Catalyst with Shayle Kann

• More 2025 trends: DeepSeek, plug-in hybrids, and curtailment

  Didn’t catch last week’s episode on Nat Bullard’s mega slide deck on energy transition? Start there.  This is the second half of our extended conversation with Nat, the former chief content officer at BloombergNEF and current co-founder at data insights company Halcyon.  In this episode, Shayle and Nat dig into topics like: Rising solar installations and stagnating wind Why we’re wasting so much renewable power amid skyrocketing load growth The rise of Chinese plug-in hybrids and exports Whether DeepSeek’s efficiency will temper or turbocharge load growth The woeful state of transmission buildout, despite demand for it Why one quarter of Virginia’s power demand comes from data centers Recommended resources Latitude Media: Does DeepSeek call the data center boom into question? Latitude Media: To get data centers online, one Virginia co-op is proposing a new business model Latitude Media: A dizzying year at the AI energy nexus Catalyst: Demystifying the Chinese EV market Reuters: Exclusive: Global solar capacity hits 2 TW on path to climate goal, data shows 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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  49:45
• Are utilities ready to fully harness demand flexibility? [partner content]

  When it comes to decarbonization planning, utilities tend to focus heavily on the supply side. But they may be overlooking one of their most powerful tools for managing a cleaner grid — demand flexibility. Demand response and time-varying rates have been in use for decades. But many utilities still haven't fully embraced demand flexibility in their planning. As utilities push toward higher penetrations of renewable energy, the ability to shift demand becomes increasingly vital for maintaining grid stability.  The challenge? It requires a fundamental shift in mindset: from controlling power plants with knobs and dials to empowering customers through smart rate design. "For years and years and decades and decades, the utilities' incentive has been to sell customers more of their product," says Scott Engstrom, chief customer officer at GridX. "But this idea of much more targeted demand flexibility as a requirement to manage a grid dominated by intermittent renewable resources is quite new." In this episode, produced in partnership with GridX, Scott Engstrom talks with Stephen Lacey about why demand flexibility deserves more attention — and how utilities can better harness it as they transition to cleaner energy. Learn more about how GridX delivers detailed analytics for time-of-use rates, helping utilities harness grid flexibility as part of their decarbonization efforts.

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  30:49
• 2025 trends: aerosols, oil demand, and carbon removal

  Out today: Nat Bullard’s 200-page slide deck with data from across the energy transition. Nat is the former chief content officer at BloombergNEF and current co-founder at data insights company Halcyon.  In part one of their two-part conversation, Shayle cherry-picked the most interesting slides and sat down with Nat to unpack them. They cover topics like: Accidental solar geoengineering and the state of aerosols The United States’ record-setting fossil fuels exports Whether Chinese oil demand is peaking Conflicting indicators for the state of ESG investing Whether you can have too many carbon removal startups Recommended resources Catalyst: Putting a halt to geoengineering — by accident Catalyst: 2024 trends: batteries, transferable tax credits, and the cost of capital  Catalyst: 2023 trends: biomass, ESG, batteries and more 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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  35:34
• The climate-ag grab bag

  Here’s a three-part puzzle for global agriculture: How do you increase calories for a growing population, while zeroing out emissions and minimizing land usage? The stakes are enormous. According to the UN, the world has to feed an estimated 9.8 billion people by 2050. But agriculture currently accounts for about a third of global carbon emissions and is driving the conversion of important ecosystems – like rainforest and grasslands – into farmland. Converting land is especially problematic because it releases additional carbon into the atmosphere. So what do we do about it? In this episode, Shayle talks to journalist Mike Grunwald, who recently penned a defense of industrial agriculture in The New York Times. He’s also the author of the upcoming book “We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate.” Shayle and Mike cover topics like: The drawbacks of industrial agriculture, like the overapplication of fertilizer and the mistreatment of animals and employees Why calories per acre need to grow substantially to feed a growing global population Why minimizing land usage through industrial agriculture may cut more emissions than alternative methods of farming like regenerative agriculture Why feed additives are not as important as the land efficiency of beef production Potential solutions, like biofertilizers, cultivated meat, and addressing food waste Why vertical farming requires too much electricity to be viable Recommended resources Simon & Schuster: We Are Eating the Earth: The Race to Fix Our Food System and Save Our Climate The New York Times: Sorry, but This Is the Future of Food Canary Media: Why vertical farming just doesn’t work Reuters: Fertiliser ban decimates Sri Lankan crops as government popularity ebbs Catalyst: Mitigating enteric methane: tech solutions for solving the cow burp problem Catalyst: From biowaste to ‘biogold’ 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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  40:44
• FOAK tales

  First-of-a-kind projects need infrastructure investment, the kind of money that costs less than venture capital and usually comes in the form of deals worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. But infrastructure investors are notoriously conservative and convincing them to bite can be challenging.  So what do infrastructure investors really want? In this episode, Shayle talks to Mario Fernandez, head of Breakthrough Energy’s FOAK finance program. It has worked with companies like Rondo, Form Energy, and Lanzajet to overcome challenges on the path to infrastructure investment. Coincidentally, the program is also called Catalyst (no relation to our show). Mario and Shayle talk about the journey from lab-proven technology to a fully de-risked infrastructure investment, covering topics like: Why investors want to see a path to multiple, repeatable projects Mario’s prescription for a scale-up path: pilot, demo, and FOAK project The difficulty of following that path on a limited financial runway The commercial construct and the tension between negotiating a flexible offtake and securing a customer Developing the right capital stack and accurately estimating capital needs Recommended resources The Green Blueprint: Rondo Energy’s complicated path to building heat batteries CTVC: Venture to Project Finance Duolingo Catalyst: Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets 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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  57:34

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