Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Here’s the dream: millions of controllable devices—from EV chargers to thermostats, fridges, and batteries—working together to inject power back into the grid. They reduce load when there’s not enough electricity supply to meet demand. They ease transmission congestion and maintain grid frequency. And these devices, collectively called distributed energy resources or DERs, are all controlled remotely by grid operators. So how far are we from this dream? In this episode, Shayle talks to Mathew Sachs, senior vice president for strategic planning and business development at CPower, a company that aggregates DERs and sells DER services to the grid. They talk about where we are on the long and winding path to large-scale deployment of DERs and what it takes to monetize them. They dig in on:  EV chargers, the fastest growing category of DERs, as well as V1G and V2G How much easier it is to share your financial data with a credit check than to share your energy data with a DER aggregator How current rules create obstacles to monetizing DERs Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 2222 and the status of new DER rules in NYISO and CAISO Positive developments like the declining costs of DERs and rising watts per customer acquired Full transcript hereRecommended Resources: Canary: FERC Order 2222: Experts offer cheers and jeers for first round of filings Canary: Is ​‘vehicle-to-everything’ charging ready for prime time? Catalyst: Tapping the gold mine of consumer energy data Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

In the U.S. alone, food waste is responsible for the equivalent emissions from 42 coal power plants. Globally it accounts for 10% of greenhouse gases, more than heavy industries like cement and steel. Why? Wasted food means wasted energy. Throwing a piece of food in the trash is like tossing out the fertilizer and fuel used to make it, too. And we waste a lot of it. Nearly one third of all food grown gets trashed. On top of that, when food decomposes in landfills through anaerobic digestion, it releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas. So how do we clean up food waste? In this episode, Shayle talks to Matt Rogers, founder and CEO of Mill. Matt founded Nest, the smart thermostat company, and has now turned his attention to food. Disclosure: Shayle’s venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners is an investor in Mill. Matt and Shayle cover topics like: Where food waste occurs along the value chain (hint: The biggest source of waste is us, when we toss food we’ve already purchased.) The causes of emissions, from energy inputs to anaerobic digestion in landfills The current solutions to food waste, such as composting, green bin programs, supply chain management software and shelf-life extension. The challenges with landfills, including trucking waste and landfill capacity. Mill’s new consumer-focused food waste technology, which includes shipping dehydrated food scraps in the mail. How much consumers care about food waste and carbon emissions. Recommended Resources: ReFED: Drawdown Update Affirms Reducing Food Waste as a Leading Solution to Climate Change ReFED: Roadmap to 2030: Reducing US Food Waste by 50% Canary: Eating the Earth | Decarbonizing our food systems Climavores: Today's food crisis is a postcard from our warming future EPA: From Farm to Kitchen: The Environmental Impacts of U.S. Food Waste Click here for a full transcriptCatalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

In this bonus episode, we present With Great Power, a podcast from GridX about the people building the future grid, today.The grid is no longer the biggest source of carbon emissions in America. It's transportation.Electric vehicles are a key part of decarbonizing the transportation sector – making utilities an important force in growing EV adoption.Electric cars will create a new opportunity for power providers to scale their business. But first, they need to get people to buy them. And that's where people like Karl Popham come in.“The mindset is how can we get EVs to your customers as quickly as possible and as profitable for the salesperson as possible,” explains Karl, who is manager of electric vehicles and emerging technologies at Austin Energy.This week, Brad speaks with Karl about Austin Energy’s work in making electric cars as accessible as possible by taking a dealership-centric approach.You can find many more episodes like this over at the With Great Power feed. Subscribe to it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to shows.

