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Every episode
Catalyst with Shayle Kann
30 episodes
Is now the time for DERs to scale?
Aug 13, 2026 · 42 min
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, a…
Critical Capital: Senator Tillis' case for "all-of-the-above" energy
Aug 11, 2026 · 31 min
This week, we’re presenting an episode of Critical Capital, a new podcast from Crux and Latitude Studios. Energy policy has become increasingly polarized just as the U.S. faces record electricity demand, a rapidly expanding AI economy, and growing competition from China. In this episode, Alfred Johnson speaks with North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis about why the country's biggest energy challenge is the inability to build durable, bipartisan policy that survives changes in political leadershi…
The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
Aug 6, 2026 · 35 min
The race to build AI infrastructure is often framed around the availability of power, chips, and capital. But another critical constraint is becoming impossible to ignore: skilled labor. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Raymond Hawkins, chief customer officer at Compass Datacenters, about why a shortage of qualified electricians has emerged as one of the biggest bottlenecks to data center construction, and how the industry is responding. Hawkins explains that labor shortages ar…
The commercial battery comeback
Jul 30, 2026 · 44 min
Commercial and industrial (C&I) battery storage has long been the missing middle of the energy storage market. It’s been too complex and expensive to scale like residential systems, but too small to compete with utility-scale projects. That may finally be changing. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Tim Hade, senior vice president at Voltus and founder of Brightfield Infrastructure, to discuss why C&I storage has historically struggled, why the economics are shifting dramat…
The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid integration
Jul 23, 2026 · 35 min
Most electric vehicles spend nearly all of their lives parked, doing nothing. But under the hood of those idle cars, a massive store of energy sits untapped. The Kia EV9, for instance, holds a 100-kilowatt-hour battery—which is equivalent to about seven home backup batteries—just waiting to be utilized. Yet despite this enormous potential, Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G) technology has remained mostly limited to small-scale pilot programs for decades. But with advanced tech hitting the market, that could…
When will quantum computing have its breakout moment?
Jul 16, 2026 · 40 min
Over the course of the past decade, quantum computing (or the concept thereof) has ridden hype cycles, just like AI or the internet writ large. In the past year, however, as governments across the globe have committed north of $50 billion to the sector, and billions more have poured into quantum startups, the technology is finding itself in the midst of a particularly dramatic hype wave. Yet even as the money pours in, quantum remains a nascent technology that hasn’t seen any use in…
Inside the AI power wars
Jul 9, 2026 · 44 min
For those steeped in the world of AI development, the major differences between tech giants’ chip strategies are easy enough to see: the speed of Google’s TPUs, the affordability of Amazon’s Trainium, and Nvidia’s market dominance. But those same companies’ respective energy strategies often fly under the radar. As data center buildouts surge across the U.S., the tech industry is hitting a massive wall: a power grid that can’t move fast enough to support them. In this episode, Shayle sits down w…
Inside the most sophisticated plan for solar geoengineering
Jul 1, 2026 · 38 min
One of the biggest challenges with technologies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions is that they require mass adoption. Solar radiation management (SRM) has the opposite problem. By Stardust Solutions’ estimate, dispersing three million tons of reflective particles into the stratosphere could cool the planet by 1.5 degrees Celsius for the relatively small price of $30 billion; that's less than the cost of a single hyperscale data center. Despite concerns about such an endeavor, the company is b…
How data centers are complicating transmission expansion
Jun 25, 2026 · 31 min
Electric transmission development is notoriously difficult, and these days, NIMBYism gets the brunt of the blame. But as data center loads surge and electricity prices climb, there’s a new roadblock – the messy world of multi-state cost allocation. The Mid-Atlantic Resiliency Link (MARL) — a planned 100-mile, $960 million transmission line stretching across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, and Virginia — was approved by PJM in 2022 under standard rules that spread costs across the entire r…
Enter the electric supercycle
Jun 18, 2026 · 36 min
While many energy insiders remain focused on the staggering demand coming from AI and data centers, a much larger and far-reaching shift is happening. We are entering what Energy Impact Partners’ head of research Andy Lubershane calls the "electric supercycle" — a series of interlocking technological flywheels that are accelerating the clean energy transition faster than many may realize. In this episode, Shayle sits down with Andy to map out the interconnected nature of the "electric stack.” Th…
How China is reshaping the global auto market
Jun 11, 2026 · 34 min
In 2020, China exported about a million cars a year. Now, it’s tracking somewhere around twelve million — surpassing the historic peaks of giants like Japan and Germany. Yet this massive global shift feels nearly invisible in the U.S. A 100% tariff on Chinese vehicles, combined with strict rules keeping Chinese hardware and software off American roads, has effectively built a regulatory wall around the domestic market. But in virtually every other corner of the globe, Chinese automakers are dram…
Surprising trends in global electricity generation
Jun 4, 2026 · 44 min
While global electricity demand is unquestionably rising, we may nonetheless be underestimating the scale of necessary future generation. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Nic Fulghum, senior energy and climate data analyst at Ember. Nic is the co-author of Ember’s annual Global Electricity Review. This year’s installment, released in April, demonstrates that renewable sources – and solar in particular – are continuing to grow exponentially, even as those markets mature. In 2025, solar generatio…
Building inference data centers on the high seas
May 28, 2026 · 48 min
Amidst the increasing urgency of powering data centers, a new solution has entered the mix: send them out to sea. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Garth Sheldon-Coulson, co-founder and CEO of Panthalassa. The company is building 85-meter steel "nodes" – taller than Big Ben – that it deploys into the deep ocean. These untethered, self-propelled nodes harness wave energy to power AI clusters, then beam their data back to land via satellite. The technology isn’t without its fair share of logistic…
