Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Everything, everywhere, all at once—that’s the state of the U.S. solar industry right now.Suppliers are rushing to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act’s generous domestic-manufacturing incentives. Major manufacturers like First Solar and Enel have announced billion dollar investments in places like Tulsa, Oklahoma and Lawrence County, Alabama.But tariffs on the import of some Chinese-made parts may resume at the end of 2024; and the industry still faces supply chain shortages and permitting backlogs.Meanwhile, the stakes are high. To reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, the U.S. needs to install 100 gigawatts of solar per year by 2030, according to a report from the REPEAT Project of Princeton’s ZERO Lab, up from about 30 gigawatts this year. Is that achievable in this chaotic environment? In this episode, Shayle talks about the state of the U.S. solar industry with Ethan Zindler, head of Americas at BloombergNEF. They cover topics like: Generous manufacturing incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act  Conditions to qualify for the incentives, such as meeting prevailing wages, building in “energy communities,” and sourcing domestic content The saga of solar tariffs Looming competition from manufacturers in Southeast Asia How supply chain bottlenecks have eased up Recommended Resources: Canary: Can the US manufacture enough solar panels to meet its surging demand? Canary: In Biden solar tariff compromise, installers win Princeton ZERO Lab’s REPEAT Project: Preliminary Report: The Climate and Energy Impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

The list of potential uses for AI in climatetech is growing fast: developing better materials, optimizing solar farms, integrating renewables and microgrids. But many of these are still theoretical. We wanted to find a real-world application that changed the way we make climatetech.So we decided to come up with our own test run.Back in March Duncan Campbell, vice president at Scale Microgrids, used ChatGPT to code some battery dispatch software and tweeted about his experience. Duncan isn’t a professional software developer, but he still came up with some promising results. Could a non-coder like Duncan use AI to do the work of several climatetech coders?We invited Duncan to do it again and ramped up the challenge. We recruited Seyed Madaeni, CEO and co-founder of Verse to create a challenge for Duncan. Seyed is an expert in AI and the software used in electricity markets. He routinely sends “problem statements” to his team of software developers to create new software. This time, he sent a problem statement to Duncan that reflects real world conditions, one that we might actually assign to real engineers to solve.The challenge? Develop battery dispatch software using ChatGPT. In this episode, Duncan presents his results to Shayle and Seyed. They talk about things like: The different methods of optimizing battery dispatch, from old-school Excel sheets to more sophisticated software written by coders Seyed’s process of assigning a problem statement to his engineering team and the simplified version he sent to Duncan Duncan’s process of iteratively working with ChatGPT-4 to develop and debug the code  Why working with ChatGPT is like working with a bunch of really fast, but really inexperienced junior coders If you want to see the code that Duncan wrote with ChatGPT, click here.  Watch the conversation on YouTube.Recommended Resources: Carbon Copy Live: How AI could supercharge climatetech The Wall Street Journal: Why AI Is the Next Big Bet for Climate Tech Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Voluntary carbon credits are a lot like used cars; you really have no idea what their quality might be. Or maybe they’re more like expensive bottles of wine. Most people (or at least Shayle) can’t tell if they’re buying good quality wine. If it’s expensive, it must be good, right?That’s the logic that has plagued voluntary carbon markets for years. A carbon credit can work in two ways. First, it can avoid 1 metric ton of emissions that would have otherwise happened by, for example, preventing deforestation. Alternatively, a credit can directly remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere through methods like direct air capture or biochar.But widespread reporting reveals that most credits don’t do what they say they do. Just this month the CEO of the world’s leading certifier stepped down after an analysis by The Guardian found that over 90% of rainforest carbon credits were worthless. In May, a new $1 billion California lawsuit alleged that the credits that Delta relied on for its claim of reaching carbon neutrality claims were bogus.Carbon credits are in crisis at the same moment we need to massively scale up carbon credits to meet net zero goals. So what do we do about these quality problems? In this episode, Shayle talks to Allister Furey, co-founder and CEO of Sylvera, a company that rates the quality