Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Latitude Media

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.

  1. 3 HR AGO

    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 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.  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.

    41 min

  2. 6 DAYS AGO

    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 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. 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.

    37 min

  3. 4 SEPT

    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 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 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 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.

    42 min

  4. 28 AUG

    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 as 98 gigawatts in the U.S —  if those facilities reduced load by just 0.5% each year.   The problem: data centers promise near-perfect reliability, often “five nines” (99.999% uptime) in service-level agreements with customers. That leaves little room to adjust something as critical to reliability as power.  But times are changing. The data center market is reckoning with the constraints of the power grid and growing concern about pushing up electricity prices to pay for new generation. In July, the Electric Power Resource Institute’s DCFlex demonstration at an Oracle data center in Phoenix, Arizona, reduced load 25% during peak demand. And this month Google expanded its demand response through two new agreements with Michigan Power and the Tennessee Valley Authority. So what are the actual mechanics of data center flexibility? In this episode, Shayle talks to Varun Sivaram, founder and CEO of Emerald AI. The startup’s data center flexibility platform powered EPRI’s DCFlex demonstration. Shayle and Varun cover topics like: What people often misunderstand about how much of their nameplate capacity data centers actually use  The distinct load profiles of training, inference, and other workloads How data centers can pause, slow, or shift workloads in time or space to reduce demand What it will take for flexibility solutions like Emerald AI to earn operator trust  How much flexibility data centers can realistically achieve  Varun’s long-term vision for evolving from occasional demand response to weekly or even daily load shifting Resources: Latitude Media: Nvidia and Oracle tapped this startup to flex a Phoenix data center   Latitude Media: Google expands demand response to target machine learning workloads    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. 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.

    36 min

  5. 21 AUG

    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 Blueprint on Terawatt Infrastructure's $1 billion strategy to build charging depots. In 2021, Neha Palmer co-founced Terrawatt Infrastructure with a bold mission: create the backbone for America's electric trucking revolution. Within its first year, Terrawatt secured a billion-dollar investment. But as the company developed plans for a nationwide charging network, it confronted the daunting challenge of building infrastructure for an electric truck market that barely existed.  High-profile bankruptcies like Nikola Motors cast long shadows over the sector's viability, raising questions about whether heavy-duty transport can truly be electrified. In this episode, Lara talks with Neha about how Terrawatt aims to transform freight transport despite market skepticism. Neha explains Terawatt’s strategic approach to site selection, innovative charging designs for fully-loaded trucks, and the vision for a revolutionary California-to-Texas network. Credits: Hosted by Lara Pierpoint. Produced by Erin Hardick. Edited by Anne Bailey and Stephen Lacey. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

    36 min

  6. 14 AUG

    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, especially given the falling price of LFP. Still, sodium-ion chemistries are picking up steam, thanks largely to growing deployments in stationary storage and small-scale mobility in China. So what’s a more bullish take on sodium-ion? In this episode, Shayle talks to Landon Mossburg, founder and CEO of sodium-ion battery manufacturer Peak Energy. He outlines a pathway to competitiveness and argues that, in the right applications, the advantages of sodium-ion chemistries outweigh their challenges. Shayle and Landon cover topics like: Why almost all current deployments of sodium-ion capacity are in China — and why Korean battery giants are committed to LFP right now The thermal advantages of sodium iron pyrophosphate (NFPP) vs. the higher energy densities of layered oxides Sodium-ion's supply chain benefits and lower CapEx requirements How NFPP’s system-level savings in cooling, safety, auxiliary power, and maintenance — plus strong cycle life — could offset its current cell cost premium Resources: Catalyst: The promise and perils of sodium-ion batteries   Latitude Media: Peak Energy’s quest to build US sodium-ion battery dominance   Latitude Media: Is it too late for the US to rival China on sodium-ion batteries?   Nature Energy: Critically assessing sodium-ion technology roadmaps and scenarios for techno-economic competitiveness against lithium-ion batteries   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.

    46 min

  7. 7 AUG

    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 developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure. In this episode, he explains his theory of the ‘Watt-Bit Spread’, which offers insightful heuristics for understanding how data centers are driving change in the power sector. Every data center company is after one thing right now: power. Electricity used to be an afterthought in data center construction, but in the AI arms race access to power has become critical because more electrons means more powerful AI models. But how and when these companies will get those electrons is unclear. Utilities have been inundated with new load requests, and it takes time to build new capacity. Given these uncertainties, how do data center companies make the high-stakes decisions about how much to build? How sustainable is the rate of construction? And how much will these data center companies pay for electricity? In this episode, Shayle talks to Brian Janous, co-founder and chief commercial officer at data center developer Cloverleaf Infrastructure. Brian recently explained how he thinks about these questions in a LinkedIn post titled “The Watt-Bit Spread,” which argues that the value of watts is incredibly high right now, and the cost of those watts is too low. Shayle and Brian cover topics like: The unclear data center demand and high costs that are making data center companies hesitant to build How the skills required for data center development have shifted from real estate and fiber to energy Why higher power prices are needed to incentivize new generation Potential solutions for better pricing electricity and speeding up the construction of new generation Recommended resources Latitude Media: AES exec on data center load: 'It's like nothing we’ve ever seen' Latitude Media: Mapping the data center power demand problem, in three charts Latitude Media: Are we thinking about the data center energy problem in the right ways? Catalyst: Can chip efficiency slow AI's energy demand? Catalyst: Under the hood of data center power demand Sequoia Capital: AI’s $600B Question 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 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.

    42 min

  8. 31 JUL

    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 existing generation to stay online. The big driver of that tight supply? Data-center driven load growth. The independent system operator covers Virginia, one of the densest and fastest-growing regions for data center development. So will higher wholesale prices incentivize enough generation to meet load growth without provoking the public with higher bills?  In this episode, Shayle talks to Steve Piper, research director of North American power and renewables at S&P Global. Steve and Shayle cover topics like: Why Steve says PJM and other stakeholders became concerned that low prices weren’t incentivizing enough generation to stay on the market Why ISOs upping resource adequacy requirements across technologies, while raising targets for reserve margins The bottlenecks slowing down the development of new generation What’s holding back demand response in the auction Resources: Latitude Media: Will Pennsylvania be the nation’s AI-energy model?   PJM: PJM Auction Procures 134,311 MW of Generation Resources; Supply Responds to Price Signal  Utility Dive: PJM capacity prices set another record with 22% jump  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 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.

    32 min
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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.

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