for the grid

Latitude: Could AI-fueled weather forecasts boost renewable energy production?

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like residential solar and electrification. FDIC-insured with market-leading savings rates, cash-back checking, and zero fees. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

The carbon removal market could reach $400 billion to $1.6 trillion by 2050, according to McKinsey. But it’s got a long way to go. Right now the market is wild, unexplored territory filled with unproven technologies, murky cost curves, and a motley mix of price points and standards. The hope is that one day it becomes a standardized commodity market of high-quality, durable removals.

But for now, brave buyers have to wade into the wilds and see what works. So what does that look like – and what have they learned so far?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Stacy Kauk, head of sustainability at Shopify, which paid $55 million for 85,000 tons of removal in 2023. Kauk says that very few of those credits have been delivered yet, but the company, along with a few other early entrants like Stripe, H&M, and Microsoft, are investing in a varied field of technologies to develop the market.

Stacy thinks of Shopify’s approach like a venture capitalist’s portfolio, with some companies succeeding and others failing. Stacy and Shayle walk through the practical realities of building that portfolio, covering topics like:

• Using forward purchases, flexible contracts, and Shopify’s internal credit standards
• The challenges that slow down ambitious startups, like permitting delays and the complicated work of measuring, reporting, and verifying credits
• Which technologies are hot and which are not, ranging from biomass burial and wastewater treatment to enhanced weathering and ocean alkalinity enhancement
• Comparing the lower energy requirements of enhancing natural systems with the potentially clearer cost curves of engineered systems
• Building a diverse portfolio across technologies and maturities
• What determines the prices Shopify pays for different credits

Recommended Resources:

Bloomberg: Stripe, Alphabet and Others to Spend Nearly $1 Billion on Carbon Removal

Carbon Dioxide Removal Primer

Latitude: Fixing the messy voluntary carbon markets

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like solar and electrification. Join in under 2 minutes at joinatmos.com/catalyst.

The list of things that depend on transformers is long: new housing, EV chargers, renewable projects, and more. That’s why skyrocketing lead times and prices for grid equipment that raises or lowers voltage is a real problem.

The wait for a new transformer has jumped to over two years, according to WoodMackenzie. Back in 2020 it took just a few months, according to Tim Mills, CEO at transformer manufacturer ERMCO. WoodMackenzie found that prices, meanwhile, have risen over 60% since 2020. 

So what’s causing the shortage?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Tim about how rising demand for transformers has pushed manufacturers to capacity – and why it’s been so hard for manufacturers to expand that capacity.

They also cover topics like:

• The state of the shortage, including prices, lead times and types of transformers that are in especially short supply.
• The major drivers of demand growth, including renewables, storms, federal investment, and EV chargers.
• How the housing boom and bust of the 2000s left transformer manufacturers wary of bubbles in demand.
• Why the tight labor market makes it hard to expand manufacturing capacity.
• How new rules proposed by the Department of Energy are throwing uncertainty into what type of equipment manufacturers should invest in.

Recommended resources:

• WoodMackenzie: Supply shortages and an inflexible market give rise to high power transformer lead times
• T&D World: No Easy Answers: Transformer Supply Crisis Deepens

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like residential solar and electrification. FDIC-insured with market-leading savings rates, cash-back checking, and zero fees. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

It's been a year and a half since the Inflation Reduction Act was passed. In that time, we've seen $110 billion in planned investments for factories that are pumping out electric cars, batteries, solar modules, and wind towers. 

The upper end of 2030 forecasts show nearly twice as much zero-carbon generation getting built compared with scenarios without the law in place.

Much of this activity is the result of a new shift in the US tax code that allows wind, solar, storage, hydrogen, carbon capture, and manufacturing tax incentives to be sold for cash. It’s creating a lot more deal volume as many more companies can now buy those credits to support new development.

“This very rarely happens that a new market forms basically overnight. The private estimates on how big the market gets get it to something like $80 or $100 billion dollars by the back half of the decade,” said Alfred Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Crux, speaking at Latitude Media’s Frontier Forum.

In January, Crux closed an $18 million Series A round led by Andreesen Horowitz – bringing the company’s total funding to $27 million to scale its sustainable finance platform.

It’s been about a year since credits started trading, with activity really picking up in the last six months. Much of our understanding of how the market is performing comes from new research from Crux, which recently surveyed 150 buyers, sellers, and intermediaries – and found a mix of eagerness, hesitance, surprises, and lots and lots of questions.

Stephen Lacey spoke with Alfred Johnson live during Latitude's Frontier Forum to address many of those questions – and riff on how this new market is taking shape. You can watch the full conversation, including questions from the audience, here.

There was so much to talk about in Nat Bullard’s 200-page slide deck on 2024’s biggest decarbonization trends that we broke the conversation into two parts. For the first half of our conversation with Nat, listen here. 

Nat has worked as an analyst and writer in climate tech for two decades and was BloombergNEF’s chief content officer until 2022.

In this second part of the conversation, Shayle and Nat cover topics like:

• How ESG has become the new third rail of finance, falling out of the spotlight of corporate reports and the annual Larry letter 
• The vexing problem of what to do with curtailed power and why we need to design around the intermittency
• Whether you can have too many carbon certification standards
• How biodiesel is eating up Europe’s biofuel supply
• First Solar’s underappreciated success in surviving the decline of U.S. solar manufacturing
• Plus: Declining hydropower, slowing coal growth, and the rising hype around AI

Recommended resources:

Nathaniel Bullard: Decarbonization: Stocks and flows, abundance and scarcity, net zero

Washington Post: ‘Greenhushing’: Why some companies quietly hide their climate pledges

World Economic Forum: Hydropower: How droughts are affecting the world's biggest renewable energy source

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like residential solar and electrification. FDIC-insured with market-leading savings rates, cash-back checking, and zero fees. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

We’re back for round two, with even more slides than last year. This year’s annual slide deck from Nat Bullard has 200 pages on the key trends shaping decarbonization in 2024. Nat has worked as an analyst and writer in climate tech for two decades and was BloombergNEF’s chief content officer until 2022.

We’ve split the conversation into two parts. In this first part, Shayle and Nat cover topics like: 

• The state of batteries, including the rapid growth of LFP chemistries, the concentration of manufacturing capacity, and the wild ride of lithium prices.
• The rapid growth of transferable tax credits and how that unlocks capital for renewables.
• How the rising cost of capital has reshaped climate tech.

Recommended resources:

Nathaniel Bullard: Decarbonization: Stocks and flows, abundance and scarcity, net zero

Latitude Media: Clean energy capital is getting pricier

WSJ: Companies Are Snapping Up New Clean-Energy Tax Credits

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like solar and electrification. Join in under 2 minutes at joinatmos.com/catalyst.

A recent slew negative headlines about U.S. EVs makes it feel like the sky is falling on the market. Yet the data show robust growth. Combined battery electric and plug-in hybrid sales in 2023 were up 50% from 2022. Meanwhile, EV market share reached 9.5% in 2023, up from 7.5% in 2022, according to BloombergNEF. 

Still, there have been real signs of changing expectations. GM and Ford have downsized their EV ambitions. Hertz sold off 20,000 Teslas. And Elon Musk tried to temper expectations in last week’s disappointing Tesla earnings call. 

So why all the conflicting indicators? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to BloombergNEF analyst Corey Cantor. They talk about the changing outlook on the speed of EV adoption as the focus shifts from early adopters to the mass market. They talk through the persistent challenges EVs face, like slow charger rollout and lack of affordable price points. They also cover topics like:

• Whether sales challenges are more of an overall market problem or a legacy automaker problem
• Tesla’s dominant but falling share of the market and what was behind the Hertz sell-off
• Momentum behind insurgent Korean automakers Kia and Hyundai
• Whether the Chinese EV giant BYD will enter the U.S. market

Recommended Resources:

Inside EVs: Hyundai's Electric Vehicle Push Is Absolutely Working

Bloomberg: EV-Charging Firms to Struggle With Finances, Investment in 2024

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like solar and electrification. Join in under 2 minutes at joinatmos.com/catalyst.

Agriculture in the U.S. produces more methane than the American oil and gas industry, and the biggest share of that agricultural methane is from enteric fermentation – essentially cow burps. Cows and other ruminant animals release methane because of the way they digest food. And as animal protein consumption rises, so will enteric emissions.

It’s a problem for climate change, but also for farmers. Methane is wasted energy that could have been used for beef or dairy production – and so enteric methane production is a challenge that researchers have been trying to solve for years. Some promising solutions are starting to make it into practice.

In this episode, Shayle talks to Charles Brooke, program manager for enteric methane at Spark Climate Solutions. Shayle and Charles cover topics like:

• Why most enteric methane comes from small-holder pasture-raised animals, instead of feed-lot-raised animals.
• The different solutions in the pipeline, such as better livestock management, feed additives, vaccines, and breeding.
• The challenges with feed additives that animals must eat everyday, like bromoform, Bovaer, and 3-NOP.
• How vaccines and breeding could shift global populations more permanently.
• The barriers to adoption, such as regulatory hurdles and public skepticism.

Recommended Resources:

Federation of American Scientists: Climate-Smart Cattle: US Research and Development Will Improve Animal Productivity, Address Greenhouse Gases, and Hasten Additional Market Solutions

USAID: Endline Methane Assessment of KCDMS Dairy and Fodder Value Chain Activities in Kenya

Food Climate Research Network: Grazed and Confused 

American Society for Microbiology: The Role of microbes in Mediating Climate Change

Environmental Defense Fund: Tackling Enteric Methane

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Plants capture hundreds of gigatons of carbon every year in timber, crops, and other forms of biomass. Much of that carbon gets released back into the atmosphere through natural processes and human intervention. But there are a few ways that we can lock it away for good, like biochar, bio-oil, and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS — all processes that fall under the umbrella of biomass carbon removal.

The International Panel on Climate Change calls carbon removal “unavoidable” — and biomass is a leading carbon removal contender. But everyone wants a slice of the biomass pie. Airlines want it for jet fuel. Midwestern legislators want it for ethanol. Homebuilders want it for construction. Oh, and humans want it for food. By 2050 potential demand for biomass could far outstrip supply. 

