Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Latest Episodes:

The geopolitics of rare earth elements Apr 24, 2025

Show notes

China’s new export controls on rare earth elements (REEs) are a problem for EVs, renewables, and other industries that rely on the minerals, especially the permanent magnets they’re used in. The vast majority of the global supply chain is in China. Plus, Chinese companies control supply chain operations around the world.

So is it possible to stand up a rare earth supply chain outside of China’s control?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Ahmad Ghahreman, co-founder and CEO of REE recycler Cyclic Materials. (Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle is a partner, invests in Cyclic.) They cover topics like:

REE 101: the basket of 17 minerals, how they’re mined and processed, and the most important five
Why an REE supply chain hasn’t been built outside of China, even though the raw materials exist outside the country
The timeline of Chinese export controls leading up to the April escalation and what could come next
The specifics of what’s limited, including oxides, alloys, and magnets
Why Ahmad is optimistic about building an ex-China supply chain
Other potential pathways, like recycling and designing more REEs-efficient products

Recommended resources:

The New York Times: The Mine Is American. The Minerals Are China’s.

The New York Times: How China Took Over the World’s Rare Earths Industry

Axios: China trade war risks stifling America's electric car movement

Heatmap: China’s Minerals Pause All Pain, No Gain for U.S

Latitude Media: Building a supply chain for rare earth elements

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a platform enabling solar and storage developers and buyers to save time, reduce risk, & increase profits in their equipment selection process. Anza gives clients access to pricing, technical, and risk data and tools that they’ve never had access to before. Learn more at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude.

Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub helps utilities build next-generation virtual power plants that unlock reliable flexibility at every level of the grid. See how EnergyHub helps unlock the power of flexibility at scale, and deliver more value through cross-DER dispatch with their leading Edge DERMS platform, by visiting energyhub.com.

What’s next for the battery storage boom? [partner content] Apr 23, 2025

Show notes

The U.S. storage market is experiencing hockey-stick growth, with multiple gigawatts being installed quarterly. But new policy uncertainties around tariffs and the Inflation Reduction Act are threatening this momentum.

But Jeff Waters, the CEO of Powin, remains optimistic.

"This industry will figure out a way to work with it," says Waters, who brings decades of experience from the semiconductor and solar industries. "What we're doing is important."

Powin is a leading storage integrator that designs, commissions, and services some of the largest utility-scale batteries in the world. As Waters puts it, "If you are a utility or if you are an IPP, if you want to integrate storage and own and operate a storage asset, we are that one throat to choke."

In this episode, produced in partnership with Powin, Stephen Lacey talks with Jeff about why he's still optimistic about the market despite significant headwinds. Drawing from his experience in semiconductors, Waters makes a case for how America should approach domestic battery manufacturing.

"When I hear people talk about storage and say, 'We don't want Chinese companies investing or getting taxpayer money to build plants,' I think it's a ridiculous notion," Waters explains. "The only way we're going to get anywhere in the U.S. market with storage is by partnering with the Chinese."

They discuss the extraordinary scaling of project sizes, the surge in electricity demand from data centers, technology trends beyond lithium-iron phosphate batteries, diverse deployment models, regional market opportunities, and the remarkable resilience of an industry used to navigating policy volatility.

This is a partner episode, brought to you by Powin. Powin is pushing the frontiers of energy storage. To learn more about Powin's integrated energy storage systems and to read case studies of how the company is executing projects, go to powin.com.

Serving data center load with carbon capture Apr 17, 2025

Show notes

Big tech’s data center construction boom is fueling a flurry of natural gas development, despite the fuel’s challenges, and it’s complicating big tech’s climate goals. But carbon capture and storage (CCS) could mitigate emissions from those new plants, and hyperscalers could secure low-carbon power while meeting their needs for speed and reliability.

So how could natural gas with CCS serve data center loads?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct, who recently co-authored a couple pieces on the topic. Despite recent high profile cancellations of natural gas projects, Julio makes the case that gas-plus-CCS has attractive advantages, provided the carbon capture actually happens. Shayle and Julio cover topics like:

The surprisingly attractive economics, even at lower flue concentrations
Where it may compete with renewables, storage, and nuclear
The challenges of siting CO2 infrastructure and uncertainty around the 45Q tax credit
Whether “CCS-ready” kicks mitigation down the road, like H2 blending
Big tech companies like Meta that are signaling interest, but not taking action
The range of CCS technologies and the manufacturers jockeying to supply them
CCS’s uncertain political future in the U.S.

Recommended resources:

Carbon Direct: Carbon Capture for Natural Gas-Fired Power Generation

Carbon Direct: Carbon capture for natural gas-fired power generation: An opportunity for hyperscalers

Latitude Media: Where does gas fit in the puzzle of powering AI?

Latitude Media: High costs, delays prompt withdrawal of five more Texas gas plants

Latitude Media: Hydrogen-ready’ power plants aren’t actually ready for hydrogen

Latitude Media: Engie’s pulled project highlights the worsening economics of gas

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

How climate disasters are shaping insurance markets Apr 10, 2025

Show notes

Premiums are rising. Insurers are leaving markets. But people keep building in risk-prone areas, and the climate disasters just keep coming.

