Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Latest Episodes:

Frontier Forum: The new power map for AI infrastructure Oct 21, 2025

Show notes

As AI reshapes the industrial landscape, companies are questioning whether the grid can keep pace. Permitting delays, transmission constraints, and reliability risks are forcing developers to rethink where power comes from.

In this episode, KR Sridhar, CEO of Bloom Energy, lays out a radically different vision. He believes that many data centers will ultimately operate like refineries — powered by captive, off-grid generation that prioritizes resilience, speed, and local control over traditional grid economics.

Sridhar argues that solid-state fuel cellshave become an ideal solution to meet data center needs at AI speed and scale. They can be deployed in months rather than years, follow digital loads in real time, and integrate with future zero-carbon fuels like hydrogen.

“I truly believe that this is a cyclical trend that’s going to continue for well over a decade,” said Sridhar.

This episode features an edited version of our live Frontier Forum conversation about what a future-proof AI power strategy really looks like. We talk about the tension between off-grid and grid-connected approaches, the importance of speed to power, carbon capture, and supply chains over the next decade of growth.

The conversation also touches on Bloom’s new white paper, Fuel Cells: A Technology Whose Time Has Come, which argues that onsite generation can deliver AI-scale reliability and lower emissions.

You can watch the full Frontier Forum conversation with audience Q&A here.

Calibrating hype with Akshat Rathi Oct 16, 2025

Show notes

In the climate space, every idea sits somewhere along the hype continuum. Some command outsize attention. Others fly under the radar despite big potential. And a rare few hit the sweet spot, earning exactly the buzz they deserve.

But how do you tell which is which?

In this episode, Shayle teams up with Akshat Rathi, senior reporter for climate at Bloomberg News and host of the Zero podcast, to sort it out. Akshat and Shayle run through a list of hot topics and place each one on the hype continuum. They cover topics like:

Using DERs to meet load growth
Co-locating generation with data centers
Infrastructure bottlenecks like generation, transmission, and transformers
The roles of venture capital and the Paris Agreement in shaping markets
A grab-bag of other topics like sodium-ion, advanced geothermal, and advanced nuclear

Resources:

Catalyst: The new wave of DERs

Catalyst: When to colocate data centers with generation

Zero: The Device Throttling Our Electrified Future

Zero: The Gas Turbine Shortage Might Be a Climate Problem

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

Catalyst is brought to you by Bloom Energy. AI data centers can’t wait years for grid power—and with Bloom Energy’s fuel cells, they don’t have to. Bloom Energy delivers affordable, always-on, ultra-reliable onsite power, built for chipmakers, hyperscalers, and data center leaders looking to power their operations at AI speed. Learn more by visiting BloomEnergy.com.

How insurance can narrow the valley of death [partner content] Oct 15, 2025

Show notes

Jamie Daggett started his career as a mechanical engineer working for cleantech startups in Silicon Valley. But after five startups and three buyouts, Daggett saw the same story repeat itself: good technologies that worked in the lab often died before reaching commercial scale.

And often they didn’t fail because the science was wrong; they failed because investors couldn’t trust that the performance would hold up over time.

That realization eventually led him to an unexpected place: insurance.

Today, Daggett is the energy storage and fuel cell lead at Ariel Green, a Lloyd’s of London syndicate that provides a wide range of insurance for clean-energy projects.

“Insurance is another tool that we can use to help grow the clean-energy market,” says Daggett. “I do feel like it plays an unsung role behind the scenes.”

In this episode, produced in collaboration with Ariel Green, Daggett talks with Stephen Lacey about how insurance is helping the energy storage sector mature.

They discuss how the bankruptcy of Powin Energy exposed the fragility of supplier warranties, what the Moss Landing fire revealed about chemistry and safety risk, and how new markets for long-duration and non-lithium storage are testing the boundaries of what can be insured.

Daggett explains how technology performance insurance now allows lenders, developers, and manufacturers to move faster by transferring risk from young suppliers to a creditworthy insurer.

This is a partner episode, produced in collaboration with Ariel Green. Ariel Green helps clients reduce uncertainty by providing investment-grade insurance for clean-energy projects — protecting the technologies that protect the environment. To learn more, visit arielgreen.com.

How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B Oct 09, 2025

Show notes

Yesterday, Base Power announced a $1 billion series C, giving the residential battery company an eye-popping $4 billion post-money valuation. Base manufactures, installs, owns, and operates residential batteries — a vertical integration strategy that CEO Zach Dell says is the “magic” to beating utility-scale batteries on CapEx. The company also acts as an electricity retailer and sells generation capacity.