So what kinds of biomass should we use for carbon removal — and where should we get that biomass from?

In this episode, Shayle talks with Dr. Bodie Cabiyo, senior forest scientist at climate science consultancy Carbon Direct and lead author of A Buyer’s Guide to Sustainable Biomass Sourcing for Carbon Dioxide Removal.

They talk about topics like:

• How carbon removal is already competing with other uses for biomass.
• The complicated question of what counts as “waste,” which some BECCS companies are using to claim carbon reductions.
• Principles for sustainably sourcing biomass for carbon removal, like tracing chain of custody and avoiding market distortions.
• The environmental and carbon math tradeoffs involved in different sources of biomass.
• What Shayle would do with biomass if he were an omnipotent global leader.

Recommended Resources:

• Carbon Direct: A Buyer’s Guide to Sustainable Biomass Sourcing for Carbon Dioxide Removal
• Catalyst: From biowaste to ​‘biogold’
• Energy Transitions Commission: Bioresources within a Net-Zero Emissions Economy: Making a Sustainable Approach Possible

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 supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like residential solar and electrification. Market-leading savings rates, cash-back checking, and zero fees. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

Venture and early-stage investment in climate tech in 2023 was down 30% from 2022, according to market intelligence firm Sightline Climate. But is that a bad thing?

In this episode, Shayle unpacks the findings of Sightline’s 2023 Climate Tech Investment Trends report with Kim Zou, co-founder and CEO of the firm, which also produces the popular CTVC newsletter. (Shayle is an adviser to Sightline, and Kim was also previously a partner at Energy Impact Partners where Shayle works.) Kim argues that smaller deal sizes suggest that the climate tech space is actually maturing.

The data focus on venture and early-stage capital, rather than non-equity financing, which actually expanded in 2023, another sign that climate tech finance is becoming more sophisticated.

Shayle and Kim also cover topics like:

• Why food and land use fell out of the top three verticals (and why heavy industry took its place).
• Major funding rounds, acquisitions, and bankruptcies in 2023.
• The role of generalist investors moving into climate tech.
• Zou’s predictions for investment trends in 2024.

Recommended Resources:

• Latitude: Exclusive: Non-equity funding for climate tech is taking off
• Latitude: Clean energy capital is getting pricier
• Catalyst: Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets

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.

Sign up for Latitude Media’s newsletter to get updates on the tech and business frontiers of the climate tech industry.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like residential solar and electrification. Market-leading savings rates, cash-back checking, and zero fees. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

The voluntary carbon market is a mess. Oil majors, big tech, and many other industries purchase voluntary credits hoping to offset their carbon emissions. But years of reporting have revealed major problems in the industry, from worthless credits to outright fraud. Amid allegations that many of its credits might actually worsen global warming, the CEO of the largest issuer of credits, Verra, resigned last year.

And so perhaps it’s no surprise that the market for traditional offsets like renewable energy credits and avoidance credits shrank in recent years. Yet the market for a newer type of credit, carbon removal, is actually growing. 

So what’s behind this bifurcation in the market? And are the voluntary carbon markets fixable?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Ryan Orbuch, partner at Lowercarbon Capital. He leads the firm’s carbon removal work. Ryan argues the market is fixable with major reforms, like overhauling incentives and ditching the idea that the voluntary carbon market can offset buyers’ emissions with as many cheap credits as needed. 

 Shayle and Ryan cover topics like:

• The bad incentives underlying the problems with the current market.
• The role of credit-rating agencies in the market.
• Ryan’s ideas for designing a better market from scratch, including ex-post payments, modular protocols, and a feedback loop for improving supplier methods.
• The potential challenges with these approaches, like financing prior to payment and uncertainty in credit delivery as protocols change.
• Companies that are pioneering some of these approaches, like Isometric’s new protocol for the bio-oil geological storage technique used by Charm Industrial.

Recommended Resources:

• The New Yorker: The Great Cash-for-Carbon Hustle
• UC Berkeley: Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) Carbon Crediting
• CDR.fyi
• Isometric: Aligning incentives

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.

Sign up for Latitude Media’s newsletter to get updates on the tech and business frontiers of the climatetech industry.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you’re a startup, investor, enterprise or innovation ecosystem that’s creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is brought to you by Atmos Financial. Atmos is revolutionizing finance by leveraging your deposits to exclusively fund decarbonization solutions, like residential solar and electrification. Market-leading savings rates, cash-back checking, and zero fees. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

There’s a hole in the finance world. Fighting climate change means scaling up lots of new technologies, but financing those first-of-a-kind (FOAK) projects is incredibly difficult. New technologies involving things like sustainable aviation fuel, geothermal, and direct air capture can take a decade or more to scale up. But venture capital is too expensive for FOAK projects, while infrastructure finance is too risk-averse.

So what solutions could solve the FOAK financing problem? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to longtime climatetech investor David Yeh. David has spent over 20 years in climatetech, including in roles at the Obama White House, Generation Investment Management, and the World Bank.

They cover topics like:

• Different approaches to FOAK, like off-balance sheet, structured finance, catalytic capital, and government programs.
• Examples of companies that solved the FOAK problem
• Code switching between venture capitalists and infrastructure financiers. (Try using the word “innovative” with traditional bankers).
• David’s checklist for FOAK entrepreneurs.

Recommended Resources:

• Bloomberg: Grant From Bill Gates-led Fund Will Make Green Jet Fuel As Cheap As Fossil Fuels
• CTVC: What the FOAK?

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 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:

• The strengths and limitations of lithium-ion batteries on the grid today, and why Mateo thinks lithium-ion is here to stay.
• The competitive landscape for mulit-day storage, including iron-air, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and transmission.
• What role multi-day storage plays for utilities beyond balancing renewables, such as meeting load growth and resilience goals.
• Plus: Shayle’s idea for bitcoin mining on a barge.

Recommended Resources:

• Canary Media: Form Energy closes its biggest deal yet for long-duration energy storage
• Carbon Copy: A groundbreaking long-duration battery nears industrial scale
• Wall Street Journal: Old West Virginia Steel Mill Becomes a Green-Energy Powerhouse

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:

• Defining what counts as a material controlled by a foreign entity of concern, such as percentage ownership in a joint venture
• Key loopholes in law, such as licensing arrangements and small percentages of low-value materials, like cathode binder and electrolyte salts 
• The parts of the supply chain most significantly affected by the rule, such as Chinese graphite, Indonesian nickel, and Congolese cobalt
• Upcoming deadlines in 2025 and 2026, and whether onshored or friend-shored facilities can begin supplying materials before then

Recommended Resources:

• Canary: The US EV industry now faces a choice: Tax credits or Chinese batteries
• Heatmap: It’s Suddenly a Mystery Which EVs Will Qualify for a Tax Credit in 2024

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:

• EV adoption rates and charging patterns by region
• The fragmented European charging networks and Europe’s unique roaming programs that facilitate interoperability
• The difference between customers who have off-street parking and their own charging infrastructure, and those who instead have to scavenge for charging
• The pros and cons of Europe’s unbundled electricity markets, as compared with vertically integrated markets in the U.S. 
• Carrots, sticks, and compliance for managed charging, also known as V1G
• The challenges of implementing vehicle-to-grid charging, or V2G

Recommended Resources:

• Catalyst: Can the V2X dream become reality?
• Catalyst: The journey to monetizing distributed energy 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:

• What goes into the cost of construction and South Korea’s secret sauce for low-cost nuclear reactors
• Why Jessica thinks we should manufacture and regulate reactors like large aircraft
• Driving down costs with modularity, small reactors, passive safety features, and more construction 
• Why changing regulations might be necessary, but not a silver bullet 
• Why the pro- and anti-nuclear camps talk past each other — and why Jessica says she’s somewhere in between 

Recommended Resources:

• 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

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:

• Load growth and whether data-center demand is good or bad for decarbonization.
• The crash in photovoltaic module prices and what it means for the solar industry.
• The impact of interest rates on climatetech.
• The challenges of siting carbon dioxide pipelines.
• Why there’s no clear winning technology for carbon dioxide removal.
• European energy companies acquiring U.S. companies.
• Why Shayle is bullish on the macro grid, despite the slow pace of interconnection and transmission buildout.

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

Recommended Resources:

• Catalyst: Navigating the electrification gauntlet
• Canary: The US offshore wind industry faces a moment of reckoning
• S&P Global: Cancellation of Navigator CO2 pipeline raises critical issues for several industries
• Catalyst: Growing the carbon dioxide removal market

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:

• Why this new wave of thermal storage technology is different.
• Small modular reactors and why David and Shayle disagree on how much hype they deserve
• Why rising interest rates are starting to become a big problem for climatetech.
• The Inflation Reduction Act and how people still don’t grasp how big of a deal it is.
• Plus: electric stovetops, mineral bottlenecks, and networked geothermal.

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:

• Volts: What's the deal with district energy?
• Volts: Fine, we're doing gas stoves
• Catalyst: Solving the conundrum of industrial heat
• Catalyst: Strong opinions on small modular reactors

Subscribe to our newsletters:

• Canary Media
• The Latitude

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:

• Why microgrid switchgear is a major bottleneck right now
• Whether the Chinese supply chain for microgrid parts will bounce back, or new manufacturing will spring up in Europe and the U.S. to replace it
• The effort to standardize microgrids to increase adoption

Recommended Resources:

• Canary: Puerto Rico’s first community-led microgrid is ready to launch
• Canary: A giant solar microgrid is coming to New York City’s JFK airport

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:

• The adoption targets for water heaters, induction stoves, and other efficient home appliances
• The roughly $9 billion in incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act that could accelerate adoption
• The need for more data to get a better understanding of where and how to speed up adoption
• Why heat pumps are a growing share of a shrinking heating and cooling market, and how that’s impacting slumping heat pump sales

Recommended Resources:

• Rewiring America: Pace of Progress
• Canary: New plan aims to quadruple heat-pump adoption in 25 states
• Canary: Heat pumps outperform boilers and furnaces — even in the cold
• Catalyst: How has US industrial policy impacted climatetech investment?

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:

• Sectors where policy accelerated existing trends, like solar deployment and EV sales.
• Sectors where policy catalyzed new growth that probably would not have happened otherwise, like in manufacturing, hydrogen, carbon management, and sustainable aviation fuels.
• Sectors that are declining despite policy incentives, like the deployment of wind and heat pumps.