Can insurance markets adapt?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Judd Boomhower, an assistant professor of economics at the University of California-San Diego and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He studies how insurance markets are reacting to climate change. Shayle and Judd cover topics like:

Why insurers are limiting coverage in California, Florida, and other high-risk markets
How disaster insurance, unlike auto or health insurance, faces a flood of claims all at the same time
How catastrophe models (or “cat models” for short) work and why AI and other improvements struggle the solve the fundamental problem: a lack of historical data needed to predict future events
The challenges of private “black-box” catastrophe models that can’t be reviewed by third parties
Reinsurance markets and why they’re not attracting more capital to shore up insurers
The pros and cons of parametric insurance, an emerging category of insurance products
Undercapitalized “fly-by-night” insurers that risk insolvency and failing to pay out claim

Recommended resources

NBER: How Are Insurance Markets Adapting to Climate Change? Risk Classification and Pricing in the Market for Homeowners Insurance

Brookings: “How is climate change impacting home insurance markets?”

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

Frontier Forum: Future-proofing data center power infrastructure Apr 07, 2025

Show notes

Data centers face a critical timing problem. They need massive amounts of power immediately, but grid upgrades can take more than seven years to complete. Microgrids could be a solution to this growing power gap.

"How do you future-proof your systems through adaptability of technologies? Microgrids are really a nice technology to address that," explains Adib Nasle, CEO of Xendee.

In this episode, recorded as part of a live Frontier Forum, Latitude Media's Stephen Lacey speaks with Xendee co-founders Adib Nasle and Michael Stadler about how microgrids can help data centers get power quickly, while also preparing for future technology changes.

The conversation explores how the combination of combined heat and power systems with supplemental technologies like batteries and renewables can create flexible, adaptable power solutions for mission-critical facilities. Their research across different energy markets shows striking cost reductions.

"We saw cost reductions up to 80 percent in California and 60 percent in Virginia," notes Dr. Michael Stadler, CTO of Xendee. "If you really go with the utility, it's always the most expensive case."

Using a stepped approach to microgrid implementation, data centers can achieve electricity prices significantly below grid rates — while maintaining complete control over their power infrastructure and preparing for future technologies like small modular reactors.

"One way to think about microgrids is really as a Swiss army knife of energy infrastructure," says Nasle. "You're getting localized resilience, economics, flexibility, scalability, efficiency through controls, and the inherent benefits of a decentralized system."

This is a partner episode, brought to you by Xendee. It was recorded live as part of Latitude Media's Frontier Forum series. Watch the full video to hear more details about microgrid design for data centers.

Specialized AI brains for physical industry Apr 04, 2025

Show notes

Everyone wants a piece of general purpose models. Instacart has deployed ChatGPT for recipes and meal planning. The Mayo Clinic is using it to summarize patient records. Schneider Electric is using an OpenAI LLM to generate sustainability reports.

With such powerful models, what’s the need for specialized models built for specific industries, especially in climate tech?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Sam Smith-Eppsteiner, partner at Innovation Endeavors. She recently wrote a blog post arguing that there may be a market that general purpose models struggle to meet: physical industries where training data is siloed, unstructured, and private. She talks through climate-relevant examples like Cadstrom’s copilot for electrical engineers, Hubflow’s automated trucker scheduling, WeaveBio’s AI-powered platform for regulatory approvals. Shayle and Sam also cover topics like:

Applicable cases, like cross referencing complicated technical manuals, repetitive manual work that employees dislike, and technical compliance
The technical knowledge lost when workers retire and how specialized AI could help
What it takes to build specialized models, including data access, vector embedding, prompt engineering, and fine tuning
What budget categories businesses might use to pay for specialized models
Selling the technology (i.e. the traditional SAAS model) vs selling the work (i.e. answers informed by models)

Recommended resources

Innovation Endeavors: Specialized brains for industry: the immense potential for domain-specific AI
Innovation Endeavors: The next industrial unicorn: Where is AI rapidly transforming the physical economy
Catalyst: The coming robotics wave
Latitude: How utilities are designing and embedding AI operating models

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

The potential for flexible data centers Mar 27, 2025

Show notes

Tyler Norris says regulators have been getting two different stories. On one side, they’ve been hearing that data centers are largely inflexible loads. On the other, last year the U.S. Department of Energy recommended data center flexibility, and EPRI launched its DCFlex initiative to demonstrate the same.

So he and a few other researchers wanted to know, What’s the potential for data center flexibility? And what benefits could it have system-wide?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Tyler, a PhD candidate at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment and former vice president of development at Cypress Creek Renewables. In a recent study, Tyler and his co-authors found there’s enough spare capacity in the existing U.S. grid to accommodate up to 98 gigawatts of new industrial load (enough for multiple Project Stargates), if that load can curtail 0.5% of annual load to avoid adding to system peaks. Shayle and Tyler unpack the study’s findings, including:

How much data centers would have to curtail and how often
Options for shaving peaks, like colocating or leasing generation, spatial flexibility, and deferring or front loading training runs
Speeding up interconnection if the data center is able to curtail load
How bridge power could transition to peak shaving backup generation

Recommended resources

Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability, Duke University: Rethinking Load Growth: Assessing the Potential for Integration of Large Flexible Loads in US Power Systems

Latitude Media: EPRI takes its data center flexibility project global

Latitude Media: Who’s really paying to power Big Tech’s AI ambitions?