The natural gas market has been through a wild ride, especially in Europe. The pandemic first pushed the prices way down. Then a resurgent economy and an unusually long European winter sent them back up to record heights. And by September of last year, Russia had dramatically cut natural gas flows to Europe, further squeezing supply.The high prices were especially painful for the continent, which relies heavily on the fuel for home heating, industry and power plants. But high prices also catalyzed efforts to shift to lower carbon technologies like renewables, hydrogen and heat pumps.Then fast forward to this past December, and now gas prices have plummeted again. What’s going on? What’s causing these rapid swings and what might happen next?In this episode, Shayle talks to Anne-Sophie Corbeau, research scholar at Columbia University’s SIPA Center on Global Energy Policy where she studies natural gas and hydrogen. Her article, “Putin’s energy gambit fizzles as warm winter saves Europe” recently ran in Bloomberg.They discuss how we got here, covering topics like: The range of factors at play, such as LNG cargos, a European drought, and unusual weather patterns Whether Europe might resume large-scale natural gas imports from Russia Why China’s zero covid policy and an unusually warm winter amounted to a lucky break for Europe What topics should we cover on the show? Send us an email or voice memo to catalyst@postscripaudio.com.Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

The Haber-Bosch process, which turns nitrogen and hydrogen into ammonia, produces an essential ingredient in fertilizers and explosives. But it’s responsible for 2% of global emissions. Ammonia could become an important low-carbon fuel, because when combusted it emits no carbon. We could use it in ships, heavy industry and even mixed in with coal or gas in power plants. So what’s keeping us from using it as a new low-carbon fuel? And why would you use it instead of hydrogen, which you already need to make ammonia?In this episode, Shayle talks to Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. Julio and a team of colleagues just co-authored a report on low-carbon ammonia for the Innovation for Cool Earth Forum.They cover topics like: Why some countries like Japan, Singapore and Korea are especially interested in developing ammonia infrastructure. How ammonia compares to other low-carbon fuels like methanol and hydrogen. How we would need to retrofit coal and gas power plants to co-fire with ammonia Addressing ammonia’s corrosion and toxicity issues. The areas that need more research, such as ammonia’s impact on air quality and radiative forcing. Key constraints like human capital and infrastructure. Recommended Resources: Innovation for Cool Earth Forum: Low-Carbon Ammonia Roadmap Canary: Watch this TED talk to get up to speed on green ammonia and shipping Canary: The race is on to build the world’s first ammonia-powered ship Chemical & Engineering News: Will Japan run on ammonia? Full transcript here.Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Today we’re talking about two climate blind spots: methane and short-term warming. Most of us think of global warming as a long game. How do we reach net zero by 2050? And how should we curb carbon dioxide emissions to get there?But the warming happening now and in the next few years is just as important.Short-term warming exacerbates wildfires, hurricanes and other climate impacts now. And the short-term trajectory of warming can make things better or worse in the long run. At some point before we reach net zero emissions, it’s increasingly likely that we will overshoot our 1.5 degree target. Hopefully we will come back down, but the more we overshoot, the worse the effects of climate change will be. Which is why we should bend the curve of that trajectory by tackling the causes of short-term warming.High up on that list is methane. It lives in the atmosphere for only 12 years, but in the 20 years after it reaches the atmosphere it causes about 84 times more warming than carbon dioxide. That means it’s also a powerful solution. Methane in the atmosphere right now causes about 30% of global warming to date, but cutting emissions now would actually have a cooling effect. Why? Because, unlike carbon dioxide which lasts for several hundred years, methane breaks down relatively quickly. So how do we tackle the methane problem?In this episode, Shayle talks to Erika Reinhardt, co-founder of Spark Climate Solutions, a non-profit focused on under-addressed climate solutions. Right now Spark is focusing on methane emissions from livestock, also known as enteric methane.Shayle and Erika cover topics like: Why we should consider different time-scale standards for measuring global warming impact, such as GWP100 and GWP20 How short-lived aerosols mask the full warming impact of greenhouse gasses Methane removal, including the process of oxidation and methane sinks Different sources of methane, such as wetlands, livestock and fossil fuel production Ready-to-deploy solutions to fossil fuel methane emissions, such as flaring, detection, capture and storage How flaring may be less effective than previously thought Solutions under development for livestock methane, such as manure management, biogas digesters and feed additives like seaweed-derived bromoform  Recommended Resources: Canary: Cutting methane emissions could make a big dent in climate change, major UN report says Bloomberg: As Gas Prices Soar, Nobody Knows How Much Methane Is Leaking Inside Climate News: Feeding Cows Seaweed Reduces Their Methane Emissions, but California Farms Are a Long Way From Scaling Up the Practice Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scalecapitalsolutions.com to learn more.Catalyst is supported by CohnReznick, a trusted partner for navigating the complex and evolving financial, tax and regulatory landscape of the renewable sector. Visit cohnreznick.com to learn more.