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

• The regional clustering of manufacturing investment and new geographic hubs, like the Southwest.
• The surprising growth in hydrogen made from steam methane reforming, also known as blue hydrogen.

Recommended Resources:

• Rhodium Group: Clean Investment Monitor
• Canary: Made in the USA: Ramping up clean energy manufacturing
• Canary: US offshore wind pushes ahead despite industry turmoil

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.

We have a flash sale for Transition-AI: New York through October 9th. Use the code FLASH30 to get 30% off your ticket price to our event on AI + energy. Spots are limited, so don't miss out!

This might be our wonkiest topic yet: Techno-economic analysis, or TEA. 

Before a startup has proven that its technology is commercially viable, it models how its technology would work. These TEAs include things like assumptions about inputs, prices, and market landscape. They help investors and entrepreneurs answer the question, will this technology compete?

TEAs are important to the success of an early-stage climate-tech company. And a lot of startups get them wrong. As an investor at Energy Impact Partners (EIP), Shayle and his team see a lot of TEAs—and have some pet peeves.

What can startups do to improve their TEAs?

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleagues Dr. Greg Thiel, EIP’s director of technology, and Dr. Melissa Ball, EIP’s associate director of technology. They cover topics like:

• Bad assumptions about things like levelized cost of production 
• Focusing on a component instead of a system
• Focusing on unhelpful metrics
• Using false precision—something Shayle calls “modeling theater”

Recommended Resources:

• Activate: Techonomics: Establishing best practices in early stage technology modeling
• Department of Energy: Techno-economic, Energy, & Carbon Heuristic Tool for Early-Stage Technologies (TECHTEST) Tool
• National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Techno-Economic Analysis

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.

It was 2020 and plant-based meats were hot. Sales were up 45% that year and expectations were high. The industry set its sights on performing as well as plant-based beverages, which had reached about a 15% dollar share of the U.S. cow-based milk market at the time. In the $300 billion U.S. meat market, a 15% share would be a massive $45 billion prize.

But then, starting in 2021, plant-based meats hit a wall. U.S. sales began three consecutive years of declines. Headlines described plant-based meats as “bleeding” and “just another fad”.

So what happened?

In this episode, Shayle talks to John Baumgartner, managing director of equity research for food and healthy living at Mizuho Securities. He explains the major factors that led to the decline—and why he’s still bullish on the long-term growth of the industry. They cover topics like:

• Why the plant-based beverage category is so different from plant-based meats
• Major factors in sales, including the Covid-19 bounce, flatlining household penetration, and inflation
• The under-no-circumstances crowd that will not consider plant-based meats
• Positive indicators for growth potential from other markets, such as Taiwan and western Europe
• Improvements in taste, mouthfeel, health, and price that could reinvigorate the industry

Recommended Resources:

• Mizuho Securities: Plant-Based Food Market Overview & Outlook
• Good Food Institute: 2023 outlook: The state of the plant-based meat category
• Deloitte: Plant-based meat gets a reality check

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.

Everything's bigger in Texas—the hats, the boots, the convenience stores. But its interconnection times? They’re surprisingly short.

In the U.S. it takes power generators four years on average to get approval to connect to the grid, and in some places, it takes far longer. In the Texas electricity market, it takes only about 1.5 years between interconnection request and agreement. And it costs way less to interconnect, too. 

The results are telling. The Texas grid, operated by the Electricity Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, has installed more wind power than any other state—40+ gigawatts worth. It’s also installed 19 gigawatts of solar power, second only to California. ERCOT has interconnected two times more generation than PJM, an electricity market in the Mid-Atlantic, even though PJM is two times larger than ERCOT in terms of peak load. 

So what does Texas know about interconnection that the rest of the U.S. doesn’t? And how could other states learn from Texas? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Tyler Norris, PhD student at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and former vice president of development at Cypress Creek Renewables. Tyler recently published a policy brief on how the U.S. could reform its interconnection process, applying lessons from ERCOT.

They cover topics like:

• Why FERC’s system impact studies lead to long delays and high costs
• ERCOT’s shorter and lower-cost process, called “connect-and-manage”

Recommended Resources:

• Duke Nicholas Institute: Beyond FERC Order 2023: Considerations on Deep Interconnection Reform
• Catalyst: Understanding the transmission bottleneck
• FERC: E-1: Commissioner Clements Concurrence on Order No. 2023: Improvements to Generator Interconnection Procedures and Agreements
• Brattle Group: Generation Interconnection and Transmission Planning

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.

Solar geoengineering is a hot (er, cool?) topic these days. One method involves injecting a form of sulfur into the atmosphere to reflect solar radiation and help reduce global temperatures. But it could also cause unpredictable changes to ozone, rainfall, and ecosystems. So when a rogue startup began sending balloons of sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere earlier this year, it sparked outrage.

But here’s the thing: We’ve been geoengineering our atmosphere for decades, just not intentionally. Scientists have long known that sulfur dioxide emissions from maritime shipping have a cooling effect on the atmosphere. They brighten clouds and reflect more solar radiation. We’ve also known that sulfur dioxide is a toxic air pollutant that causes tens of thousands of premature deaths per year. 

So in 2020 when the International Maritime Organization, which regulates shipping, required ships to drastically cut their sulfur dioxide emissions, it reduced air pollution. But it also accidentally warmed the surface of the oceans.

So how big of a deal is this?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Dan Visioni, climate scientist and assistant professor at Cornell University’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. They cover topics like:

• The mechanism behind marine cloud brightening and how it differs from stratospheric sulfate injection
• Why the warming effect was so strong in the North Atlantic in particular
• What we still don’t understand about the impact on global mean temperatures and regional weather, like heat waves and hurricanes  
• What this accidental experiment tells us about how someone could conduct a deliberate geoengineering experiment

Recommended Resources:

• Analysis: How low-sulphur shipping rules are affecting global warming
• Atmospheric Chemistry & Physics: Climate and air quality trade-offs in altering ship fuel sulfur content

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Are you looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape the business of energy? Come network with utilities, top energy firms, startups, and AI experts at Transition-AI: New York on October 19. Our listeners get a 10% discount with the code pspods10.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com. 

Last time we talked to Dr. Michael Webber, we dug into the nexus between water and energy. This episode we’re diving into food. The connections are myriad.

Food itself is just a means of energy storage, and a particularly good one at that. While photosynthesis is remarkably inefficient—averaging only 0.3% globally, compared to 90% or more in an electric motor—it stores energy for weeks to years.

In the U.S. we use around 12% of our energy to produce food, in the form of inputs like diesel, fertilizer, and electricity. Meanwhile, the food system itself provides fuel to the rest of the energy system, through ethanol and other forms of bioenergy.

So how do all these things fit together? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Webber, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Texas–Austin, and chief technology officer at Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle is a partner. They cover topics like:

• The Green revolution, which added more energy to food production, improving yields while reducing the amount of people required
• The categories of energy consumption, such as fertilizers, on-site fuel, transportation, the cold chain and cooking
• Food waste, which in the U.S. reaches about 30 - 50% of edible food
• Why buying local is not necessarily good for the environment
• Why we should not use food for fuel, unless it’s waste by-products from food production
• How climate change affects the food system, for example by reducing the efficiency of photosynthesis and requiring more refrigeration to reduce spoilage
• The viability of indoor agriculture

Recommended Resources:

• Climavores: Bursting the ‘eat local’ bubble
• Catalyst: The 3 pathways to alternative proteins
• Catalyst: From biowaste to ​‘biogold’
• Catalyst: How well does soil actually store carbon?

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Are you looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape the business of energy? Come network with utilities, top energy firms, startups, and AI experts at Transition-AI: New York on October 19. Our listeners get a 10% discount with the code pspods10.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

Here’s the dream: Millions of EVs plugged into their charging docks, working in concert to relieve stress on the world’s power grids. They reduce charging load or even inject energy back onto the grid. They back up renewables when the wind doesn’t blow or the sun doesn’t shine. 

That’s the vision for managed charging, or V1G, and vehicle-to-grid, or V2G. There’s also a third technology called vehicle-to-home that allows an EV battery to power a building, just like a home battery. Collectively these technologies are called V2X.

There’s reason to think this V2X dream could become a reality. They’re already happening at small scales. And when they reach larger scales, the cumulative impact could be big. A recent Nature study found that by 2030 the total battery capacity across the world’s mobile batteries could be more than two terawatt hours, climbing to more than 30 terawatt hours by 2050.

But first, these technologies need to overcome some big barriers—costly grid upgrades, degrading batteries, drivers worried about being left without a charge—just to name a few. 

So what will V2X actually look like?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Ty Jagerson, leader of V2X at GM. They cover topics like:

• The contracts GM is signing with customers to manage their charging
• Reassuring EV owners that managed charging is not going to leave them without a charge
• What kind of compensation EV owners could get for V2G and whether the value to companies will be worth the costs
• The carrots and sticks of V2G: compensation and time-of-use charges
• Whether V2G will be more valuable for capacity or energy markets
• Whether V2G will degrade batteries and violate manufacturer warranties

Recommended Resources:

• Canary Media: Is ​‘vehicle-to-everything’ charging ready for prime time?
• Union of Concerned Scientists: EVs Can Support Power Grid Reliability and Reduce Costs. Here’s How.
• Catalyst: Will charging infrastructure be a bottleneck for electric vehicles?

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Are you looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape the business of energy? Come network with utilities, top energy firms, startups, and AI experts at Transition-AI: New York on October 19. Our listeners get a 10% discount with the code pspods10.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

If there were a holy grail of electric vehicle batteries, it would be low-weight, long-range, and fast-charging. It would last a million miles and cost less than anything produced today.

So in the booming EV battery market, what kind of battery will check all those boxes? Who will invent it? And do we really need all those features in one battery in the first place?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Sam Jaffe, vice president of battery solutions at E-Source. They trace the history of the two major competing lithium-ion chemistries: Lithium Iron (or ferrous) Phosphate (LFP) and Nickel Manganese Cobalt (NMC).

