Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Latest Episodes:

The state of connected DERs [partner content] Sep 24, 2024

Show notes

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.

Can AI revolutionize materials discovery? Sep 19, 2024

Show notes

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.

The better mousetrap fallacy Sep 12, 2024

Show notes

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

The rise of climate adaptation tech Sep 05, 2024

Show notes

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

Why are we still flaring gas? Aug 29, 2024

Show notes

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

Hunting for geologic hydrogen Aug 23, 2024

Show notes

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

The cost of nuclear Aug 15, 2024

Show notes

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

Frontier Forum: Is America’s green bank ready? Aug 13, 2024

Show notes

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.

Understanding the transmission bottleneck Aug 08, 2024

Show notes

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

Pathways to decarbonizing steel Aug 02, 2024

Show notes

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