Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Technology
About
Investor Shayle Kann is asking big questions about how to decarbonize the planet: How cheap can clean energy get? Will artificial intelligence speed up climate solutions? Where is the smart money going into climate technologies? Every week on Catalyst , Shayle explains the world of climate tech with prominent experts, investors, researchers, and executives. Produced by Latitude Media.
Episodes
- Cracking the code on autonomous trucking
Even though autonomous passenger vehicles have entered the mainstream in cities across the country, autonomous trucks still lag behind. But Humble Robotics thinks it has cracked the code with a new design that completely does away with the…
- How AI is modernizing EPCs
As the utility-scale solar market collides with an era defined by massive load growth, EPC (engineering, procurement, and construction) firms are rethinking their strategy to meet the moment. In this episode, Shayle speaks to George Hershm…
- Live from Transition-AI 2026: Inside Google’s massive AI CapEx
As the race to build out artificial intelligence accelerates, the infrastructure required to support it is undergoing a remarkable transformation. In February, Google announced a plan to spend $175 billion to $185 billion in CapEx for 2026…
- How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B [re-published]
[ This episode is a re-run from October 2025. Look out for a new episode of Catalyst on Thursday, April 23. ] Yesterday, Base Power announced a $1 billion series C , giving the residential battery company an eye-popping $4 billion post…
- The rise of flexible data centers
As the buildout of data centers accelerates on a dramatic trajectory,its strain on the electric grid has increased in turn; forecasts suggest they could consume up to 17% of all US power by 2030. To avoid higher rates and slower AI growth,…
- Frontier Forum: Why clean energy capital boomed in a volatile year [partner content]
In 2025, the clean energy market navigated a mix of shifting tariffs, evolving FEOC compliance rules, and uncertainty around tax policy. On the surface, it looked like a year defined by instability. And yet, capital continued to move. Tota…
- Building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain
Even as momentum grows for U.S. nuclear, the fuel supply chain is often overlooked. This dynamic is shifting as the industry wakes up to critical choke points and a heavy reliance on countries like Russia for enrichment. As America aims to…
- Battery booms and the rise of flexibility [partner content]
Battery markets have a pattern: They boom, capital floods in, prices collapse, and then the cycle starts again. So as storage becomes more important than ever, how do we maximize revenue and deliver needed flexibility? In this episode, Ste…
- The state and future of nuclear waste
The nuclear power sector is gaining a lot of momentum. But even as SMRs continue to flourish, the Department of Energy’s reactor pilot program moves forward, and decommissioned plants come back online, the question of what to do with nucle…
- Scaling America's domestic solar supply chain
Despite the dark cloud of federal policy hanging over the solar industry, skyrocketing load growth is driving demand. The question is whether supply can keep up. In this episode, Shayle talks to Scott Moskowitz — VP of market strategy and…
- AI scaling pathways: on grid, on edge, off grid, off planet
As demand for data center power skyrockets, available options to provide that power have dwindled. And cohesive frameworks for finding sustainable generation remain few and far between. In this episode, Shayle speaks with Jake Elder, senio…
- Frontier Forum: How VPPs earn grid-scale trust [partner content]
Can a grid operator tell the difference between a virtual power plant and a traditional one? That’s the idea behind the Huels Test , a framework developed by EnergyHub to answer a simple but consequential question: when does a distributed…
- Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Despite its ability to deliver ample carbon-free energy, the potential of geothermal and EGS is limited by the number of drilling sites close enough to the earth’s surface. But a few pioneering companies have landed on a potential solution…
- Volts crossover: Six big energy questions
They’re at it again. Two years after they last teamed up for a Volts / Catalyst crossover episode , David Roberts joins Shayle for another far-ranging conversation exploring the future of energy. Their prompt was simple: Each host brought…
- The rise of grid power electronics with Drew Baglino
For decades, the physical equipment underpinning the electric grid has remained largely unchanged: passive, "dumb" devices installed as far back as the 1970s that lack much real-time control. But today, in the face of skyrocketing energy d…
- PJM and ERCOT navigate a capacity rollercoaster
Last year, the PJM capacity crunch became a focal point for an entire industry struggling to navigate the explosive growth of hyperscaler data centers. Yet even in the first two months of 2026, capacity prices have continued to skyrocket,…
- The path to market for new nuclear reactors
Spurred by a suite of executive orders and investments from the federal government, new nuclear reactors are coming soon. Or the announcements are at least. The advanced nuclear sector has found itself in the spotlight as companies race to…
- The rise of permissionless DERs
Distributed batteries are having a big moment. On one hand, companies like Base Power and Tesla have leaned into large residential batteries that export power back to the grid, but need permits and inspections to operate. At the same time,…
- More 2026 trends: Solar costs, oil oversupply, and the startup slump
We are back for Part 2 of Shayle’s double header conversation with the veteran energy analyst Nat Bullard, dissecting his annual presentation on the state of decarbonization. If you missed it, we recommend you go back and listen to Part 1…
- A ‘rain delay’ for the energy transition [partner content]
In 2024, Tom Burton described the clean energy transition as entering its “third inning” — a phase defined by execution and scale. A year later, the game looks very different. In this episode, produced in partnership with Mintz, Stephen La…
- 2026 trends: Gas turbines, Texas’ load queue and China electrifies
It’s a new year, which means the veteran energy analyst Nat Bullard has dropped another annual, data-rich presentation on the state of energy and decarbonization. And per what has become tradition, Nat is back on Catalyst – for the fourth…
- The VC case for 'full stack deeptech'
For “deep tech” or industrial tech investors, a captivating idea on paper doesn’t always translate into a sustainable or viable business. Even a remarkable technological breakthrough isn’t guaranteed to survive the long sales cycles of the…
- How AI is changing weather forecasting
Weather forecasting drives billions of economic decisions — from grid operations to evacuation planning. Better forecasting could improve supply chain planning, disaster warnings, and renewable integration. The industry has decades of sate…
- The gas turbine crunch
Demand for turbines is growing fast, but so are lead times — causing serious headaches for developers and even cancellations. In Texas, one of six cancelled projects cited “ equipment procurement constraints ” as the reasons for its withdr…
- Will inference move to the edge?