Sam and Shayle also discuss the factors that shaped this competition, like China, Tesla, and access to capital. They discuss new partnerships between battery manufacturers and automakers, including LG and GM, Samsung SDI and Stellantis, ACC and Mercedes

And they cover questions like:

• Who decides which chemistries to develop — automakers or battery part manufacturers? 
• Will a small number of chemistries dominate or will there be a rapid diversification of battery chemistries to meet different needs?
• Is fast charging a nice-to-have or need-to-have?
• Will the rising costs of battery materials, especially lithium, slow the adoption of EVs? 

Plus, Sam explains why he is no longer bearish on vehicle-to-grid (V2G) charging.

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Are you looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape the business of energy? Come network with utilities, top energy firms, startups, and AI experts at Transition-AI: New York on October 19. Our listeners get a 10% discount with the code pspods10.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

Electrification should be a field day for utilities. As we electrify the economy, adding gigafactories, charging stations, and green hydrogen hubs to the grid, the demand for power is growing for the first time in decades. For savvy utilities, there’s a lot of money to be made. But only if they can keep up. 

Utilities face massive challenges to deliver the power needed for electrification – years-long interconnection queues, a shortage of transformers, an uncertain regulatory environment—the list goes on. It’s the electrification gauntlet. 

Can utilities make it through? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. 

They cover topics like:

• Why power demand flatlined over the past twenty years—and what’s changing now
• Big industrial loads like data centers that face delays because utilities aren’t able to deliver enough power 
• The differences between big industrial load growth, like green hydrogen hubs, and distributed load growth, like heat pumps.
• The current EPA’s proposed power plant regulations, which might require carbon capture and storage
• The shortage of electrical transformers 
• Why microgrids might become even more valuable as utilities struggle to deliver power

Recommended Resources:

• Reuters: Global power demand growth to rebound in 2024 after slowdown, IEA says
• Utility Dive: Full industrial electrification could more than double US power demand. Here’s how renewables can meet it.

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Are you looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape the business of energy? Come network with utilities, top energy firms, startups, and AI experts at Transition-AI: New York on October 19. Our listeners get a 10% discount with the code pspods10.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

It’s the highest-intensity solar power you can get. It’s available 24/7. And you can send it anywhere on earth.

All you need to do is launch a ten-by-ten kilometer array of solar panels into geosynchronous orbit, capture solar energy, and beam it to earth using a massive antenna array. Then set up a receiver a few kilometers in diameter on earth to collect that power and send it to the grid. 

Sound like science fiction? You wouldn’t be far off (looking at you, Isaac Asimov). But the reality is that Caltech, the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, and the Japanese Space Agency are all working on the idea.

Recent developments in space tech warrant some cautious optimism about space-based solar. Space X has pioneered reusable rockets that have dramatically reduced the cost of launches. And mass production of satellites has brought down the cost of hardware, too.

So how would space-based solar actually work? And what would it take to commercialize it?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Sanjay Vijendran, lead for the SOLARIS initiative on space-based solar power at the European Space Agency. He argues that space-based solar is much closer to commercialization than nuclear fusion, which garners a lot more attention and funding.

They cover topics like:

• The four main components: the launch, the solar panels, the antenna, and the receiver on earth
• Where we need additional research, including beaming power at greater distance and scale, plus power beaming safety
• What it might feel like if you stood under the beam
• The target launch costs the industry would need to reach for viability
• Pilot projects happening right now

Recommended Resources:

• The Verge: Space-based solar power is having its moment in the sun
• Science: Space-based solar power is getting serious—can it solve Earth’s energy woes?
• Canary: Is space-based solar ready for liftoff?

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

This week we’re bringing you a special crossover episode from With Great Power. It’s a show about one of the most complex machines ever built – the power grid. It’s a machine that’s changing faster than ever. With Great Power is about the people driving that change:

A third of the world's largest companies now have net-zero targets in place for carbon emissions. Google was ahead of the curve. Back in 2007, it had already achieved its goal of going carbon neutral across all of its offices and data centers around the globe.

But as demand for Google's services expanded, it knew that it had to overhaul its energy goals. At the time, Raiford Smith served as Google's global head of energy and location strategy. And part of his job was jump-starting this massive effort.

In 2021, Google launched one of the most ambitious corporate energy strategies ever. And Raiford and his team made it possible.

After a career spanning more than 30 years at utilities like Duke Energy, CPS, Entergy, and Southern company, and two years at Google, Raiford knows firsthand that change is possible at power companies.

This week, Brad talked with Raiford, now the chief innovation officer at AES, about what's needed to spur tech innovation at utilities, and the technologies that will be integral to the energy transition.

This podcast is produced by GridX. GridX is the Enterprise Rate Platform that modern utilities rely on to usher in our clean energy future.

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com. 

The good news: The Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ) contains more nickel and cobalt than the rest of the world’s land-based reserves combined. It also has significant resources of high-grade lithium, copper and rare earth metals—all of which are critical for the batteries the world needs to meet Paris Agreement targets.

The bad news: The CCZ lies at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and contains biodiverse ecosystems we know very little about—and that we could profoundly harm if we mine them.

The CCZ lies between Hawaii and Mexico and is about half the size of the continental United States. And it’s just one of many potential deep-sea sources of critical minerals.

So should we mine the deep sea to fight climate change? And if we do, how do we also protect seafloor ecosystems?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Renee Grogan, an expert in deep-sea mining. She is a co-founder and board director at Impossible Metals. 

Together they cover topics like:

• The different types of seafloor resources, including polymetallic nodules, cobalt ferro-manganese crusts, and massive sulfides
• Better understanding seafloor ecosystems and incorporating science into mining practices and regulations, including selective harvesting, protected areas, and offsets
• The challenges of enforcing regulations three to five kilometers below the surface
• Ongoing negotiations at the International Seabed Authority, which was planning to finalize regulations for deep-sea mining last week, but announced that it needed more time.

Recommended Resources:

• NYT: Pacific Seabed Mining Delayed as International Agency Finalizes Rules
• Forbes: Deep Sea Mining: The Biggest Climate Issue You’ve Never Heard Of
• British Geological Survey: Deep-sea mining evidence review – MineralsUK

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

Carbon capture and storage. It’s a controversial tool in the energy transition that we don’t want to use, but probably have to. Most of the scenarios in the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report include capturing and storing hundreds of gigatons of carbon dioxide between now and 2100. 

When people say carbon capture and storage, or CCS, they often mean different things. It’s a term that covers multiple technologies used to capture CO2—such as point-source and direct-air capture— and different approaches to using that CO2. 

With the CCS industry is in its infancy, tackling some big questions now could save us headaches down the road. Questions about CCS infrastructure use, where we’ll build it, and who will control it.

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Emily Grubert, associate professor of sustainable energy policy at the University of Notre Dame. She posted a Twitter thread recently about how the same CCS infrastructure actually has four different use cases:

1. Avoiding emissions to extend the life of fossil-fuel infrastructure
2. Avoiding emissions where we don’t have zero-carbon alternatives yet, like cement production
3. Removing carbon to compensate for other emissions, i.e. offsets
4. Removing carbon to draw down legacy emissions and avoid overshooting 1.5 degrees Celsius targets

They walk through each categories and cover topics like:

• Which categories to prioritize over others
• Avoiding the double-counting problem
• Where we should use CCS vs. zero-carbon alternatives
• The resource constraints on CCS, including water, land and energy
• Whether we have the luxury to prioritize when we need to deploy CCS so quickly
• Whether CCS customers or regulatory bodies should determine the type of CCS infrastructure we have and where we build it

Recommended Resources:

• Catalyst: Carbon capture and storage is making a comeback
• Bloomberg: Big Money Rushes Into Carbon Capture. Can It Deliver This Time?
• US DOE: Strategic Vision: The Role of FECM in Achieving Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

Before hydrogen makes it big, we have to overcome a massive, ocean-sized challenge: Transporting the fuel between continents. 

The places that will be best suited to produce hydrogen via renewables-powered electrolysis, like Australia and Egypt, will have to ship that hydrogen to demand centers in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere.

And it turns out that shipping hydrogen is way harder than shipping oil or natural gas. Hydrogen has a very low volumetric energy density. Compared to one barrel of oil, the equivalent amount of gaseous hydrogen takes up way more space to transport.

Fortunately, a range of technologies could solve this problem. Will one become the dominant means of transporting hydrogen across the oceans?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy. Anne-Sophie recently wrote about hydrogen transport for Cipher News. 

They cover the five leading contenders for transoceanic transport:

• Liquified hydrogen
• E-methane, also known as synthetic methane or carbon neutral gas
• Liquid organic hydrogen carriers(LOHCs)
• Methanol
• Ammonia

They also discuss topics like:

• Why good old fashioned pipelines might be a viable option for transport, even between continents
• The challenges of converting natural gas infrastructure into hydrogen infrastructure
• Why hydrogen exporters might be better off producing products made with hydrogen, such as steel, rather than the hydrogen itself

Recommended Resources:

• Cipher News: Global hydrogen trade may be just a pipe dream
• IRENA: Global Hydrogen Trade to Meet the 1.5°C Climate Goal: Technology Review of Hydrogen Carriers
• IEA: Global Hydrogen Review 2022

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by RE+. RE+ is more than just the largest clean energy event, it’s a catalyst for industry innovation designed to supercharge business growth in the clean energy economy. Learn more: re-plus.com.

More than a third of the world’s current greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels go through underground networks of fungi, according to a new peer-reviewed study in Current Biology.

That’s a whopping 13 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalents per year.

Mycorrhizal fungi act as a symbiotic partner of plants, seeking out nutrients and bringing them back to the plants’ roots. In return, they accept carbon in the form of carbohydrates—which they then lock away in the structure of the fungi. This symbiotic relationship is nothing new to scientists; what’s surprising is the magnitude of carbon stored.

But how permanent is this sink? And what can we do to support fungi as a nature-based climate solution?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Heidi-Jayne Hawkins, lead author of the new paper and research director at Conservation South Africa. 

They cover topics like:

• The evolutionary history of mycorrhizal fungi 
• The mechanics of fungal carbon storage, which boosts carbon storage by 5-20% more than plants alone
• What we can do to support conditions for fungi to absorb carbon
• Open questions about the permanence of the storage

Recommended Resources:

• Current Biology: Mycorrhizal mycelium as a global carbon pool

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Everything, everywhere, all at once—that’s the state of the U.S. solar industry right now.

