Field notes The Energy Transition for the Rest of Us

Source · Episodes

Catalyst with Shayle Kann

A podcast about energy, climate tech and the electricity system. Usually one long interview, organized around a single question, with a host who pushes back.

Hosted by
Shayle Kann
Published by
Latitude Media
Notes
125
Span
Nov 2022 – Sep 2026
Reading
~255,000 words

2026 35

  1. 17 Sep 2026 Fuel cells, geopolitics, and the solar growth curve with No outside guest; producer Max Savage Levenson interviews host Shayle Kann, early-stage investor, Energy Impact Partners Looking back at 2026 so far and forward to what comes next, what has surprised Shayle Kann, and what is he watching?
  2. 10 Sep 2026 Do data centers really increase electricity prices? with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Are data centers making your electricity bill go up?
  3. 3 Sep 2026 What comes after the data center backlash? with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Cloverleaf Infrastructure Is the backlash against data centers something developers can actually fix, and if it is not, where does the buildout go instead?
  4. 27 Aug 2026 The rise of metal fuels with Richard Wang, co-founder and CEO, Voya Energy Diesel generators are universally disliked and nobody has managed to replace them. Could aluminum do it?
  5. 20 Aug 2026 Can AI revolutionize grid operations? with Josh Wong, CEO and founder, ThinkLabs AI What actually happens inside a utility’s planning and operations functions, and where could AI change it?
  6. 6 Aug 2026 The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom with Raymond Hawkins, chief customer officer, Compass Datacenters How much is the shortage of electricians actually holding back data center construction, and what can anyone do about it?
  7. 30 Jul 2026 Why C&I storage is finally taking off with Tim Hade, senior vice president, Voltus; previously co-founder and CEO, Brightfield Infrastructure Commercial and industrial storage, meaning batteries installed at a business’s own site, has never gone anywhere. Is that actually changing, and why would this time be different?
  8. 23 Jul 2026 The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid integration with Steve Letendre, senior advisor, Vehicle-Grid Integration Council; founder and editor, V2Gnews.com Bidirectional cars and chargers finally exist, so if the parked battery in the garage still does not show up on the grid, what is actually holding it back?
  9. 16 Jul 2026 When will quantum computing have its breakout moment? with Bob Sorensen, chief analyst for quantum computing, Hyperion Research How close is quantum computing to being genuinely useful, and what exactly does useful look like?
  10. 9 Jul 2026 Inside the AI power wars with Jeremie Eliahou Ontiveros, leads infrastructure and power research, SemiAnalysis Everyone can describe how the AI companies differ on chips. How do they differ on power?
  11. 1 Jul 2026 Inside the most sophisticated plan for solar geoengineering with Yanai Yedvab, CEO and co-founder, Stardust If cooling the whole planet costs about what one hyperscale data center costs, what would make it safe enough to consider, and who decides whether it happens?
  12. 25 Jun 2026 How data centers are complicating transmission expansion with Maeve Allsup, senior reporter, Latitude Media Why is a transmission line that the AI boom made more necessary getting harder to build because of the AI boom?
  13. 18 Jun 2026 Enter the electric supercycle with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Electricity demand is surging while everything needed to supply it is scarce and expensive. Is that a temporary crunch, or the start of a long expansion, and what would stop it?
  14. 11 Jun 2026 How China is reshaping the global auto market with Michael Dunne, CEO, Dunne Insights China now exports more cars than any country ever has, to everywhere except the United States. What is actually driving that, and is the American wall real protection or just delay?
  15. 4 Jun 2026 Surprising trends in global electricity generation with Nic Fulghum, senior energy and climate data analyst, Ember, and co-author of the Global Electricity Review What actually happened to global electricity generation in 2025, and where does the data contradict the story people are telling about it?
  16. 28 May 2026 Building inference data centers on the high seas with Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO, Panthalassa Could you power AI compute by putting the generator and the servers together on untethered steel structures bobbing in the deep ocean, and would it pencil?
  17. 21 May 2026 A blueprint for scalable fusion power with Carrie von Muench, founding chief operating officer, Pacific Fusion After the 2022 ignition result, where is fusion actually standing on the road to a power plant that competes on cost, and which milestone should you watch next?