of credits, akin to what agencies like Moody’s or Standard & Poor’s do for bonds.Shayle and Allister cover topics like: The history of the first voluntary carbon markets and their early problems, like producing fluorocarbons just to destroy them The state of the current market, including its size, segments and prices The wide gulf in price between the cheapest avoidance credits and the most ambitious engineered removal credits  Why Allister thinks we need to be on a “war footing” to reach to the highly ambitious carbon removal targets to meet net zero, such as growing the market from $2 billion to $1 trillion by 2050 Why high prices do not necessarily mean high quality  Recommended Resources: The Guardian: Revealed: more than 90% of rainforest carbon offsets by biggest certifier are worthless, analysis shows The Guardian: Delta Air Lines faces lawsuit over $1bn carbon neutrality claim Sylvera: Sylvera response to The Guardian’s Analysis of Rainforest Offsets Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Are you a utility or climatetech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston, on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

The energy transition is fueling skyrocketing demand for copper, an essential metal for renewables, batteries, and other climatetech.But supply isn’t keeping up. There’s more than enough copper in the earth’s known reserves to supply our growing demand for the metal, but supply is stagnating due to rising extraction costs and decades-long lead times to open new mines.A July 2022 report from S&P Global predicts that demand could begin to exceed supply in just a few years.. Without action, a growing supply gap could last into the 2050s, hampering the speed and scale of the transition.What can we do about it?In this episode, Shayle talks to Cristóbal Undurraga, the CEO of copper mining technology company Ceibo. They talk about the causes of stagnating supply and the technologies that could help increase production. They cover topics like: Energy usage and carbon emissions in copper supply chains The limitations of scrap recycling to meet growing demand The geopolitics of copper supply chains, including China’s major role in smelting The pros and cons of the two major copper extraction methods – concentration and electrolysis The two major types of ore – copper oxides and copper sulfides, and why one is so much harder to mine The long lead times to build new mines and why constructing new ones isn’t easy Ceibo’s approach to increase mine capacity using novel electrolysis technology for copper sulfides Recommended Resources: S&P Global: The Future of Copper The Economist: Copper is the missing ingredient of the energy transition Bloomberg: The Green Energy Transition Has a Chilean Copper Problem Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Are you a utility or climatetech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston, on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20.On the Catalyst with Shayle Kann podcast this week:The good news: the U.S. has about 47 days’ worth of energy stored up for later use. The bad news? Virtually all of it is in the form of fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. By comparison, if you add up all the energy stored in batteries, pumped hydropower and other zero-carbon storage, it adds up to just a few seconds’ worth.This small scale of low-carbon energy storage is a big problem. We’re building out intermittent renewables fast, and we need enough energy storage to back up wind when turbines slow down and solar when the sun isn’t shining. But there are technologies that could get us there. In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane, who is a partner and head of research at Energy Impact Partners. Andy recently wrote a piece called Four ways to store sunlight, which compares lithium-ion batteries, heat storage, ion-air batteries, and hydrogen. Andy and Shayle cover topics like: The storage trifecta: short duration, diurnal, and multi-day seasonal Andy’s guess at how low the price of lithium-ion batteries could go Why we would use heat storage and hydrogen, despite their low round-trip efficiencies Why molten-salt heat storage didn’t take off High hopes for iron-air batteries’ low costs Blending hydrogen into gas turbines How all these technologies are competing against carbon capture and storage (CCS) Recommended Resources: Andy Lubershane: Four ways to store sunlight Form Energy: Enabling a True 24/7 Carbon-Free Resource Portfolio for Great River Energy with Multi-Day Storage Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Are you a utility or climate tech startup looking to understand how artificial intelligence will shape your company? Come to our one-day event, Transition-AI: Boston on June 15. Our listeners get a 20% discount with the code PSPODS20.Last year, the Supreme Court struck down the EPA’s first attempt to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. But it also preserved the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. The