Suppliers are rushing to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous domestic-manufacturing incentives. Major manufacturers like First Solar and Enel have announced billion dollar investments in places like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Lawrence County, Alabama.

But tariffs on the import of some Chinese-made parts may resume at the end of 2024; and the industry still faces supply chain shortages and permitting backlogs.

Meanwhile, the stakes are high. To reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the U.S. needs to install 100 gigawatts of solar per year by 2030, according to a report from the REPEAT Project of Princeton’s ZERO Lab, up from about 30 gigawatts this year. 

Is that achievable in this chaotic environment? 

In this episode, Shayle talks about the state of the U.S. solar industry with Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BloombergNEF. They cover topics like:

• Generous manufacturing incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act 
• Conditions to qualify for the incentives, such as meeting prevailing wages, building in “energy communities,” and sourcing domestic content
• The saga of solar tariffs
• Looming competition from manufacturers in Southeast Asia
• How supply chain bottlenecks have eased up

Recommended Resources:

• Canary: Can the US manufacture enough solar panels to meet its surging demand?
• Canary: In Biden solar tariff compromise, installers win
• Princeton ZERO Lab’s REPEAT Project: Preliminary Report: The Climate and Energy Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

The list of potential uses for AI in climatetech is growing fast: developing better materials, optimizing solar farms, integrating renewables and microgrids. But many of these are still theoretical. We wanted to find a real-world application that changed the way we make climatetech.

So we decided to come up with our own test run.

Back in March Duncan Campbell, vice president at Scale Microgrids, used ChatGPT to code some battery dispatch software and tweeted about his experience. Duncan isn’t a professional software developer, but he still came up with some promising results. 

Could a non-coder like Duncan use AI to do the work of several climatetech coders?

We invited Duncan to do it again and ramped up the challenge. We recruited Seyed Madaeni, CEO and co-founder of Verse to create a challenge for Duncan. Seyed is an expert in AI and the software used in electricity markets. He routinely sends “problem statements” to his team of software developers to create new software. This time, he sent a problem statement to Duncan that reflects real world conditions, one that we might actually assign to real engineers to solve.

The challenge? Develop battery dispatch software using ChatGPT. 

In this episode, Duncan presents his results to Shayle and Seyed. They talk about things like:

• The different methods of optimizing battery dispatch, from old-school Excel sheets to more sophisticated software written by coders
• Seyed’s process of assigning a problem statement to his engineering team and the simplified version he sent to Duncan
• Duncan’s process of iteratively working with ChatGPT-4 to develop and debug the code 
• Why working with ChatGPT is like working with a bunch of really fast, but really inexperienced junior coders
• If you want to see the code that Duncan wrote with ChatGPT, click here. 

Watch the conversation on YouTube.

Recommended Resources:

• Carbon Copy Live: How AI could supercharge climatetech
• The Wall Street Journal: Why AI Is the Next Big Bet for Climate Tech

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Voluntary carbon credits are a lot like used cars; you really have no idea what their quality might be. Or maybe they’re more like expensive bottles of wine. Most people (or at least Shayle) can’t tell if they’re buying good quality wine. If it’s expensive, it must be good, right?

That’s the logic that has plagued voluntary carbon markets for years. 

A carbon credit can work in two ways. First, it can avoid 1 metric ton of emissions that would have otherwise happened by, for example, preventing deforestation. Alternatively, a credit can directly remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere through methods like direct air capture or biochar.

But widespread reporting reveals that most credits don’t do what they say they do. Just this month the CEO of the world’s leading certifier stepped down after an analysis by The Guardian found that over 90% of rainforest carbon credits were worthless. In May, a new $1 billion California lawsuit alleged that the credits that Delta relied on for its claim of reaching carbon neutrality claims were bogus.

Carbon credits are in crisis at the same moment we need to massively scale up carbon credits to meet net zero goals. So what do we do about these quality problems? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Allister Furey, co-founder and CEO of Sylvera, a company that rates the quality of credits, akin to what agencies like Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s do for bonds.

Shayle and Allister cover topics like:

• The history of the first voluntary carbon markets and their early problems, like producing fluorocarbons just to destroy them
• The state of the current market, including its size, segments and prices
• The wide gulf in price between the cheapest avoidance credits and the most ambitious engineered removal credits 
• Why Allister thinks we need to be on a “war footing” to reach to the highly ambitious carbon removal targets to meet net zero, such as growing the market from $2 billion to $1 trillion by 2050
• Why high prices do not necessarily mean high quality 

Recommended Resources:

• The Guardian: Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows
• The Guardian: Delta Air Lines faces lawsuit over $1bn carbon neutrality claim
• Sylvera: Sylvera response to The Guardian’s Analysis of Rainforest Offsets

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Are you a utility or climatetech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston, on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

The energy transition is fueling skyrocketing demand for copper, an essential metal for renewables, batteries, and other climatetech.

But supply isn’t keeping up. There’s more than enough copper in the earth’s known reserves to supply our growing demand for the metal, but supply is stagnating due to rising extraction costs and decades-long lead times to open new mines.

A July 2022 report from S&P Global predicts that demand could begin to exceed supply in just a few years.. Without action, a growing supply gap could last into the 2050s, hampering the speed and scale of the transition.

What can we do about it?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Cristóbal Undurraga, the CEO of copper mining technology company Ceibo. They talk about the causes of stagnating supply and the technologies that could help increase production. 

They cover topics like:

• Energy usage and carbon emissions in copper supply chains
• The limitations of scrap recycling to meet growing demand
• The geopolitics of copper supply chains, including China’s major role in smelting
• The pros and cons of the two major copper extraction methods – concentration and electrolysis
• The two major types of ore – copper oxides and copper sulfides, and why one is so much harder to mine
• The long lead times to build new mines and why constructing new ones isn’t easy
• Ceibo’s approach to increase mine capacity using novel electrolysis technology for copper sulfides

Recommended Resources:

• S&P Global: The Future of Copper
• The Economist: Copper is the missing ingredient of the energy transition
• Bloomberg: The Green Energy Transition Has a Chilean Copper Problem

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Are you a utility or climatetech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston, on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20.

On the Catalyst with Shayle Kann podcast this week:

The good news: the U.S. has about 47 days’ worth of energy stored up for later use. The bad news? Virtually all of it is in the form of fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. By comparison, if you add up all the energy stored in batteries, pumped hydropower and other zero-carbon storage, it adds up to just a few seconds’ worth.

This small scale of low-carbon energy storage is a big problem. We’re building out intermittent renewables fast, and we need enough energy storage to back up wind when turbines slow down and solar when the sun isn’t shining. 

But there are technologies that could get us there. In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, who is a partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. Andy recently wrote a piece called Four ways to store sunlight, which compares lithium-ion batteries, heat storage, ion-air batteries, and hydrogen. Andy and Shayle cover topics like:

• The storage trifecta: short duration, diurnal, and multi-day seasonal
• Andy’s guess at how low the price of lithium-ion batteries could go
• Why we would use heat storage and hydrogen, despite their low round-trip efficiencies
• Why molten-salt heat storage didn’t take off
• High hopes for iron-air batteries’ low costs
• Blending hydrogen into gas turbines
• How all these technologies are competing against carbon capture and storage (CCS)

Recommended Resources:

• Andy Lubershane: Four ways to store sunlight
• Form Energy: Enabling a True 24/7 Carbon-Free Resource Portfolio for Great River Energy with Multi-Day Storage

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Are you a utility or climate tech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20.

Last year, the Supreme Court struck down the EPA’s first attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. But it also preserved the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The agency just needed to find the right approach. The question for the EPA was: What legal tools would pass the scrutiny of the court?

Last week, Biden’s EPA came out with its answer. The proposed plan requires new and existing power plants to meet emission standards. The agency estimates that the rule would reduce GHG emissions by a total 617 million tons through 2042, a small but meaningful fraction of the total. Right now the U.S. power sector emits about 1.5 billion tons per year. 

It’s an approach that dovetails with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is expected to dramatically reduce the cost of key emissions-reducing technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen. If the IRA was the Biden administration’s carrot for reducing climate emissions, then the new rule is the stick. 

In this episode, Shayle unpacks the proposal with John Larsen, who leads U.S. climate policy research at the Rhodium Group. In March, John’s team modeled the impact of hypothetical power emissions standards on the U.S. power fleet, finding that many coal plants might shut down rather than install CCS.

Shayle and John dig into specifics, like:

• The four main options available to power plant operators under the proposed rules: shut down, install carbon capture and storage (CCS), co-fire with hydrogen, or just run less
• The differences in rules for new and existing plants
• How the standards become more stringent with higher capacity factors
• The role of states in the rules and the “off-ramps” they could use to get around some of the rules
• The power plants that would be exempt from the rules, such as gas peaker plants with low capacity factors
• What the changing economics of CCS and hydrogen could mean for the effect of the regulations
• The legal gauntlet that the plan is sure to face, including lawsuits from Republican states 

Recommended Resources:

• Rhodium Group: Pathways to Paris: Post-IRA Policy Action to Drive US Decarbonization
• Rhodium Group: Has the Supreme Court Blocked the Path to the 2030 Climate Target?
• Heatmap: What the EPA Can’t Say About Its New Power Plant Rules
• Canary: The EPA has a controversial new plan to clean up power plants

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Depending on who you talk to, Bitcoin mines are either great for the grid or the worst thing that’s ever happened to it. These warehouses of computers essentially turn electricity into bitcoins. Proponents argue that mines can do a number of things for the grid, like:

• Support grid reliability by reducing demand during peak hours
• Incentivize new renewable generation by raising the prices that solar and wind farms receive
• Reduce methane emissions by capturing flare gas from fossil fuel wells and then using that gas to generate electricity for mine operations

Meanwhile, opponents argue that the mines raise emissions and electricity prices. So how do we make sense of the great Bitcoin energy debate?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Ben Hertz-Shargel, global head of grid edge at Wood Mackenzie. The New York Times recently reported on the role of Bitcoin mining on the grid, and Ben was part of a team that contributed to the report.