  18. 14 May 2026 Inside the global fertilizer crunch with Josh Linville, vice president of fertilizer, StoneX The Strait of Hormuz has been shut for about ten weeks. What is that doing to the global fertilizer market, and when does it turn into a food problem?
  19. 7 May 2026 Has Humble Robotics cracked the code on autonomous trucking? with Eyal Cohen, founder and CEO, Humble Robotics Why is there still no Waymo of trucking ten years in, and does starting from a clean sheet, both the vehicle and the software, change the answer?
  20. 30 Apr 2026 How AI is modernizing EPCs with George Hershman, CEO, SOLV Energy What actually limits how fast a large solar and storage contractor can put projects in the ground, and where does AI change that?
  21. 23 Apr 2026 Live from Transition-AI 2026: Inside Google’s massive AI capex with Amin Vahdat, chief technologist for AI infrastructure, Google As AI shifts from training models to serving them, does that change the size, the reliability and the power profile of what Google builds with the $175 to $185 billion of capital expenditure it has planned for this year?
  22. 9 Apr 2026 The rise of flexible data centers with Varun Sivaram, CEO, Emerald AI Almost everyone now agrees data centers should be flexible grid assets. What is actually stopping it from happening at scale?
  23. 2 Apr 2026 Building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain with Scott Nolan, founder and CEO, General Matter If the US is going to build a lot of nuclear, where is its fuel supply chain actually broken, and can the broken part be rebuilt in time?
  24. 26 Mar 2026 The state and future of nuclear waste with Jen Shafer, professor in the nuclear science and engineering program, Colorado School of Mines What is US nuclear waste actually made of, what is happening to it, and does a new wave of reactors change the problem?
  25. 19 Mar 2026 Scaling America’s domestic solar supply chain with Scott Moskowitz, VP of market strategy and public affairs, Qcells; board chair, Solar Energy Industries Association The US has reshored solar module assembly. Can it build the rest of the supply chain, and what is actually stopping it?
  26. 12 Mar 2026 AI scaling pathways: On grid, on edge, off grid, off planet with Jake Elder, senior vice president of research and innovation, Energy Impact Partners If demand for compute keeps climbing, which ways of siting and powering data centers can actually scale: large grid-connected sites, small sites at the edge, off-grid sites, or data centers in orbit?
  27. 5 Mar 2026 Digging deep for super hot geothermal with Carlos Araque, CEO and founder, Quaise Energy Geothermal works only where heat sits near the surface. If you drill deep enough to find much hotter rock, can you actually reach it, get the heat out, and do it cheaply?
  28. 25 Feb 2026 Volts crossover: Six big energy questions with David Roberts, host of the Volts podcast (co-hosted episode; both speakers pose and answer questions) What are the big open questions in energy and climate that we might actually get an answer to within the next five to ten years?
  29. 19 Feb 2026 The rise of grid power electronics with Drew Baglino with Drew Baglino, founder and CEO, Heron Power What changes if the grid’s transformers stop being passive lumps of steel and become controllable power electronics, and why is that finally possible now?
  30. 12 Feb 2026 PJM and ERCOT are navigating a capacity rollercoaster with Paul Segal, CEO, LS Power What is actually happening in the two most-watched US power markets, and is either one getting the capacity it needs in time?
  31. 29 Jan 2026 The rise of permissionless DERs with James McGinniss, co-founder and CEO, David Energy What are “permissionless” distributed energy resources, and can batteries small enough to plug into a wall outlet ever add up to enough capacity to matter?
  32. 22 Jan 2026 More 2026 trends: Solar costs, oil oversupply, and the startup slump with Nat Bullard, climate tech analyst and writer; co-founder, Halcyon Once you step away from data centers, what do the data actually say about where energy and decarbonization stood going into 2026?
  33. 15 Jan 2026 2026 trends: Gas turbines, Texas’ load queue, and China electrifies with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon; energy and climate analyst and writer There isn’t one. This is the annual walk through Bullard’s 200-slide data deck, part one of two, with Kann picking favorite slides rather than building a thesis. The loose through-line: how much new demand is coming, and is anyone positioned to serve it?
  34. 8 Jan 2026 The VC case for ‘full stack deeptech’ with Ian Rountree, founder and partner, Cantos Which hard technology startups are actually investable at venture pace, and which ones are structurally set up to fail no matter how good the technology is?
  35. 2 Jan 2026 How AI is changing weather forecasting with Peter Battaglia, senior director of research, Google DeepMind sustainability program Everyone assumes AI will improve weather forecasting. Through what mechanism, exactly, and what would better forecasts actually unlock?