agency just needed to find the right approach. The question for the EPA was: What legal tools would pass the scrutiny of the court?Last week, Biden’s EPA came out with its answer. The proposed plan requires new and existing power plants to meet emission standards. The agency estimates that the rule would reduce GHG emissions by a total 617 million tons through 2042, a small but meaningful fraction of the total. Right now the U.S. power sector emits about 1.5 billion tons per year. It’s an approach that dovetails with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which is expected to dramatically reduce the cost of key emissions-reducing technologies, such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and hydrogen. If the IRA was the Biden administration’s carrot for reducing climate emissions, then the new rule is the stick. In this episode, Shayle unpacks the proposal with John Larsen, who leads U.S. climate policy research at the Rhodium Group. In March, John’s team modeled the impact of hypothetical power emissions standards on the U.S. power fleet, finding that many coal plants might shut down rather than install CCS.Shayle and John dig into specifics, like: The four main options available to power plant operators under the proposed rules: shut down, install carbon capture and storage (CCS), co-fire with hydrogen, or just run less The differences in rules for new and existing plants How the standards become more stringent with higher capacity factors The role of states in the rules and the “off-ramps” they could use to get around some of the rules The power plants that would be exempt from the rules, such as gas peaker plants with low capacity factors What the changing economics of CCS and hydrogen could mean for the effect of the regulations The legal gauntlet that the plan is sure to face, including lawsuits from Republican states  Recommended Resources: Rhodium Group: Pathways to Paris: Post-IRA Policy Action to Drive US Decarbonization Rhodium Group: Has the Supreme Court Blocked the Path to the 2030 Climate Target? Heatmap: What the EPA Can’t Say About Its New Power Plant Rules Canary: The EPA has a controversial new plan to clean up power plants Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Depending on who you talk to, Bitcoin mines are either great for the grid or the worst thing that’s ever happened to it. These warehouses of computers essentially turn electricity into bitcoins. Proponents argue that mines can do a number of things for the grid, like: Support grid reliability by reducing demand during peak hours Incentivize new renewable generation by raising the prices that solar and wind farms receive Reduce methane emissions by capturing flare gas from fossil fuel wells and then using that gas to generate electricity for mine operations Meanwhile, opponents argue that the mines raise emissions and electricity prices. So how do we make sense of the great Bitcoin energy debate?In this episode, Shayle talks to Ben Hertz-Shargel, global head of grid edge at Wood Mackenzie. The New York Times recently reported on the role of Bitcoin mining on the grid, and Ben was part of a team that contributed to the report.Shayle and Ben discuss:  How Bitcoin mines affect electricity prices for nearby consumers Whether mines use only excess renewable generation or incentivize fossil-fuel generators to ramp up What mines’ load profiles say about their flexibility and price-sensitivity, especially during peak demand The evidence on whether mines are signing long-term power purchase agreements, repowering mothballed projects or otherwise helping to incentivize new renewables construction Alternative crypto currencies that don’t require so much electricity Recommended Resources: NYT: The Real-World Costs of the Digital Race for Bitcoin Earth Justice and The Sierra Club: The Energy Bomb: How Proof-of-Work Cryptocurrency Mining Worsens the Climate Crisis and Harms Communities Now Coinspeaker: Texas Senate Passes Bill to Limit Incentives for Crypto Miners Participating in Demand Response Programs Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

The U.S. power grid is clogged, and it’s holding back the energy transition. Solar and wind farms are waiting four or more years to connect to the grid. Rising congestion costs are driving up retail electricity prices while hurting generator revenues. And the process of approving projects for interconnection is so complicated and expensive that it’s forcing developers to abandon the projects they were planning to build. We need much more transmission capacity and a better process for connecting projects. And we need it now more than ever. Demand for power will skyrocket as we connect EVs, heat pumps and other new loads to the grid. But Rob Gramlich, our guest today, comes with good news: We did it before. We can do it again. Rob is the founder and president of Grid Strategies. In this episode, Shayle and Rob talk through the three major challenges of transmission – congestion, interconnection, and buildout. And Rob explains how