Shayle and Ben discuss: 

• How Bitcoin mines affect electricity prices for nearby consumers
• Whether mines use only excess renewable generation or incentivize fossil-fuel generators to ramp up
• What mines’ load profiles say about their flexibility and price-sensitivity, especially during peak demand
• The evidence on whether mines are signing long-term power purchase agreements, repowering mothballed projects or otherwise helping to incentivize new renewables construction
• Alternative crypto currencies that don’t require so much electricity

Recommended Resources:

• NYT: The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin
• Earth Justice and The Sierra Club: The Energy Bomb: How Proof-of-Work Cryptocurrency Mining Worsens the Climate Crisis and Harms Communities Now
• Coinspeaker: Texas Senate Passes Bill to Limit Incentives for Crypto Miners Participating in Demand Response Programs

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

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:

• The history of transmission in the U.S.
• The three P’s of transmission challenges: planning, permitting, and paying
• How congestion costs might shoot up over the next few years as grid capacity lags behind generation, causing new generation to slow and retail electricity prices to go up
• Reforming the slow, complex, and expensive approval process for interconnection at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
• Where local opposition fits into transmission’s larger problems

Recommended Resources:

• Grid Strategies: Transmission Congestion Costs in the U.S. RTOs
• Grid Strategies: Fewer New Miles: The U.S. Transmission Grid in the 2010s

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

We’re bringing you a special crossover episode this week from Catalyst’s sister podcast, The Carbon Copy. It’s about a rogue startup that was trying to do something we’ve talked about on this show: solar geoengineering. 

Last year, Time staff writer Alejandro de la Garza found himself on the floor of a hotel room in Nevada with two guys trying to cook sulfur dioxide out of a tin can. 

Luke Iseman and Andrew Song are the co-founders of Make Sunsets, a startup claiming to be implementing solar geoengineering by launching weather balloons filled with SO2 into the stratosphere.

Their first experimental launch in the Mexican state of Baja California resulted in a swift regulatory response from the Mexican government. But when they ran another test launch a few weeks ago just outside of Reno, Nevada, Luke invited Alejandro to join them. 

This week, we speak with Alejandro about his Time profile of the controversial startup. Plus, we talk with geoengineering experts Holly Buck and Kevin Surprise.

“Any single person you talk to in solar geoengineering research, whether they’re bullish or against it, they all think that what Make Sunsets is doing is a bad idea,” explains Alejandro.

Make Sunsets represents a turning point for the field of geoengineering, with rogue actors pushing the field from academic debate into the real world. Is the company’s recent balloon launch an act of performance art — or an open door to an uncontrolled climate experiment?

Recommended Resources:

• Time: Exclusive: Inside a Controversial Startup's Risky Attempt to Control Our Climate
• The Guardian: Solar geoengineering could be ‘remarkably inexpensive’ – report
• MIT Technology Review: This technology could alter the entire planet. These groups want every nation to have a say.
• US Geological Survey: The Atmospheric Impact of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo Eruption
• Catalyst: Solar geoengineering: Is it worth the risk?

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Hydropower is the world’s largest source of renewable electricity today, according to the IEA. Like gas peaker plants, it’s highly dispatchable, meaning it can complement intermittent renewables like wind and solar. 

And we could get a lot more of it. The IEA estimates that we could double the amount of energy produced globally. One peer-reviewed study found that global economic potential for hydropower was 21,000 terawatt hours per year, more than five times the current generation today. 

So how could we deploy more hydropower?

In this episode, guest host Lara Pierpoint talks to Gia Schneider, co-founder and CEO of Natel Energy, a hydropower technology company. One key argument Gia makes is that if we can build smaller projects with lower ecosystem impacts, we can tap into more zero-carbon power. 

Gia and Lara talk through: 

• How quickly we need to build more hydropower to meet 2050 net-zero targets
• The benefits of traditional hydro as a full-stack grid resource Different types of hydro technology like run of river, hydrokinetic, and traditional large-scale dams
• Why smaller, more distributed systems are key to unlocking hydropower potential
• Different technologies to manage fish and debris like bypass channels, screens and fish-safe turbines
• The co-benefits of improving riverine landscapes, including making ecosystems and hydroelectric infrastructure more resilient to climate change
• How hydrology and forecasting can help us better manage dams in a changing climate

Recommended Resources:

• Energy & Environmental Science: A comprehensive view of global potential for hydro-generated electricity
• Bloomberg: The World’s Biggest Source of Clean Energy Is Evaporating Fast

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

The battery manufacturing announcements have been coming one after another—a VW cathode facility in Canada; a Tesla factory in Mexico; a Ford battery plant in Michigan.

These companies hope to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act’s lucrative EV tax credits:

• Up to $3,750 for strategic minerals mined in the U.S. or its many free trade partner countries
• Up to $3,750 for battery components produced only in the U.S., Mexico, or Canada.

But there’s a catch. A whole bunch of intermediate battery products don’t fit neatly into either bucket. For example, lithium gets processed into precursor cathode active material before it becomes cathode active material, the powder that actually makes it onto the factory floor of a battery manufacturer. Battery electrolytes go through multiple processing steps, too.

Until last week, suppliers of these products were left wondering: Where should we manufacture to qualify? And for which credit?

Congress had left these details up to the Treasury Department, and on Friday regulators released guidance for these intermediate products, or “constituent materials.” The new rules pleased some and angered others.

So what do the changes mean for EV supply chains? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Sam Jaffe, our resident EV-supply-chain whisperer. He’s the vice president of Battery Storage Solutions at E Source. He’s come on the show before to talk about the holy grail of batteries and the basics of the IRA’s EV tax credits. 

This time, Sam explains the new Treasury guidance.They cover topics like:

• Incentivizing domestic manufacturing while also giving auto companies the flexibility to qualify for credits
• Why Joe Manchin and European countries are upset about the new rules
• Japan’s last-minute free trade agreement before the rules came out
• How hard it will be for EV manufacturers to get qualifying constituent materials anytime soon, especially as they launch new mass market models
• What we still don’t know about how the Treasury will implement the IRA, including which countries or companies will qualify as “foreign entities of concern”

Recommended Resources:

• U.S. Treasury: Anticipated Direction of Forthcoming Proposed Guidance on Critical Mineral and Battery Component Value Calculations for the New Clean Vehicle Credit
• The New York Times: New Rules Will Make Many Electric Cars Ineligible for Tax Credits
• Politico: Bitter friends: Inside the summit aiming to heal EU-US trade rift

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

The run on Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) earlier this month was a hair-raising experience for anyone in climatetech. The bank catered to entrepreneurs in tech, especially climate. So when news of SVB’s troubled assets hit social media, startups scrambled to withdraw millions of dollars and draft emergency plans to make payroll. But after the Federal Insurance Deposit Corporation (FDIC) took over SVB and another troubled regional institution, Signature Bank, the dust started to settle. The FDIC announced that it would insure the full deposits at SVB, above the $250,000 guarantee. 

But how did this all happen? And what does it mean for climatetech today?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Saloni Multani, partner at Galvanize Climate Solutions and former chief financial officer for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. She came on the show last May to explain what the economic downturn meant for climatetech. This time Saloni and Shayle cover topics like:

• What led to the problems at SVB, Signature, and others
• How trends in the broader banking system signal a new environment for climatetech companies 
• The durability of climatetech opportunities Whether others will fill the hole left by SVB, which was a critical partner to many climatetech projects, including 62% of U.S. community solar projects

Recommended Resources:

• The Carbon Copy: A bank collapse threatens climate startups
• Canary: Community solar industry says it can ride out Silicon Valley Bank failure
• The Guardian: ‘The first Twitter-fuelled bank run’: how social media compounded SVB’s collapse
• Catalyst: How will the downturn affect climatetech?

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

Landfills, dairy farms and wastewater plants all emit methane, the potent greenhouse gas produced when organic material decomposes in the absence of oxygen. 

But instead of emitting that methane (often called biomethane or waste methane), it’s possible to capture and refine it, resulting in renewable natural gas, or RNG. Capturing methane that would have been emitted anyway (something that’s still up for debate) creates RNG that’s carbon neutral or carbon negative. And using that RNG to displace fossil-fuel derived natural gas can cut overall emissions.

Big players in energy are betting big on RNG. Last fall BP acquired RNG producer Archaea for $4.1 billion, Shell bought Nature Energy for $2 billion and NextEra purchased $1.1 billion in RNG assets from Energy Power Partners.

So what’s behind this recent flurry of activity? And to what extent could RNG actually offset carbon emissions? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Brandon Moffatt, cofounder of Stormfisher, an RNG and hydrogen producer.

They cover topics like:

• RNG feedstocks like dairy farms, wastewater treatment plants, and landfills
• How much waste methane is available for RNG
• How different feedstocks determine RNG’s carbon intensity
• Government subsidies like the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) and Renewable Identification Numbers (RINs)

Recommended Resources: 

• Environmental Research Letters: At scale, renewable natural gas systems could be climate intensive: the influence of methane feedstock and leakage rates
• Bloomberg: The Gas Industry’s Survival Plan: Make Fuel From Cow Poop
• Vox: The false promise of “renewable natural gas”
• CBC: Renewable natural gas could help slow climate change, but by how much?

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

Nitrous oxide or N2O is the third largest source of GHG emissions behind carbon dioxide and methane. Also known as laughing gas, it’s long-lived like carbon dioxide and incredibly potent like methane. And it accounts for about 6% of global warming. 

So where does it come from? And what do we do about it?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Eric Davidson, professor at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, and principal scientist at Spark Climate Solutions. Eric studies the surprising source of nitrous oxide: bacteria in the soil. Eric and Shayle talk about topics like: 

• How the application of nitrogen fertilizer causes more emissions than the production of fertilizer itself
• The challenging economics of agriculture that cause farmers to over-apply fertilizer
• How precise and timely application of fertilizer could cut emissions
• New livestock feed additives that could replace the N2O-intensive crops in animal feed
• New crops that require less fertilizer

Recommended Resources:

• Nature Climate Change: Improving the social cost of nitrous oxide
• The Conversation: New research: nitrous oxide emissions 300 times more powerful than CO₂ are jeopardizing Earth’s future
• Nature: A comprehensive quantification of global nitrous oxide sources and sinks

Come watch a live episode of The Carbon Copy! Canary Media and Post Script Media are hosting a live event at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Mass. on April 6. We’ll record a live episode of The Carbon Copy with some very special guests. Get your tickets today.