A blueprint for scalable fusion power
May 21, 2026 · 41 min
For years, the prospect of commercial nuclear fusion felt a long way off. But recent breakthroughs—like Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s historic 2022 net energy gain—have marked a new chapter in the quest for fusion. Proving the physics in a lab, however, is a lot different than building a power plant that can compete on the open grid. Massive hurdles remain across physics, financing, and scaling. In this episode, host Shayle Kann sits down with Carrie von Muench, COO of Pacific Fusion…
Inside the global fertilizer crunch
May 14, 2026 · 36 min
While much of the world has been focused on the war in Iran’s impact on the energy sector, another arguably more impactful market has been largely overlooked: fertilizer. The global fertilizer market is in a precarious spot. Roughly a third of the world's seaborne fertilizer trade goes through the Strait of Hormuz. Even before the war in Iran began, China, the world’s top phosphate producer, halted exports of the crucial compound. As a result, the longer the strait remains closed, the more the t…
Cracking the code on autonomous trucking
May 7, 2026 · 43 min
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 tractor-trailer model we see on the highway every day. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Eyal Cohen, founder and CEO of Humble. The company built its electric trucks from the ground up. Fully cabless, they combine the tractor and trailer into a single platform…
How AI is modernizing EPCs
Apr 30, 2026 · 34 min
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 Hershman, CEO of SOLV Energy, one of the largest solar and storage construction firms in the US. George offers a unique perspective into the state of the market as well as the logistics of building gigawatt-scale projects and insights into how automation is changing…
Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
Apr 23, 2026 · 36 min
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— a figure roughly equivalent to the GDP of Hungary. In this special live episode, recorded at Transition-AI 2026 in San Francisco, Shayle sits down with Amin Vahdat, Google’s chief technologist for AI infrastructure. Amin pulls back the curtain on how the hype…
How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B [re-published]
Apr 16, 2026 · 40 min
[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-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…
The rise of flexible data centers
Apr 9, 2026 · 43 min
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, the industry has embraced a promising solution: data center flexibility. In this episode, Shayle speaks with Varun Sivaram, the CEO of Emerald AI. Coming on the heels of a $25 million investment round led by Energy Impact Partners, Varun returns to the show to…
Frontier Forum: Why clean energy capital boomed in a volatile year [partner content]
Apr 6, 2026 · 34 min
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. Total capital expenditures across the clean economy reached roughly $120 billion, with total financing activity exceeding $200 billion across the full stack of project capital. The transferable tax credit market scaled to about $42 billion, growing rapidly in just…
Building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain
Apr 2, 2026 · 39 min
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 reduce geopolitical dependency in energy, fixing these domestic gaps has become a strategic priority. In this episode — a companion to a separate episode of Catalyst focused on nuclear waste — Shayle Kann speaks with Scott Nolan, the CEO of General Matter. The…
Battery booms and the rise of flexibility [partner content]
Mar 30, 2026 · 31 min
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, Stephen Lacey speaks with Sean McEvoy, chief product officer and head of commercial at GridBeyond North America, about how that cycle is playing out across global power markets — and what happens when batteries stop being scarce. As markets saturate, the source of…
The state and future of nuclear waste
Mar 26, 2026 · 34 min
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 nuclear waste has largely stayed out of the spotlight. The U.S. currently houses 90,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel; as more plants come online, that number could rise dramatically. In this episode, Shayle speaks to Dr. Jen Shafer, a former ARPA-E director and curren…
Scaling America's domestic solar supply chain
Mar 19, 2026 · 40 min
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 public affairs at Qcells and board chair of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) — about the challenges of reshoring solar in the U.S. They cover topics like: How supply chain resilience incentivize reshoring efforts The specific state of polysilicon,…
AI scaling pathways: on grid, on edge, off grid, off planet
Mar 12, 2026 · 43 min
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, senior vice president of research and innovation at Energy Impact Partners. The two colleagues dig into the four main generation solutions — on grid, off grid, on edge, and off planet – and consider the viability of each in the years to come. Shayle and Jake explore…
Frontier Forum: How VPPs earn grid-scale trust [partner content]
Mar 10, 2026 · 35 min
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 fleet of customer devices become reliable enough to function like a power plant? Passing the test means more than just aggregating thermostats or batteries. It means delivering predictable, repeatable performance that utility planners and operators trust enough…
Digging deep for super hot geothermal
Mar 5, 2026 · 36 min
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: dig way deeper. In this episode, Shayle speaks with Carlos Araque, the founder of Quaise Energy. The company has developed millimeter-wave drills to vaporize rock, allowing them to dig up to twelve miles underground in search of water around 800 degrees Fahre…
Volts crossover: Six big energy questions
Feb 25, 2026 · 1 hr 5 min
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 three critical questions they want to see answered in the next decade. From “data center fever” to closed-loop critical mineral economics, Shayle and David take the opportunity to dive deep into a myriad of second-order effects of the clean energy transition. In t…
The rise of grid power electronics with Drew Baglino
Feb 19, 2026 · 50 min
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 demand, a new class of technologies has emerged. In this episode, Drew Baglino, the founder and CEO of Heron Power, returns to the show to discuss his company’s new generation of solid-state transformers, or SSTs. After a 17-year career at Tesla — where he led e…
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