So how does Base’s business model work? And what will it do with its new fundraise?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Zach about Base’s business model, the vertical integration strategy, and the challenges ahead. They cover topics like:

The customer value proposition: how customers pay for backup power and Base uses the batteries for grid services

Bases’s “gentailer” business model in ERCOT, earning revenue from monthly customer fees, retail electricity sales, and battery arbitrage

The regulated market approach, where Base sells capacity directly to utilities

Base’s vertical integration strategy: from ground-mounted designs to decoupled installation processes

Challenges like managing a fixed workforce amid fluctuating demand and the declining price volatility in ERCOT

Resources:

New York Times: Base Power, a Battery-Focused Power Company, Raises $1 Billion

Open Circuit: Is this moment for distributed energy different?

Catalyst: Is now the time for DERs to scale?

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

Frontier Forum: A new playbook for clean energy growth Oct 06, 2025

Show notes

After the failure of federal climate legislation in 2010, clean energy advocates realized they had to look elsewhere for momentum. The result was a shift toward states and regional markets — and the creation of Advanced Energy United, a trade group built to make policy progress outside of Washington.

Today, that strategy is more important than ever. With the federal government rolling out new regulatory hurdles, load growth accelerating, and an affordability crisis growing, states have become critical for industry growth.

In this episode, Heather O’Neill, the CEO of Advanced Energy United, talks about a new playbook for scaling clean energy in this environment. The framework: build it, make it flexible, and make it affordable.

That means removing red tape for new projects, unlocking more value from existing infrastructure through tools like virtual power plants and advanced transmission technologies, and ensuring affordability as utilities make massive investment decisions.

“States are where some of our most forward-looking and politically resilient clean energy policies have been developed,” said O’Neill. “And that’s where the opportunities are today.”

This week, we feature an edited version of our recent Frontier Forum with Heather about how states are shaping the clean energy transition, and how companies can use United’s new playbook to grow the market.

You can download United’s new playbook guide here, and watch the full Frontier Forum conversation with live audience Q&A at Latitude Media.

The new wave of DERs Oct 02, 2025

Show notes

Demand response was the original distributed energy resource. In its early days, it was surprisingly manual: a grid operator would call up a large load, like a factory, and request a few hours of reduced demand during peak times.

Fast forward to today and DERs look dramatically different. They’re automated, deployed frequently across the country, and include everything from EVs and thermostats to sophisticated management systems at paper mills and data centers.

So how did DERs evolve from phone calls to fully fledged virtual power plants? And what role do they play now as electricity demand surges?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dana Guernsey, co-founder and CEO of DER and VPP developer Voltus. She is also the former director of energy markets at EnerNOC, a pioneer in demand response. Shayle and Dana cover topics like:

The changing mix of customers and resources, as well as the evolving use cases

Voltus’ new “Bring Your Own Capacity” model, allowing large loads like data centers to fund regional VPPs

The barriers that hold DERs back, like access to data

The market forces shaping DER adoption, including load growth, declining system costs, and market structures

How DERs stack up against conventional power plants in meeting rising demand

Resources:

Open Circuit: The grid flexibility solutions staring us in the face

Catalyst: Is now the time for DERs to scale?

Catalyst: Making DERs work for load growth

Catalyst: PJM and the capacity crunch

Latitude Media: Google expands demand response to target machine learning workloads

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

Ag residue and carbon removal Sep 25, 2025

Show notes

Agricultural byproducts like corn stover, wood chips, and soybean husks typically get left to decompose and release carbon dioxide. Don’t call them “waste” though; some farmers use these byproducts as field cover to improve soil health. And industry uses a fraction of this biomass as feedstock for valuable products like ethanol, electricity, and heat. Theoretically, it’s a vastly underutilized resource.

The problem is that agricultural residue is really hard to collect. The economics of gathering, sorting, processing, and refining are tough. On top of that, it makes for a crappy fuel. It’s low energy density and high carbon, compared to oil, for example.