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

Come watch a live episode of The Carbon Copy! Canary Media and Post Script Media are hosting a live event at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Ma. on April 6. record a live episode of The Carbon Copy with some very special guests. Get your tickets today.

We’re bringing you a special crossover episode this week from Catalyst’s sister podcast, The Carbon Copy. I host the show and we did an episode recently about this urgent climate tech problem: America’s shortage of electricians. 

To decarbonize the economy, we need to electrify everything. That means installing millions of heat pumps, EV chargers, electric water heaters and rooftop solar panels. 

But there’s one big problem: finding enough electricians to make it happen. Electricians across the country are flooded with work — and just as demand is skyrocketing, many in the field are nearing retirement age. 

This week, in a special collaboration with Grist, reporter Emily Pontecorvo discusses where to find all the electricians we need to electrify everything and how we can train enough new entrants to the field to meet our climate goals. Read Emily’s feature article.

Transcript available here.

Recommended Resources:

• Canary: We need a lot more electricians if we’re going to electrify everything
• Canary: How to get contractors on board with heat pumps and electrification
• Canary: US climate law to spur thousands of new jobs in every state

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

Last year’s surge in oil prices brought record windfall profits for oil majors, and a boon for investors. But historic trends don’t favor fossil fuels.

From 2010 to 2020, the oil & gas sector underperformed the broader S&P 500 index. The sector gained 6% over that period, while the benchmark S&P index grew 180%. Some called it a "lost decade" for fossil fuel investors.

“If anything, oil's been a drag,” says Zach Stein, the co-founder and CEO of Carbon Collective, a company building climate-focused portfolios for investors and employer 401(k) plans.

The recent surge for the oil and gas sector shows how fundamental fossil fuels are for today's economy. But looking forward, oil is facing the most significant competition it has ever seen, thanks to electrification and clean energy. 

That view of the long-term threat to fossil fuels drove Zach to co-found Carbon Collective – with a mission to build funds around industries that will deliver strong returns in a climate-constrained world.

In this episode, produced with Carbon Collective, Zach Stein talks with Stephen Lacey about trends in sustainable investing – how to define the category, identify good investments, and separate it from the confusing world of ESG.

If you want to invest sustainably – at work or individually – you can learn more at carboncollective.co. There, you can see how the portfolios are built and read more about the company's theory of change.

Come watch a live episode of The Carbon Copy! Canary Media and Post Script Media are hosting a live event at Greentown Labs in Somerville, Massachusetts on April 6 with some very special guests. Get your tickets today.

We had so much to cover in Nat Bullard’s monster climate trends deck that we’re back for another episode. Haven’t heard the first part yet? Listen here. 

Nat was the chief content officer at BloombergNEF until last year. He is now a senior contributor at BNEF and Bloomberg Green as well as a venture partner at Voyager Ventures. 

Shayle and Nat dig into topics like:

• EVs. From 2017 to 2022, internal combustion engine car sales globally declined by nearly a third. Yet EV sales are on the rise. Will growth in EVs stave off the decline of passenger vehicle sales?
• Onshoring of supply chains. Companies have announced plans to bring manufacturing facilities to the U.S. or nearby countries. In the EV value chain alone, there were $70 billion worth of announcements in 2022. Will this onshoring trend have lasting power? 
• The three ages of decarbonization. First came renewable energy, then the energy transition, and starting in 2019, the net zero age. It builds on everything we did before, but now with a focus on molecules, calories, industry, and pressure on the boardroom.
• Plus: What we can do with old coal sites and the types of projects that tend to have cost overruns.

For a full transcript, click here

Recommended resources:

• Nathaniel Bullard: Decarbonization: The long view, trends and transience, net zero

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

It’s the first year of what we hope is an annual event: Nat Bullard has released his first climate trends report. He was the chief content officer at BloombergNEF until last year, and now is a senior contributor at BNEF and Bloomberg Green. He’s also a venture partner at Voyager Ventures. 

There’s so much in this 141-slide deck that we’ve split the conversation into two episodes. In this first part, Shayle and Nat dig into topics like:

• Land use. For example: we grow 40% of the U.S. corn to offset 10% of U.S. motor gas demand. Also, despite a growing world population, land used for agriculture globally has been shrinking. What do these trends mean for alternative proteins and sustainable aviation fuels?
• ESG. In 2022, there were more anti-ESG than pro-ESG regulatory developments. And while ESG fund flows were positive last year, they’re still only a fraction of their peak in 2021. Where is ESG investment heading and should we even be putting environmental, social and governance criteria in the same bucket? 
• Batteries. Battery costs rose in 2022, but battery system costs rose faster. And yet there’s still rising demand for utility-scale batteries. Meanwhile, the top ten battery manufacturers of 2022 were in Asia. What do these trends mean for the battery market and manufacturing supply chains?

For a full transcript, click here

Recommended resources:

• Nathaniel Bullard: Decarbonization: The long view, trends and transience, net zero
• Catalyst: Climatetech’s surprising bottleneck: Land access

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

Recent announcements in the world of nuclear power might make you think that new nuclear technologies are close to deployment in North America. But look closely and you’ll find that progress is actually painfully slow, weighed down by regulatory challenges.

Today’s guest argues that all those rules and regulations need to be overhauled.In this episode, Shayle talks to Bret Kugelmass, CEO and founder of nuclear reactor developer Last Energy. He’s also the host of the podcast Titans of Nuclear. They cover topics like:

• Small modular vs micro vs traditional reactors
• The state of SMR and nuclear development in North America
• Why utilities are disincentivized to build nuclear
• Places that are currently seeing a lot of construction, like China and Poland
• Building with existing components vs developing new designs
• The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s certification and licensing process
• Overhauling the bureaucracy and the institutional design of the Commission itself

Click here for a full transcript.

Recommended Resources:

• Catalyst: Will advanced reactors solve nuclear’s problems?
• Canary: Small modular nuclear reactors: The race is on to actually build them
• Canary: A small modular nuclear reactor just got U.S. approval — a big milestone

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

Recent research has raised questions about the global-warming impact of uncombusted hydrogen. When it leaks from storage, pipes and other infrastructure into the atmosphere, new studies suggest hydrogen absorbs more heat than previously understood. And, perhaps more importantly, it extends the atmospheric life of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

Proponents argue that hydrogen is a critical climate solution. “Green” hydrogen, for example, is made with zero-carbon electricity, effectively turning things like solar and wind energy into a storable fuel that can replace natural gas in many end uses. But could hydrogen’s warming impacts outweigh its advantages?

That depends on your assumptions about how and where we use it.

In this episode, Shayle talks to Thomas Koch Blank, senior principal at RMI, where he leads the organization’s Breakthrough Technology Program. Shayle and Thomas examine the new research and discuss topics like: 

• Where we will use hydrogen and varying risks of leakage in those applications
• Poor applications for hydrogen, like turning “blue” hydrogen derived from steam methane reforming into synfuel
• Estimated leakage rates and the incentives for hydrogen producers to build low-leakage systems
• Hydrogen’s total warming impact, factoring in how much natural gas it could replace
• How natural gas and hydrogen compare kilogram for kilogram or megajoule for megajoule
• The time horizon we should use to evaluate the global warming potential of hydrogen
• Hydrogen leakage measurement, verification, and safety

Recommended Resources:

• Environmental Defense Fund: Emissions of Hydrogen Could Undermine Its Climate Benefits; Warming Effects Are Two to Six Times Higher Than Previously Thought
• RMI: Hydrogen Reality Check #1: Hydrogen Is Not a Significant Warming Risk
• Columbia University’s SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy: Hydrogen Leakage: A Potential Risk for the Hydrogen Economy

Click here for a full transcript.

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by EnergyHub. The company’s platform lets consumers turn their smart thermostats, EVs, batteries, water heaters, and other products into virtual power plants that keep the grid stable and enable higher penetration of solar and wind power. And they are hiring! Learn more and see open roles at energyhub.com/catalyst

Catalyst is brought to you by Sealed: The experts in home weatherization and electrification upgrades. Sealed is leading the way, with over a decade of experience being accountable to homeowners because they only get paid based on actual energy reductions. Visit Sealed.com/measuredsavings to learn more.

It’s that time of year when we reach into our listener mailbag and answer your questions. And you had some good ones. In this episode, Shayle once again hands the mic to guest host Sarah Golden, VP of energy at GreenBiz Sarah Golden. Together they cover things like:

• The role of biology in creating fossil-fuel-free materials
• Whether the marginal cost of electricity is heading toward zero
• Solving the dilemma of financing first-of-a-kind projects
• The impact of tech layoffs on climatetech
• The biggest roadblocks to decarbonization
• What role battery recycling will play in addressing the shortage of lithium and other critical minerals

Click here for a full transcript of this episode.

What else should we cover on the show? Leave us a voicemail at 919-808-5832. Or email us at [email protected]. You can also tag us on Twitter.

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Here’s the dream: millions of controllable devices—from EV chargers to thermostats, fridges, and batteries—working together to inject power back into the grid. They reduce load when there’s not enough electricity supply to meet demand. They ease transmission congestion and maintain grid frequency. And these devices, collectively called distributed energy resources or DERs, are all controlled remotely by grid operators. 

So how far are we from this dream? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Mathew Sachs, senior vice president for strategic planning and business development at CPower, a company that aggregates DERs and sells DER services to the grid. They talk about where we are on the long and winding path to large-scale deployment of DERs and what it takes to monetize them. They dig in on: 

• EV chargers, the fastest growing category of DERs, as well as V1G and V2G
• How much easier it is to share your financial data with a credit check than to share your energy data with a DER aggregator
• How current rules create obstacles to monetizing DERs
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 2222 and the status of new DER rules in NYISO and CAISO
• Positive developments like the declining costs of DERs and rising watts per customer acquired

Full transcript here

Recommended Resources:

• Canary: FERC Order 2222: Experts offer cheers and jeers for first round of filings
• Canary: Is ​‘vehicle-to-everything’ charging ready for prime time?
• Catalyst: Tapping the gold mine of consumer energy data

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

In the U.S. alone, food waste is responsible for the equivalent emissions from 42 coal power plants. Globally it accounts for 10% of greenhouse gases, more than heavy industries like cement and steel. 