2025 46

  1. 18 Dec 2025 Will inference move to the edge? with Dr. Ben Lee, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, University of Pennsylvania; visiting researcher, Google How much AI inference will move out of giant centralized data centers into smaller local ones or onto personal devices, and what would that do to the energy picture?
  2. 11 Dec 2025 Can AI revolutionize EPC? with Alex Modon, co-founder and CEO, Unlimited Industries Big capital projects are chronically late and over budget. Can AI change that, and is engineering even where the leverage is?
  3. 4 Dec 2025 Who benefits from the AI power bottleneck? with Shanu Mathew, senior vice president and portfolio manager-analyst for US sustainable equity, Lazard Everyone in the AI and energy business says power is the bottleneck. Whose interests does that story serve, and how should you discount what you hear?
  4. 20 Nov 2025 Looking for a turnaround in transmission with Rob Gramlich, founder and president, Grid Strategies A year after a bleak assessment of US transmission, has anything actually turned around?
  5. 13 Nov 2025 Driving down the cost of green hydrogen with Raffi Garabedian, co-founder and CEO, Electric Hydrogen Green hydrogen’s hype cycle collapsed because the stuff cost far too much. What would actually make it cheap enough to beat the fossil-derived molecule it is supposed to replace?
  6. 6 Nov 2025 Inside a $300 million bet on AI for physical R&D with Ekin Dogus Cubuk, co-founder, Periodic Labs; formerly Google DeepMind A year ago Cubuk was sober about using AI for materials discovery. What changed enough in twelve months to justify leaving Google DeepMind and raising $300 million to do it?
  7. 30 Oct 2025 Unpacking DOE’s proposal to transform data center interconnection with Allison Clements, FERC commissioner 2020-2024, now partner at ASG and principal of 804 Advisory; and Tyler Norris, doctoral student, Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment The US Secretary of Energy has told federal regulators to rewrite how large electricity loads connect to the grid. What does the proposal actually do, and would it work?
  8. 23 Oct 2025 Five big questions about the future of energy with Andy Lubershane, head of research and partner, Energy Impact Partners Five separate questions about where the AI-driven electricity boom goes next: when could today’s shortage turn into a glut, who wins and loses from it, and what should we expect from nuclear, enhanced geothermal and grid-enhancing technologies?
  9. 16 Oct 2025 Calibrating hype with Akshat Rathi with Akshat Rathi, senior reporter for climate, Bloomberg News, and host of the Zero podcast Which of the energy transition’s hot topics are overhyped, which are underhyped, and how would you tell the difference?
  10. 9 Oct 2025 How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B with Zach Dell, co-founder and CEO, Base Power Base Power just raised a billion dollars to put large batteries on houses and sell the electricity. Can a fleet of residential batteries really land a megawatt on the grid more cheaply than a utility-scale project?
  11. 2 Oct 2025 The new wave of DERs with Dana Guernsey, co-founder and CEO, Voltus How did demand response get from emergency phone calls to an everyday grid resource, and what can it now do about load growth?
  12. 25 Sep 2025 Ag residue and carbon removal with Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and CEO, Charm Industrial Crop residue is abundant, expensive to collect and a poor fuel. What is it actually good for, and what would it take to get it off the field economically?
  13. 18 Sep 2025 Is now the time for DERs to scale? with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Distributed energy resources were hyped a decade ago and mostly did not happen. Is this time actually different?
  14. 12 Sep 2025 When to colocate data centers with generation with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Cloverleaf Infrastructure When does it actually make sense to build generation on site at a data center, and when has the idea simply become fashionable?
  15. 4 Sep 2025 AMA: Geoengineering, nuclear, power prices, and more with Lara Pierpoint, managing director, Trellis Climate at Prime, and host of The Green Blueprint Listener questions put to two climate investors: what do they actually think about solar geoengineering, electricity prices, nuclear, the climate tech cycle, vehicle-to-grid and plastics?
  16. 28 Aug 2025 The mechanics of data center flexibility with Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO, Emerald AI What does it actually take to make an AI data center flexible, and how much flexibility is really there?
  17. 14 Aug 2025 The case for sodium-ion with Landon Mossburg, founder and CEO, Peak Energy Sodium-ion cells still cost more per kilowatt-hour than the lithium chemistry that dominates grid storage. So what is the bullish case for building grid batteries out of them?
  18. 31 Jul 2025 PJM and the capacity crunch with Steve Piper, research director for North American power and renewables, S&P Global PJM’s capacity auction cleared at a record again. What does that say about whether enough generation gets built, and about what consumers will pay?
  19. 24 Jul 2025 Repurposing EV batteries for grid storage with Colin Campbell, chief technology officer, Redwood Materials When is it better to put a worn-out electric vehicle battery back on the grid than to shred it for the materials inside it?
  20. 17 Jul 2025 Five big questions emerging from the OBBB with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners The One Big Beautiful Bill has passed and rewrites much of the Inflation Reduction Act. What are the open questions it leaves, sector by sector?
  21. 10 Jul 2025 Tumult in residential solar with Julien Dumoulin-Smith, head of power, utilities and clean energy equity research, Jefferies The One Big Beautiful Bill phases out residential solar’s tax credits. What does that do to an industry that was already in serious trouble before it passed?
  22. 3 Jul 2025 Fresh intel from state utility regulatory filings with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon What do state utility regulatory filings actually reveal right now about how utilities are absorbing data center load, and about where costs are heading?