Today virtually all AI compute takes place in centralized data centers, driving the demand for massive power infrastructure. But as workloads shift from training to inference, and AI applications become more latency-sensitive (autonomous v…
- Can AI revolutionize EPC?
Big construction projects in the U.S. are notoriously unpredictable, often finishing over budget and behind schedule. Part of the problem is the inherent complexity of these kinds of projects, like data centers and first-of-a-kind plants.…
- Who benefits from the AI power bottleneck?
The bottleneck holding back AI is a scarcity of power, or so goes the story. That may be true — and plenty of reporting backs it up — but different actors in the space face varying incentives to play up or play down that narrative. So what…
- Looking for a turnaround in transmission
After years of stalled transmission buildout, there are new signs of progress. Earlier this month, SPP approved $8.6 billion in transmission projects across 14 states . Major plans are emerging in MISO , PJM , and ERCOT . Despite the DOE c…
- New Mexico proves America can still build [partner content]
Across the country, people are asking the same question: why is it so hard to build in America? From transmission lines to clean energy factories, projects are taking longer, costs are rising, and frustration is growing. But in New Mexico,…
- Driving down the cost of green hydrogen
A few years ago, industry and political leaders embraced hydrogen as a solution to a laundry list of hard-to-abate decarbonization challenges — steel production , ammonia production , and more. But hydrogen failed to come down in costs and…
- Inside a $300 million bet on AI for physical R&D
A big problem with using artificial intelligence to discover new materials? It struggles to predict beyond its training data. That means AI might be better at optimizing known materials than discovering entirely new ones — like a room temp…
- Unpacking DOE's proposal to transform data center interconnection
Last Thursday, Energy Secretary Chris Wright directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to consider rulemaking to fast-track interconnection for large loads — as long as they agree to be curtailable or colocate with dispatchable gen…
- Five big questions about the future of energy
We’ve covered AI’s massive power appetite in depth over the past year – with good reason. It’s the driving force behind much of the change and uncertainty in the energy world right now, from the error bars around our demand for electricity…
- Frontier Forum: The new power map for AI infrastructure
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…
- Calibrating hype with Akshat Rathi
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 d…
- How insurance can narrow the valley of death [partner content]
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…
- How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B
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 s…
- Frontier Forum: A new playbook for clean energy growth
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 tr…
- The new wave of DERs
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 forw…
- Ag residue and carbon removal
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. An…
- Is now the time for DERs to scale?
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 t…
- When to colocate data centers with generation
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 argum…
- AMA: Geoengineering, nuclear, power prices, and more
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 to…
- The mechanics of data center flexibility
Adding flexibility to data center loads could ease strain on the grid and reduce the need for costly new generation. And, according to one study, shaving off just a few megawatts during peak hours could also unlock unused capacity —as many…
- The Green Blueprint: Terrawatt Infrastructure’s billion-dollar strategy
Editor's note: With the Trump administration's efforts to roll back California's electric trucking rules, there's new attention on heavy duty transport right now. So we're bringing you a deep dive into the industry, an episode of The Green…
- The case for sodium-ion
Our first episode covering sodium-ion batteries featured a cautious take on the chemistry: Back in February Adrian Yao , founder of Stanford’s STEER program, explained the challenges of reaching competitive energy density and costs, especi…
- Explaining the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’
Editor’s note: The uncertainties of data center construction — like when, where, and how much to build — are as pressing as ever. So we’re revisiting a conversation with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer at data center…
- PJM and the capacity crunch
The PJM capacity auction this month broke records with sky-high wholesale power prices — and that was by design. Under PJM’s auction rules, tight supply raises prices, incentivizing the development of new generation and encouraging existin…
- Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage
The job of an EV battery is unforgiving. If its performance slips too far — say, lost acceleration or range — it's probably off to the recycling heap. That’s even though it may have plenty of usable life, if only for something less demandi…
- Five big questions emerging from the OBBB
The One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB) complicates things. Together with a related executive order, it dismantled key parts of the Inflation Reduction Act, while also injecting uncertainty into tax credit eligibility. The uncertainty in particu…