A coalition of companies organized by the U.S. government is promising to purchase low-carbon versions of commodities from “hard to abate” heavy industries. This sort of policy is called an advanced market commitment, which the U.S. has used in the past to accelerate the development of new technologies. With guaranteed revenue from the government, manufacturers are able to take risks to create products that they might not have otherwise.In the leadup to COP26 last year, John Kerry, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, announced the First Movers Coalition (FMC) in collaboration with the World Economic Forum. It now involves 65 companies—including Delta, Maersk, and Rio Tinto—that will buy or supply a percentage of low-carbon products by 2030. India, Norway and eight other countries have signed on, too. The coalition has also committed to purchase carbon removal, adding to the wave of similar pledges like the $1 billion Frontier Fund.So how will the FMC work?In this episode, Shayle talks to FMC’s brainchild, Varun Sivaram. Varun is managing director and senior advisor for clean energy and innovation in Kerry's office.They cover topics like: Why advanced market commitments are not silver bullets The FMC’s ability to make companies keep their commitments  How the FMC is developing standards for low-carbon products How much progress coalition members have made toward their targets  How the Inflation Reduction Act and the FMC support each other The FMC’s ability to endure changes of administration When we can stop calling these sectors “hard to abate”  Recommended Resources: Bloomberg: Companies Commit to Buying Super-Green Cement in Corporate Climate Club Columbia University: To Bring Emissions-Slashing Technologies to Market, the United States Needs Targeted Demand-Pull Innovation Policies Harvard University: Using Advance Market Commitments for Public Purpose Technology Development Catalyst: Growing the carbon dioxide removal market Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scalecapitalsolutions.com to learn more.Catalyst is supported by CohnReznick Capital, a trusted source for renewable energy investment banking servicing the US sustainability sector. Visit cohnreznickcapital.com to learn more.

We are headed into an uncertain future for the climate – but the range of possible scenarios is getting clearer. We’ve likely avoided the worst-case scenarios, thanks to the progress made in clean energy.And that has experts feeling conflicted.“People who are deep in the industry of trying to address climate change flip flop from skepticism to the amazing opportunity we have,” says DNV Senior Vice President Nick Brod. “Every few weeks, we see new technologies that show us that there is endless potential to make things more and more efficient.”“We definitely have a lot of the technologies in wind and solar and storage – and there continues to be breakthroughs,” says DNV Senior Vice President Marion Hill.We have most of the tools available to slow climate change. So where are the opportunities? And what are the bottlenecks to growth?In this special episode, produced in partnership with DNV, we feature a conversation between Stephen Lacey, Nick Brod, and Marion Hill about the trends reshaping supply and demand on the grid.DNV provides advice and assurance to customers across the spectrum of the energy transition, from generation to end use – in solar, storage, wind, grid planning, hydrogen, carbon capture, and more. To learn more about how experts like Nick and Marion can help you accelerate the energy transition, go to dnv.com/catalyst