  23. 26 Jun 2025 GM’s big new battery tech push with Kurt Kelty, vice president of battery, propulsion and sustainability, General Motors General Motors says a manganese-rich cathode chemistry it calls LMR will give it close to high-nickel driving range at lithium iron phosphate cost. What is it, and why should anyone treat this announcement differently from every other battery announcement?
  24. 19 Jun 2025 The story of steam with Addison Stark, co-founder and chief executive (he prefers chief boiler maker), AtmosZero What actually decarbonizes industrial steam, and why has the obvious-looking answer, harvesting waste heat, never worked?
  25. 12 Jun 2025 The state of play of data center development with Chris Sharp, chief technology officer, Digital Realty Is the AI buildout spreading data centers out to wherever cheap power happens to be, or concentrating them further into the regions that are already full?
  26. 5 Jun 2025 The gas turbine crunch with Anthony (Tony) Brough, president, Dora Partners Gas turbines are suddenly impossible to get and increasingly expensive. What is actually causing the bottleneck?
  27. 29 May 2025 How geothermal gets built with Carl Hoiland, co-founder and CEO, Zanskar What does it actually take to find and develop a geothermal project, and why is the process finally getting faster?
  28. 22 May 2025 What to make of Trump’s deep-sea minerals push with Hans Smit, president and CEO, Ocean Minerals What does the Trump administration’s executive order on deep-sea mining actually change?
  29. 8 May 2025 The US nuclear groundswell with Chris Colbert, co-founder and CEO, Elementl Power The US nuclear market is clearly stirring again. Does a groundswell like this one turn into an actual wave, or into another 2007-style mirage?
  30. 1 May 2025 Catalyst Live at SF Climate Week with Nick Chaset, chief executive, Octopus Energy US; Mike Schroepfer, founder and partner, Gigascale Capital (former chief technology officer of Meta) What is climate tech over-hyping and under-hyping right now, and why does Kann think consumer products account for so many of its few big wins?
  31. 24 Apr 2025 The geopolitics of rare earth elements with Ahmad Ghahreman, co-founder and CEO, Cyclic Materials China controls the rare earth supply chain more completely than any other critical mineral, and has started using that control as leverage. Can a supply chain be built outside it?
  32. 17 Apr 2025 Serving data center load with carbon capture with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist, Carbon Direct Hyperscalers are driving a large gas buildout while holding real decarbonization commitments. Can carbon capture square that circle, or is “capture ready” the same empty promise “hydrogen ready” turned out to be?
  33. 4 Apr 2025 Specialized AI brains for physical industry with Sam Smith-Eppsteiner, partner, Innovation Endeavors Do physical industries need their own specialized AI products, or will the big general-purpose models eventually get good enough to do the job?
  34. 27 Mar 2025 The potential for flexible data centers | Catalyst with Tyler Norris, PhD candidate, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University How much additional data center load could the existing US grid absorb if that load agreed to be a little bit flexible?
  35. 20 Mar 2025 The coming robotics wave with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Robots are not new and neither is the labor shortage, so why has robotics suddenly become interesting in energy and climate, and where would it matter most?
  36. 13 Mar 2025 An ode to electrochemistry with Yet-Ming Chiang, professor of materials science and engineering, MIT, and co-founder of Form Energy, Sublime Systems and other electrochemistry companies What is electrochemistry actually good at, and how do you tell which industrial problems are worth pointing it at?
  37. 6 Mar 2025 A skeptic’s take on AI electricity load growth with Jonathan Koomey, founder and president, Koomey Analytics How much electricity will AI data centers actually use, and how much weight should anyone put on the forecasts saying the answer is enormous?
  38. 27 Feb 2025 Cultivated meat industry faces ‘trough of disillusionment’ with Isha Datar, executive director, New Harvest A decade of venture-funded companies later, why is there still no cultivated meat on the shelf, and what would actually change that?
  39. 20 Feb 2025 The promise and perils of sodium-ion batteries with Adrian Yao, founder of the STEER battery research program at Stanford; board member and former co-founder and chief technology officer of the lithium-ion manufacturer EnPower What would it actually take for sodium-ion batteries to beat lithium-ion on cost?
  40. 13 Feb 2025 The case for colocating data centers and generation with Sheldon Kimber, founder and CEO, Intersect Power Why build generation on a data center’s own site instead of connecting the data center to the grid, and does that logic run all the way to going off grid?
  41. 6 Feb 2025 Catalyst: 2025 Climate Tech Trends with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon; former chief content officer, BloombergNEF Entering 2025, what do the underlying data actually show about where energy and climate stand, and does a sudden jump in AI model efficiency break the load-growth story?
  42. 30 Jan 2025 2025 trends: aerosols, oil demand, and carbon removal with Nat Bullard, co-founder, Halcyon (an AI company), and former chief content officer, Bloomberg New Energy Finance What do the data actually say about where energy and climate stood entering 2025?
  43. 23 Jan 2025 The climate-ag grab bag with Mike Grunwald, journalist and author of the forthcoming book ‘We Are Eating the Earth’ Food and land are about a third of global emissions and are on track to consume far more land by 2050. What actually fixes that?
  44. 16 Jan 2025 FOAK tales with Mario Fernandez, head of Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, Breakthrough Energy What does it actually take to get a first-of-a-kind climate project financed, and why is that still the hardest step?
  45. 9 Jan 2025 Making DERs work for load growth with Pier LaFarge, co-founder and CEO, Sparkfund Load growth is being answered almost entirely with big centralized projects. Can distributed energy carry a real share of it, and how would a utility actually buy it?
  46. 6 Jan 2025 Lithium’s wild ride with Ernest Scheyder, senior correspondent, Reuters, and author of The War Below Lithium prices rose steeply and then crashed. What actually caused each half of that, and what decides where the market goes next?