we’ve built out transmission in the past with efforts like ERCOT’s Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) and MISO’s Multi-Value Projects (MVPs).They also cover topics like: The history of transmission in the U.S. The three P’s of transmission challenges: planning, permitting, and paying How congestion costs might shoot up over the next few years as grid capacity lags behind generation, causing new generation to slow and retail electricity prices to go up Reforming the slow, complex, and expensive approval process for interconnection at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Where local opposition fits into transmission’s larger problems Recommended Resources: Grid Strategies: Transmission Congestion Costs in the U.S. RTOs Grid Strategies: Fewer New Miles: The U.S. Transmission Grid in the 2010s Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

We’re bringing you a special crossover episode this week from Catalyst’s sister podcast, The Carbon Copy. It’s about a rogue startup that was trying to do something we’ve talked about on this show: solar geoengineering. Last year, Time staff writer Alejandro de la Garza found himself on the floor of a hotel room in Nevada with two guys trying to cook sulfur dioxide out of a tin can. Luke Iseman and Andrew Song are the co-founders of Make Sunsets, a startup claiming to be implementing solar geoengineering by launching weather balloons filled with SO2 into the stratosphere.Their first experimental launch in the Mexican state of Baja California resulted in a swift regulatory response from the Mexican government. But when they ran another test launch a few weeks ago just outside of Reno, Nevada, Luke invited Alejandro to join them. This week, we speak with Alejandro about his Time profile of the controversial startup. Plus, we talk with geoengineering experts Holly Buck and Kevin Surprise.“Any single person you talk to in solar geoengineering research, whether they’re bullish or against it, they all think that what Make Sunsets is doing is a bad idea,” explains Alejandro.Make Sunsets represents a turning point for the field of geoengineering, with rogue actors pushing the field from academic debate into the real world. Is the company’s recent balloon launch an act of performance art — or an open door to an uncontrolled climate experiment?Recommended Resources: Time: Exclusive: Inside a Controversial Startup's Risky Attempt to Control Our Climate The Guardian: Solar geoengineering could be ‘remarkably inexpensive’ – report MIT Technology Review: This technology could alter the entire planet. These groups want every nation to have a say. US Geological Survey: The Atmospheric Impact of the 1991 Mount Pinatubo Eruption Catalyst: Solar geoengineering: Is it worth the risk? Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.

Hydropower is the world’s largest source of renewable electricity today, according to the IEA. Like gas peaker plants, it’s highly dispatchable, meaning it can complement intermittent renewables like wind and solar. And we could get a lot more of it. The IEA estimates that we could double the amount of energy produced globally. One peer-reviewed study found that global economic potential for hydropower was 21,000 terawatt hours per year, more than five times the current generation today. So how could we deploy more hydropower?In this episode, guest host Lara Pierpoint talks to Gia Schneider, co-founder and CEO of Natel Energy, a hydropower technology company. One key argument Gia makes is that if we can build smaller projects with lower ecosystem impacts, we can tap into more zero-carbon power. Gia and Lara talk through:  How quickly we need to build more hydropower to meet 2050 net-zero targets The benefits of traditional hydro as a full-stack grid resource Different types of hydro technology like run of river, hydrokinetic, and traditional large-scale dams Why smaller, more distributed systems are key to unlocking hydropower potential Different technologies to manage fish and debris like bypass channels, screens and fish-safe turbines The co-benefits of improving riverine landscapes, including making ecosystems and hydroelectric infrastructure more resilient to climate change How hydrology and forecasting can help us better manage dams in a changing climate Recommended Resources: Energy & Environmental Science: A comprehensive view of global potential for hydro-generated electricity Bloomberg: The World’s Biggest Source of Clean Energy Is Evaporating Fast Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Support for Catalyst comes from Climate Positive, a podcast by HASI, that features candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers who are at the forefront of the transition to a sustainable economy. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrids, the distributed energy company dedicated to transforming the way modern energy infrastructure is designed, constructed, and financed. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes it easy. Learn more: scalemicrogrids.com.