To make products like cement, cereal and even baby food, you need heat—and lots of it. Industrial heat consumes about one-fifth of all energy used in 2018, according to the International Energy Agency. Factories often burn coal or natural gas to generate consistent temperatures up to 2200 degrees Celsius. And most run nearly 24/7 to maintain profitability in competitive commodity markets.  Other sectors like power and ground transportation have clear pathways to decarbonization, relying mainly on electrification and cheap intermittent renewables. But these solutions don’t deliver consistent temperatures and the 24/7 energy needed to make things like steel and petrochemicals. So industrial heat has been a far more stubborn problem to solve.But there’s a crowded field of technologies lining up to try, including hydrogen, biogas, heat pumps, electric arc furnaces, and even heat batteries.In this episode, Shayle talks to John O’Donnell, co-founder and CEO of Rondo Energy, a thermal storage startup. Shayle’s venture capital firm Energy Impact Partners has made investments in Rondo Energy. They break down the challenges of industrial heat and discuss the range of technologies that could help to generate it with low emissions.John and Shayle cover topics like: Which fuels do we currently rely on for specific industrial uses, and where could we use alternatives? How thermal batteries can help to solve the intermittency challenges of wind and solar Industrial grid defection, where large industrial facilities build behind-the-meter renewables to avoid the rising costs of delivered electricity The potential for industrial growth in places with access to cheap renewables, like the American midwest Recommended Resources: McKinsey: Net-zero heat: Long-duration energy storage to accelerate energy system decarbonization Canary: This startup’s energy storage tech is ​‘essentially a giant toaster’ Canary: This startup wants to use cheap surplus clean energy to make high-temperature industrial heat Catalyst: The many pathways to decarbonizing chemicals  Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scalecapitalsolutions.com to learn more.Catalyst is supported by CohnReznick Capital, a trusted source for renewable energy investment banking servicing the US sustainability sector. Visit cohnreznickcapital.com to learn more.

We want your feedback! Fill out our listener survey for a chance to win a $100 Patagonia gift card.In a funny twist of fate, solar’s success has made it old news. It’s the fastest-growing source of electricity in the world and one of the cheapest. But it’s far from the hot topic it was a decade ago when utility-scale photovoltaics were still an emerging technology. Now that it’s a more mature tool in the climate fight, we take it for granted.And yet there’s so much more we need to do. To reach net zero by 2050, we likely need to quadruple global solar capacity by 2030, according to projections by BloombergNEF (BNEF). But labor shortages, high material costs and interconnection bottlenecks stand in the way. So how do we get there?In this episode Shayle talks to Jenny Chase, who managed BloombergNEF’s solar insights team for 17 years before leaving the role this month. Every year she tweets a thread of 50 not-always-popular opinions on solar, covering the state of the industry and the challenges it needs to solve. For this episode, Shayle picked the opinions he found most interesting and unpacked them with Jenny. They cover Jenny’s opinions on: The biggest bottlenecks holding back solar deployment, like labor shortages, high polysilicon prices and grid interconnection backlogs Why we don’t need new technology breakthroughs in solar  Perovskite and building-integrated photovoltaics   How residential solar and battery salespeople are making up their savings projections How the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act could spur an unsustainable boom in solar and hydrogen equipment manufacturing Why leading forecasts could be underestimating solar deployment Recommended Resources: Twitter: Jenny Chase’s 2022 opinions-on-solar thread  Canary Media: What’s behind solar’s polysilicon shortage — and why it’s not getting better anytime soon Canary Media: Perovskites can make solar panels more efficient than silicon alone Bloomberg: Solar Outshines Wind to Lead China’s Clean-Energy Transition Bloomberg: Solar Growth Estimates for 2050 Are Aggressive, But Not Unrealistic Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.Catalyst is supported by Scale Microgrid Solutions, your comprehensive source for all distributed energy financing. Distributed generation can be complex. Scale makes financing it easy. Visit scalecapitalsolutions.com to learn more.Catalyst is supported by CohnReznick Capital, a trusted source for renewable energy investment banking servicing the US sustainability sector. Visit cohnreznickcapital.com to learn more.