2024 33

  1. 19 Dec 2024 Scaling low-carbon products with book and claim systems with Adam Klauber, vice president of sustainability and digital supply chain, World Energy Low-carbon fuels and materials get made where the inputs are cheapest, and the buyers willing to pay a premium are somewhere else. Can book and claim bridge that gap without repeating the mistakes of renewable energy credits?
  2. 12 Dec 2024 What happened at Northvolt? with Sam Jaffe, principal, 1019 Technologies Northvolt raised more money than almost any private company in Europe to become its homegrown answer to the Asian battery giants, then filed for bankruptcy. What actually went wrong, and what is the right lesson to draw?
  3. 5 Dec 2024 Explaining the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’ with Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer, Cloverleaf Infrastructure; previously vice president of energy at Microsoft Why can data centers not get power, when the companies that want it are willing to pay almost anything for it?
  4. 2 Dec 2024 From biowaste to ‘biogold’ with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist, Carbon Direct There is only so much biomass, and every use of it competes with every other use. What should we actually do with it?
  5. 21 Nov 2024 TEA breakdown: green ammonia and synthetic methane with Greg Thiel, managing director of technology, and Melissa Ball, associate director of technology, Energy Impact Partners What would actually have to change for green ammonia and synthetic methane to be made at a cost anyone would pay?
  6. 22 Oct 2024 Inside Crusoe’s energy-first approach to data centers with Chase Lochmiller, co-founder and CEO, Crusoe If you site computing around energy instead of siting energy around computing, what changes?
  7. 10 Oct 2024 Unpacking China’s cheap battery costs with James Frith, principal, Volta Energy Technologies How much cheaper is it really to manufacture battery cells in China than in the West, and what actually explains the gap?
  8. 3 Oct 2024 DAC’s bumpy road to commercial scale with Andreas Aepli, chief financial officer, Climeworks The first commercial direct air capture plants are running. What does it actually take to get from there to commercial scale, and what has the one company that has done it learned along the way?
  9. 19 Sep 2024 Can AI revolutionize materials discovery? with Ekin Dogus Cubuk, research scientist working on materials discovery, Google DeepMind Is materials discovery the killer application for artificial intelligence in climate tech, or is it much harder than it looks?
  10. 12 Sep 2024 The better mousetrap fallacy with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Which parts of climate tech still need a technology breakthrough, and which ones only need someone to build a lot more of what already works?
  11. 5 Sep 2024 The rise of climate adaptation tech with Katie MacDonald, co-founder and managing partner, Tailwind Climate Is climate adaptation a definable investment category in its own right, or does it expand until it means everything and therefore nothing?
  12. 29 Aug 2024 Why are we still flaring gas? with Tomás de Oliveira Bredariol, energy and environmental policy analyst focused on methane, International Energy Agency (IEA) Natural gas is one of the most heavily traded commodities on earth, so why do oil producers still burn about 150 billion cubic meters of it a year at the wellhead instead of selling it?
  13. 23 Aug 2024 Hunting for geologic hydrogen with Pete Johnson, CEO and co-founder, Koloma Hydrogen forms naturally underground all over the world. Can we drill for it the way we drill for oil and gas, and is there any public evidence yet that a tappable resource exists?
  14. 15 Aug 2024 The cost of nuclear with Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director, Good Energy Collective Why does a nuclear reactor cost roughly four times as much to build in the United States as in South Korea, and what would actually make American nuclear cheap?
  15. 9 Aug 2024 Understanding the transmission bottleneck with Rob Gramlich, founder and president, Grid Strategies The United States has nearly stopped building transmission at exactly the moment it needs far more of it. What is actually blocking it, and is it fixable?
  16. 12 Jul 2024 Decarbonizing the high seas with Lynn Loo, CEO, Global Centre for Maritime Decarbonisation What will ocean-going ships burn instead of fuel oil, and why has shipping not converged on a single answer the way aviation has?