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the public relations and strategic marketing agency of choice for climate and energy leaders. If you're a startup, investor, or global corporation that's looking to tell your climate story, demonstrate your impact, or accelerate your growth, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help. Learn more at antennagroup.com.

Frontier Forum: How tax credit transfers are reshaping energy finance Mar 21, 2025

Show notes

In 2023, the U.S. market for transferable clean energy tax credits was just getting started. One year later, that market has tripled in size, with credits diversifying beyond wind and solar into nuclear, manufacturing, and other technologies.

"The statistics on just how much it grew over that period are really impressive — indicating the transparency, efficiency, liquidity, and growing nature of the market," explains Alfred Johnson, CEO of Crux, which operates a debt and tax credit platform for clean energy.

When new rules allowed clean energy tax credits to be sold for cash, it suddenly opened up a dynamic new market. Now, instead of only large banks with a tax appetite being able to finance projects, any corporate buyer with tax liability can participate — and they're rushing in.

In this episode, recorded during a live Frontier Forum, Latitude Media's Maeve Allsup moderates a conversation with Crux's Alfred Johnson, Stephanie Deterding, Crux's managing director of markets and transactions, and Timmi Kloster, senior vice president of tax credit syndications at US Bank Corp.

The panelists discuss six key findings from Crux's recent market report: the market grew and diversified; pricing improved; smaller credits saw the greatest price improvements; hybrid transactions enabled tax equity market growth; tax insurance became more prominent; and forward commitments grew significantly.

"What surprised me the most is just how quickly investors entered the market and were willing to transact," explains Timmi Kloster of US Bank. "We saw three times the amount of new investors enter the space through transferability that we would have seen in a typical, pre-IRA traditional tax equity partnership market."

Despite post-election policy uncertainty, the market remains robust. "In the weeks following the November election, bidding activity was the highest we have seen yet," says Johnson, noting that 90% of projects benefiting from the credits are in Republican districts.

This is a partner episode, brought to you by Crux. It was recorded live as part of Latitude Media's Frontier Forum series. Watch the full video to hear more details about the booming tax credit market. Or read the Crux report.

The coming robotics wave Mar 20, 2025

Show notes

Robots are becoming cheaper to make and more powerful because of AI. In the climate tech space, they’re already laying transmission lines, inspecting wind turbines, and installing solar panels.. And with labor productivity stagnating, immigration restrictions tightening, and the cost of labor rising, they’re looking even more appealing.

So where might robotics have the biggest impact on climate tech?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Andy Lubershane, a partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners (where he’s a colleague of Shayle). Andy also recently wrote a blog post on the effects of autonomy across climate tech. They cover topics like:

How more affordable parts and better foundation models are making robotics cheaper
The high CapEx and low OpEx that make automation expensive to start, but valuable with high utilization
Robotics-as-a-service companies that help to overcome these initial CapEx challenges
The most promising applications, like manufacturing, construction, and maintenance
The hopes for more humanoid general-purpose robots — and the challenges in making them

Recommended resources

Steel for Fuel: Autonomy is real now

SemiAnalysis: America Is Missing The New Labor Economy – Robotics Part 1

Steel for Fuel: From SaaS to Robots

F-Prime Capital: State of Robotics

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

An ode to electrochemistry Mar 13, 2025

Show notes

Batteries were electrochemistry’s breakout hit. For years it was a field that kept a low profile, outshined by flashier cousins like biotech and computer science. That is until lithium-ion batteries became big business, showing that studying the relationship between chemicals and energy could unlock technical pathways that other disciplines could not. Now the field is making breakthroughs in critical areas like cement, metallurgy, and new battery chemistries.

So what else can electrochemistry do? Which problems is it especially good at solving?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Yet-Ming Chiang, a professor of materials science and engineering at MIT. He’s also the co-founder of at least six electrochemistry companies, including Form Energy and Sublime Systems, which are both portfolio companies of Energy Impact Partners where Shayle is an investor. They cover topics like:

Promising applications like mining, SAFs, and other industrial processes that require a high concentration of energy
The strengths of electrochemistry and where it fits best in larger system
The weak spots of electrochemistry, like solid-solid transformations and the limitation to 2-dimensional surfaces
How electrochemical processes work with intermittent power and the role of embedded chemical storage
AI’s potential to shape the field — and its limits

Recommended resources

Catalyst: What do you do with a 100-hour battery?

Catalyst: Fixing cement’s carbon problem

Catalyst: Seeking the holy grail of batteries

Catalyst: The promise and perils of sodium-ion batteries

Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Daniel Woldorff. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is executive editor.

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