Catalyst with Shayle Kann

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...

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 th...

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,...

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...

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 arou...

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 parti...

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...

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...

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, halte...

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 t...

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 wel...

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 Va...

[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...

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...

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 proje...

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 Cat...

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 p...

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...

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 topic...

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 edg...

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 me...

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 r...

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...

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 n...

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, and the economics of energy generation have only become more tenuous.  In this episode, Shayle Kann talks to Paul Segal, the CEO of LS Power. A major player in t...