  17. 27 Jun 2024 Going deep on next-gen geothermal with Roland Horne, professor of earth sciences and head of the geothermal program, Stanford University Of the next-generation geothermal approaches now nearing market, which are actually ready to scale, and what would it take for geothermal to work outside the few places it works today?
  18. 20 Jun 2024 Demystifying the Chinese EV market with TP Huang, pseudonymous writer covering Chinese electric vehicles, clean energy and technology on Substack What is actually going on inside China’s electric vehicle market: what drove the sudden acceleration, who is winning, and is the export threat the one Western tariffs are aimed at?
  19. 13 Jun 2024 Under the hood of data center power demand with Brian Janous, co-founder, Cloverleaf Infrastructure; former vice president of energy, Microsoft Granting that AI will pull a large amount of new load onto the grid, how do we actually serve it, and what does serving it do to the grid and to the tech companies’ climate commitments?
  20. 30 May 2024 Heavy duty decarbonization with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Batteries cannot move the biggest, heaviest things. So what fuels the trucks, ships and planes, and what actually decides the answer?
  21. 2 May 2024 CO2 utilization with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist, Carbon Direct If we end up capturing billions of tons of carbon dioxide a year, what should we actually do with it?
  22. 26 Apr 2024 Building a supply chain for rare earth elements with Ahmad Ghahreman, CEO and co-founder, Cyclic Materials What would it actually take to build a rare earth element supply chain outside China?
  23. 4 Apr 2024 Understanding the growing world of battery recycling with Dan Steingart, chair of the earth and environmental engineering department, Columbia University Battery recycling is technically well understood, so why is it such a hard business, and what would a recycler have to do to make it work?
  24. 28 Mar 2024 The electricity gauntlet has arrived with Andy Lubershane, partner and head of research, Energy Impact Partners Everyone has suddenly woken up to the fact that electricity demand is outrunning our ability to supply it. Now that the problem is mainstream, what actually happens next, and is the alarm overdone?
  25. 14 Mar 2024 Climate tech’s tough year in the public markets with Shanu Mathew, portfolio manager and research analyst, Lazard Almost every climate tech market kept growing through 2023, so why did climate tech stocks fall so far behind the broader market?
  26. 8 Mar 2024 Will AI deliver the promise of a digital grid? with David Groarke, managing director, Indigo Advisory Group The last wave of smart grid investment did not deliver what it promised. Is the current wave of AI in the power sector any different?
  27. 6 Mar 2024 Shopify’s head of sustainability on the realities of carbon removal with Stacy Kauk, head of sustainability, Shopify What does it look like to be one of the first corporate buyers of durable carbon removal, and what does three and a half years of it teach you?
  28. 26 Feb 2024 Understanding the electric transformer shortage with Tim Mills, CEO, ERMCO Why did lead times for distribution transformers stay at one to two years long after the rest of the post-COVID supply chains cleared?
  29. 13 Feb 2024 2024 trends: batteries, tax credits, and the cost of capital with Nat Bullard, independent climate tech analyst and writer, formerly chief content officer at BloombergNEF What do the 2023 data actually say about how decarbonization is going, and where have the binding constraints moved?
  30. 1 Feb 2024 What’s really happening in the US EV market? with Corey Cantor, senior associate and EV analyst, BloombergNEF Mainstream coverage says the US electric vehicle market is losing momentum while sales are growing fast. Which is it, and what is actually going on?
  31. 29 Jan 2024 Tech solutions for solving the cow burp problem with Charles Brooke, program manager for enteric methane, Spark Climate Solutions Can technology actually stop cows from burping methane, and how much of the problem can it realistically reach?
  32. 23 Jan 2024 The pitfalls of sourcing biomass for carbon removal with Dr. Bodie Cabiyo, senior forest scientist, Carbon Direct If we are going to use plants to pull carbon out of the atmosphere, where should the biomass come from, and how would anyone know whether a given batch is actually doing good?
  33. 11 Jan 2024 2023 climate tech venture investment trends with Kim Zou, co-founder and CEO, Sightline Climate Climate tech venture funding fell about 30% in 2023. What did that drop actually measure?

