Podcast profile
Catalyst with Shayle Kann
By Latitude Media
A weekly podcast featuring veteran investor Shayle Kann interviewing experts about the state of the energy sector and the technologies powering decarbonization. Shayle Kann is asking the big questions about the ways we power our world: How cheap can clean energy get? Where is the smart money going on new technologies? How will the AI boom both help and hinder us on our journey to decarbonization? Every Thursday on Catalyst, Shayle dives deep into the world of energy with prominent experts, investors, researchers, and executives to unpack both the solutions and the challenges at play in this ever-changing landscape.
Latest episode
The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
35 min
- Cadence
- Weekly
- Typical length
- 38 min
- Latest release
- Aug 6, 2026
- Language
- EN
Topics
Sustainability & Energy
Energy systems, decarbonization, climate technology, and sustainability.
Capital & Markets
Venture capital, investing, financial markets, fundraising, and deals.
Industry Transformation
How technology changes the operating model of a named industry.
Formats
Interview
A host-led conversation with one or more guests.
Explainer & Deep Dive
Structured exploration of one subject in substantial depth.
Audience level
Informed
Basic familiarity helps because industry context and terminology appear.
People behind the show
Current hosts
Listen from the original source
This directory never re-hosts or republishes podcast audio.
Official sources checked
Episode audio and show facts come from the checked-in refresh of the show’s public sources.
From the feed
Latest episodes
The electrician shortage slowing the AI boom
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 qualif
The commercial battery comeback
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, senio
The multi-billion dollar promise of vehicle-to-grid integration
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 thi
When will quantum computing have its breakout moment?
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 technolog
Inside the AI power wars
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 dat
Inside the most sophisticated plan for solar geoengineering
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 de
How data centers are complicating transmission expansion
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 mill
Enter the electric supercycle
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
How China is reshaping the global auto market
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 hardwar
Surprising trends in global electricity generation
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 installm
Building inference data centers on the high seas
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
A blueprint for scalable fusion power
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
Inside the global fertilizer crunch
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. Eve
Cracking the code on autonomous trucking
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 s
How AI is modernizing EPCs
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 i
Inside Google’s massive AI capex (live)
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
How Base Power plans to use its fresh $1B [re-published]
[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 batterie
The rise of flexible data centers
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
Frontier Forum: Why clean energy capital boomed in a volatile year [partner content]
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, wit
Building a domestic nuclear fuel supply chain
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
Battery booms and the rise of flexibility [partner content]
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
The state and future of nuclear waste
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 90,00
Scaling America's domestic solar supply chain
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 Associati
AI scaling pathways: on grid, on edge, off grid, off planet
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 co
Frontier Forum: How VPPs earn grid-scale trust [partner content]
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? P