Why? Wasted food means wasted energy. Throwing a piece of food in the trash is like tossing out the fertilizer and fuel used to make it, too. And we waste a lot of it. Nearly one third of all food grown gets trashed. On top of that, when food decomposes in landfills through anaerobic digestion, it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. 

So how do we clean up food waste? 

In this episode, Shayle talks to Matt Rogers, founder and CEO of Mill. Matt founded Nest, the smart thermostat company, and has now turned his attention to food. 

Disclosure: Shayle’s venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners is an investor in Mill. 

Matt and Shayle cover topics like:

• Where food waste occurs along the value chain (hint: The biggest source of waste is us, when we toss food we’ve already purchased.)
• The causes of emissions, from energy inputs to anaerobic digestion in landfills
• The current solutions to food waste, such as composting, green bin programs, supply chain management software and shelf-life extension.
• The challenges with landfills, including trucking waste and landfill capacity.
• Mill’s new consumer-focused food waste technology, which includes shipping dehydrated food scraps in the mail.
• How much consumers care about food waste and carbon emissions.

Recommended Resources:

• ReFED: Drawdown Update Affirms Reducing Food Waste as a Leading Solution to Climate Change
• ReFED: Roadmap to 2030: Reducing US Food Waste by 50%
• Canary: Eating the Earth | Decarbonizing our food systems
• Climavores: Today's food crisis is a postcard from our warming future
• EPA: From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste

Click here for a full transcript

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

In this bonus episode, we present With Great Power, a podcast from GridX about the people building the future grid, today.

The grid is no longer the biggest source of carbon emissions in America. It's transportation.

Electric vehicles are a key part of decarbonizing the transportation sector – making utilities an important force in growing EV adoption.

Electric cars will create a new opportunity for power providers to scale their business. But first, they need to get people to buy them. And that's where people like Karl Popham come in.

“The mindset is how can we get EVs to your customers as quickly as possible and as profitable for the salesperson as possible,” explains Karl, who is manager of electric vehicles and emerging technologies at Austin Energy.

This week, Brad speaks with Karl about Austin Energy’s work in making electric cars as accessible as possible by taking a dealership-centric approach.

You can find many more episodes like this over at the With Great Power feed. Subscribe to it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to shows.

The natural gas market has been through a wild ride, especially in Europe. The pandemic first pushed the prices way down. Then a resurgent economy and an unusually long European winter sent them back up to record heights. And by September of last year, Russia had dramatically cut natural gas flows to Europe, further squeezing supply.

The high prices were especially painful for the continent, which relies heavily on the fuel for home heating, industry and power plants. But high prices also catalyzed efforts to shift to lower carbon technologies like renewables, hydrogen and heat pumps.

Then fast forward to this past December, and now gas prices have plummeted again. What’s going on? What’s causing these rapid swings and what might happen next?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Anne-Sophie Corbeau, research scholar at Columbia University’s SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy where she studies natural gas and hydrogen. Her article, “Putin’s energy gambit fizzles as warm winter saves Europe” recently ran in Bloomberg.

They discuss how we got here, covering topics like:

• The range of factors at play, such as LNG cargos, a European drought, and unusual weather patterns
• Whether Europe might resume large-scale natural gas imports from Russia
• Why China’s zero covid policy and an unusually warm winter amounted to a lucky break for Europe

What topics should we cover on the show? Send us an email or voice memo to [email protected].

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

The Haber-Bosch process, which turns nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia, produces an essential ingredient in fertilizers and explosives. But it’s responsible for 2% of global emissions. 

Ammonia could become an important low-carbon fuel, because when combusted it emits no carbon. We could use it in ships, heavy industry and even mixed in with coal or gas in power plants. 

So what’s keeping us from using it as a new low-carbon fuel? And why would you use it instead of hydrogen, which you already need to make ammonia?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. Julio and a team of colleagues just co-authored a report on low-carbon ammonia for the Innovation for Cool Earth Forum.

They cover topics like:

• Why some countries like Japan, Singapore and Korea are especially interested in developing ammonia infrastructure.
• How ammonia compares to other low-carbon fuels like methanol and hydrogen.
• How we would need to retrofit coal and gas power plants to co-fire with ammonia
• Addressing ammonia’s corrosion and toxicity issues.
• The areas that need more research, such as ammonia’s impact on air quality and radiative forcing.
• Key constraints like human capital and infrastructure.

Recommended Resources:

• Innovation for Cool Earth Forum: Low-Carbon Ammonia Roadmap
• Canary: Watch this TED talk to get up to speed on green ammonia and shipping
• Canary: The race is on to build the world’s first ammonia-powered ship
• Chemical & Engineering News: Will Japan run on ammonia?

Full transcript here.

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Today we’re talking about two climate blind spots: methane and short-term warming. Most of us think of global warming as a long game. How do we reach net zero by 2050? And how should we curb carbon dioxide emissions to get there?

But the warming happening now and in the next few years is just as important.

Short-term warming exacerbates wildfires, hurricanes and other climate impacts now. And the short-term trajectory of warming can make things better or worse in the long run. At some point before we reach net zero emissions, it’s increasingly likely that we will overshoot our 1.5 degree target. Hopefully we will come back down, but the more we overshoot, the worse the effects of climate change will be. Which is why we should bend the curve of that trajectory by tackling the causes of short-term warming.

High up on that list is methane. It lives in the atmosphere for only 12 years, but in the 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere it causes about 84 times more warming than carbon dioxide. That means it’s also a powerful solution. Methane in the atmosphere right now causes about 30% of global warming to date, but cutting emissions now would actually have a cooling effect. Why? Because, unlike carbon dioxide which lasts for several hundred years, methane breaks down relatively quickly. 

So how do we tackle the methane problem?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Erika Reinhardt, co-founder of Spark Climate Solutions, a non-profit focused on under-addressed climate solutions. Right now Spark is focusing on methane emissions from livestock, also known as enteric methane.

Shayle and Erika cover topics like:

• Why we should consider different time-scale standards for measuring global warming impact, such as GWP100 and GWP20
• How short-lived aerosols mask the full warming impact of greenhouse gasses
• Methane removal, including the process of oxidation and methane sinks
• Different sources of methane, such as wetlands, livestock and fossil fuel production
• Ready-to-deploy solutions to fossil fuel methane emissions, such as flaring, detection, capture and storage
• How flaring may be less effective than previously thought
• Solutions under development for livestock methane, such as manure management, biogas digesters and feed additives like seaweed-derived bromoform 

Recommended Resources:

• Canary: Cutting methane emissions could make a big dent in climate change, major UN report says
• Bloomberg: As Gas Prices Soar, Nobody Knows How Much Methane Is Leaking
• Inside Climate News: Feeding Cows Seaweed Reduces Their Methane Emissions, but California Farms Are a Long Way From Scaling Up the Practice

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scalecapitalsolutions.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by CohnReznick, a trusted partner for navigating the complex and evolving financial, tax and regulatory landscape of the renewable sector. Visit cohnreznick.com to learn more.

A coalition of companies organized by the U.S. government is promising to purchase low-carbon versions of commodities from “hard to abate” heavy industries. This sort of policy is called an advanced market commitment, which the U.S. has used in the past to accelerate the development of new technologies. With guaranteed revenue from the government, manufacturers are able to take risks to create products that they might not have otherwise.

In the leadup to COP26 last year, John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, announced the First Movers Coalition (FMC) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. It now involves 65 companies—including Delta, Maersk, and Rio Tinto—that will buy or supply a percentage of low-carbon products by 2030. India, Norway and eight other countries have signed on, too. The coalition has also committed to purchase carbon removal, adding to the wave of similar pledges like the $1 billion Frontier Fund.

So how will the FMC work?

In this episode, Shayle talks to FMC’s brainchild, Varun Sivaram. Varun is managing director and senior advisor for clean energy and innovation in Kerry's office.

They cover topics like:

• Why advanced market commitments are not silver bullets
• The FMC’s ability to make companies keep their commitments 
• How the FMC is developing standards for low-carbon products
• How much progress coalition members have made toward their targets 
• How the Inflation Reduction Act and the FMC support each other
• The FMC’s ability to endure changes of administration
• When we can stop calling these sectors “hard to abate”

 Recommended Resources:

• Bloomberg: Companies Commit to Buying Super-Green Cement in Corporate Climate Club
• Columbia University: To Bring Emissions-Slashing Technologies to Market, the United States Needs Targeted Demand-Pull Innovation Policies
• Harvard University: Using Advance Market Commitments for Public Purpose Technology Development
• Catalyst: Growing the carbon dioxide removal market

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scalecapitalsolutions.com to learn more.

Catalyst is supported by CohnReznick Capital, a trusted source for renewable energy investment banking servicing the US sustainability sector. Visit cohnreznickcapital.com to learn more.

We are headed into an uncertain future for the climate – but the range of possible scenarios is getting clearer. We’ve likely avoided the worst-case scenarios, thanks to the progress made in clean energy.

And that has experts feeling conflicted.

“People who are deep in the industry of trying to address climate change flip flop from skepticism to the amazing opportunity we have,” says DNV Senior Vice President Nick Brod. “Every few weeks, we see new technologies that show us that there is endless potential to make things more and more efficient.”

“We definitely have a lot of the technologies in wind and solar and storage – and there continues to be breakthroughs,” says DNV Senior Vice President Marion Hill.

We have most of the tools available to slow climate change. So where are the opportunities? And what are the bottlenecks to growth?

In this special episode, produced in partnership with DNV, we feature a conversation between Stephen Lacey, Nick Brod, and Marion Hill about the trends reshaping supply and demand on the grid.

DNV provides advice and assurance to customers across the spectrum of the energy transition, from generation to end use – in solar, storage, wind, grid planning, hydrogen, carbon capture, and more. To learn more about how experts like Nick and Marion can help you accelerate the energy transition, go to dnv.com/catalyst