2023 9

  1. 21 Dec 2023 Financing first-of-a-kind climate assets with David Yeh, climatetech investor and debt provider, most recently CIBC; previously the White House, the DOE Loan Programs Office and Generation Investment Management Why is financing the first commercial plant for a new climate technology so hard, and how do the ones that get built actually get paid for?
  2. 14 Dec 2023 What do you do with a 100-hour battery? with Mateo Jaramillo, co-founder and CEO, Form Energy What do you actually do with a 100-hour battery on the grid, and is there a use for one now rather than only in a far more renewable future?
  3. 7 Dec 2023 Update: What the new Treasury rules mean for EV supply chains with Sam Jaffe, senior director of business development, Addionics Now that Treasury has defined what counts as a “foreign entity of concern,” can an electric vehicle built on today’s battery supply chain still qualify for the $7,500 tax credit?
  4. 30 Nov 2023 EV charging on both sides of the pond with Nick Woolley, co-founder and CEO, ev.energy Europe adopted electric vehicles earlier than the United States. Does that make it a window into America’s charging future, and what can each side learn from the other?
  5. 16 Nov 2023 The cost of nuclear with Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director, Good Energy Collective Building a reactor in South Korea costs about a quarter what it costs in the United States. Why, and what would actually make American nuclear cheap?
  6. 27 Oct 2023 The market for microgrids with Tim Hade, co-founder and chief development officer, Scale Microgrids The tailwinds behind microgrids have been building for years. Is the market actually inflecting, and if not, what is holding it back?
  7. 12 Oct 2023 How has US industrial policy impacted climatetech investment? with Trevor Houser, partner, Rhodium Group A year after the Inflation Reduction Act, has US industrial policy actually moved money into clean energy, or is it still mostly announcements?
  8. 5 Oct 2023 Climatetech startups need strong techno-economic analysis with Dr. Greg Thiel, director of technology, and Dr. Melissa Ball, associate director of technology, Energy Impact Partners What is a techno-economic analysis actually for at an early-stage hard technology company, and what do people most often get wrong when they build one?
  9. 10 Aug 2023 Beaming 24/7 solar from space with Sanjay Vijendran, lead for the Solaris initiative on space-based solar power, European Space Agency Is beaming solar power down from orbit a serious energy option, or is it still science fiction?

2022 2

  1. 8 Dec 2022 Solving the conundrum of industrial heat with John O’Donnell, co-founder and CEO, Rondo Energy Industrial heat is about a quarter of global emissions, factories need it around the clock, and energy can be more than half their cost of production. How do you decarbonize it?
  2. 17 Nov 2022 Fixing cement’s carbon problem with Leah Ellis, co-founder and CEO, Sublime Systems Cement releases carbon dioxide twice over, once from the fuel and once from the rock itself. Which of the proposed fixes actually gets both to zero?