So in what applications does agricultural residue make the most sense? And how do you economically collect the material at scale?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and CEO of Charm Industrial, a carbon removal startup that collects agricultural residue and refines it in the field into what it calls “bio-oil.” It then injects the bio-oil underground for sequestration. Together, Peter and Shayle discuss the use cases and collection of agricultural residue, covering topics like:

How the difficult economics of collecting and transporting biomass have killed centralized biomass projects, except in a few niche examples
Why Peter says the processing and densification are key to improving the economics
The tradeoffs between big, centralized processing facilities and Charm’s on-field mobile pyrolysis units
The case for using agricultural residue for applications where the carbon content matters, like iron-making, sustainable aviation fuel, and carbon removal
What’s driving carbon removal buyers and what it takes to build trust with them

Resources:

Catalyst: Fuzzy math and food competition: The pitfalls of sourcing biomass for carbon removal
Open Circuit: What we learned from the ethanol disaster
Catalyst: Shopify’s head of sustainability on the realities of the carbon removal market
Catalyst: From biowaste to ‘biogold’

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

Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a solar and energy storage development and procurement platform helping clients make optimal decisions, saving significant time, money, and reducing risk. Subscribers instantly access pricing, product, and supplier data. Learn more at ⁠go.anzarenewables.com/latitude⁠.

Catalyst is supported 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.

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.

Is now the time for DERs to scale? Sep 18, 2025

Show notes

A decade ago, DERs were hot. The hype was that things like batteries, smart devices, and other distributed energy technologies would offset the need for expanding traditional grid infrastructure.

But DERs never took off, at least not at the scale that many hoped for. They had high price tags and short track records compared to the existing substations, transmission lines, and generation options that utilities were familiar with. In short, the market didn’t need them yet.

Fast forward 10 years, and things have changed. Load growth is increasing while major grid bottlenecks — like in transmission, interconnection, and supply chains — may be opening up a new opportunity.

So is the time finally right for DERs?

In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. Last week, Andy published a blog post making the case that DERs were a good idea that was just too early, but the market is ready now. Shayle and Andy cover topics like:

What held DERs back a decade ago

Why now is different, including falling system costs and growing grid bottlenecks

The difference between demand response and virtual power plants

The potential hurdles to scale, like supply chain bottlenecks, foreign entity of concern regulations, and fire codes

Resources:

Latitude Media: Can distributed energy answer AI’s power problem?

Open Circuit: The grid flexibility solutions staring us in the face

Catalyst: Making DERs work for load growth

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

When to colocate data centers with generation Sep 12, 2025

Show notes

The idea of colocating data centers with behind-the-meter generation is picking up steam, including large projects in Memphis, Texas, and Utah developing significant on-site capacity, mostly from combined-cycle gas plants. The main argument is speed to power. Building your own generation allows data centers to sidestep the challenges involved in grid upgrades, transmission, and permitting.

But when does a good idea jump the shark?

In this episode, Shayle brings Brian Janous back on the show to talk about why a data center might not want to colocate generation. Brian is co-founder and chief commercial officer at data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure. He makes the case for relying on alternatives instead, like batteries, grid-enhancing technologies (GETs), advanced conductors, and a range of other non-generation options to take advantage of untapped capacity in the existing grid. Shayle and Brian cover topics like:

Whether 24/7 loads actually needs 24/7 power and why utilities solve for peaks, not 24/7 needs

The constraints of colocation, including gas constraints, added complexity and cost, and permitting challenges

The complexity of multiple-party solutions involving VPPs, GETs, and other alternatives vs. the relative simplicity of single-party generation

Why both Shayle and Brian are skeptical of on-site nuclear

Resources:

Catalyst: The case for colocating data centers and generation

Latitude Media: AEP, Dominion argue there’s no such thing as ‘isolated’ colocation for data centers

Catalyst: Explaining the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’

Catalyst: The potential for flexible data centers

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

AMA: Geoengineering, nuclear, power prices, and more Sep 04, 2025

Show notes

You sent in great questions, and today we’re answering them. In this episode, Shayle hands it over to Lara Pierpoint, the managing director of Trellis Climate at the Prime Coalition and host of The Green Blueprint. Together they cover topics like:

Whether solar radiation management will remain the “black sheep” of climate technologies

What technologies will excel in a world of rising power prices

Whether the nuclear renaissance is finally here

Why Lara and Shayle are more bullish on vehicle-to-home than V2G

The thorny plastics problem – and whether it’s core to climate change

Resources:

Catalyst: Solar geoengineering: Is it worth the risk?

Latitude Media: Google, Kairos, and TVA ink historic next-generation nuclear deal

Catalyst: The US power demand surge: The electricity gauntlet has arrived

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 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.
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.

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