Episodes
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The bad news: The refrigerants we use in air conditioners, fridges, and vehicles absorb hundreds to thousands of times more heat than carbon dioxide does. The good news: We’re in the middle of a global effort to replace them with lower impact alternatives.
Will we replace them fast enough to hit climate targets? And in the meantime, can we prevent them from leaking into the atmosphere?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Ian McGavisk, senior advisor at RMI for carbon-free buildings. An industry veteran, he recently co-authored a report on recovering residential AC refrigerants in the U.S., which have the carbon equivalent of 1.7 million cars. (Ian also works in business development at Transaera. Energy Impact Partners, where Shayle works, invests in Transaera.). Shayle and Ian cover topics like:
The sources of emissions in the refrigerant lifecycle
The economics of recovering and reclaiming refrigerants
Alternatives with low global warming potential and their tradeoffs, such as efficiency, flammability and concerns about forever chemicals
Recommended resources
RMI: Refrigerant Reclamation
Project Drawdown: Refrigerant Management
Project Drawdown: Alternative Refrigerants
EPA: Transitioning to Low-GWP Alternatives in Commercial Refrigeration
UN Environmental Programme: Montreal Protocol On Substances That Deplete The Ozone Layer, Report Of The Technology And Economic Assessment Panel, May 2024
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.
On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here! -
This might be our wonkiest topic yet: Techno-economic analysis, or TEA.
Before a startup proves its technology is commercially viable, it models how a technology would work. These TEAs include things like assumptions about inputs, prices, and market landscape. They help investors and entrepreneurs answer the question, will this technology compete?
TEAs are important to the success of an early-stage climate-tech company. And a lot of startups get them wrong. As an investor at Energy Impact Partners (EIP), Shayle and his team see a lot of TEAs—and have some pet peeves.
So what can startups do to improve their TEAs?
This episode is a re-run from October 2023. We’re making a new episode on TEAs soon – stay tuned. But to start, we’re running this episode as a way to set up our next one.
In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleagues Dr. Greg Thiel, EIP’s director of technology, and Dr. Melissa Ball, EIP’s associate director of technology. They cover topics like:
Bad assumptions about things like levelized cost of production
Focusing on a component instead of a system
Focusing on unhelpful metrics
Using false precision—something Shayle calls “modeling theater”
Recommended Resources:
Activate: Techonomics: Establishing best practices in early stage technology modeling
Department of Energy: Techno-economic, Energy, & Carbon Heuristic Tool for Early-Stage Technologies (TECHTEST) Tool
National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Techno-Economic Analysis
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.
On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here! -
Missing episodes?
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We capture concentrated methane emissions from point sources like dairy barns, landfills, and coal mines. Mitigating methane emissions is essential to hitting net-zero targets, but could we capture diluted gasses straight from the atmosphere, too?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Gabrielle Dreyfus, Chief Scientist at the Institute For Governance & Sustainable Development, about a National Academy of Sciences report on the unexplored area of methane removal. Gabrielle chaired the committee behind the report. Shayle and Gabrielle cover topics like:
Why methane removal may be critical to addressing methane from hard-to-abate sources, like enteric emissions and tropical wetlands
Key differences between methane removal and carbon dioxide removal
How reducing methane in the atmosphere may also reduce its atmospheric lifetime
Technological pathways, including reactors, concentrators, surface treatments, ecosystem uptake enhancement, and atmospheric oxidation enhancement
The potential for combining methane and carbon dioxide removal in direct air capture
Recommended resources
Catalyst: Why are we still flaring gas?
Catalyst: Mitigating enteric methane: tech solutions for solving the cow burp problem
Catalyst: Why methane matters
Latitude Media: A look under the hood of EDF’s methane detection satellite
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.
On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here! -
AI is enabling a multitude of solutions across power, industry, and transportation. But AI energy demands are increasingly stressing the electric grid — creating a bottleneck for growth and new challenges for clean energy supply.
The mounting tension highlights the need for an energy-first approach to computing.
Developer Crusoe is building AI infrastructure that takes advantage of clean energy to power workloads for AI modeling. Likewise, Nvidia, Crusoe’s primary GPU supplier, has been consistently improving the energy efficiency of its GPUs. Both demonstrate the innovation that’s happening in the marketplace to create a 'climate-aligned cloud' for customers.
In the AI era, how do you build data centers with an energy-first approach?
In this Frontier Forum, Stephen Lacey explores all sides of the AI-energy nexus with talks with Chase Lochmiller, the co-founder and CEO. They discuss innovations in data center design, why the energy demands of AI could be higher than projected, and why that shouldn't scare us.
Chase Lochmiller will be speaking at Latitude Media’s Transition-AI conference on December 3rd in Washington, DC. Get your tickets here. -
Getting the construction industry to try a novel form of cement is like turning a giant ship. It’s hard to redirect the immense momentum behind existing ways of doing business, especially involving cement, the most energy-intensive ingredient in concrete. Industry insiders point to tight margins, concerns about messing with the ingredients that literally hold up buildings, and the long list of stakeholders will agree to try a new material.
So how do you get a risk-averse construction supply chain to try decarbonized cement?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Leah Ellis, CEO and co-founder of Sublime Systems, a company that recently landed its first commercial deployment of decarbonized cement. (Shayle is an investor in Sublime). Shayle and Leah cover topics like:
The long list of parties involved in a single pour of concrete
Why the green premium is a burden for margin-squeezed contractors but “budget dust” for the building buyer
How to align stakeholders, once there's buy-in from financers
How a book-and-claim system could work for decarbonized cement
How major concrete consumers, like governments, can create demand
Why the boom in data center construction creates a window of opportunity for decarbonized construction materials
Recommended resources
Catalyst: Pathways to decarbonizing steel
Catalyst: Fixing cement’s carbon problem
Latitude Media: With climate venture capital down, industrial investments had a ‘breakout year’ in 2023
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.
On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here! -
Chinese battery companies are manufacturing the cheapest cells in the world right now, and it’s not just because of cheap labor and state subsidies. They’ve streamlined the process in a way that has industry experts wondering how international competitors can ever catch up.
In this episode, Shayle talks to James Frith, principal at the battery investment firm Volta Energy Technologies. He argues that there are multiple factors behind Chinese manufacturers’ efficiency and speed, like the know-how to operate plants with high yields, easy access to suppliers, and ability to squeeze margins to near zero. Shayle and James cover topics like:
The confluence of overcapacity, softening demand, and low commodity prices that could result in a “bloodbath” of market consolidation in China
Why the low cell prices on the spot market hit stationary storage harder than EVs
Cost drivers of cell manufacturing, like labor, power, and environmental regulations
What Western companies can learn from China’s cheap prices
Why James is bullish on partnerships between Chinese and Western companies
Recommended resources
Latitude Media: How Northvolt’s bet on lithium metal batteries fell apart
Latitude Media: A summer of ups and downs in the battery sector
Latitude Media: DOE designates $3 billion for the advanced battery supply chain
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.
On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here! -
Tannice McCoy grew up in a mining family, but she never imagined herself in the mining business. Today she’s the president and general manager of NewRange Copper Nickel.
Jenna Lehti never imagined herself in the mining industry either. She’s a member of the Bois Forte band of the Ojibwe tribe in Northern Minnesota, and grew up on a reservation adjacent to the Iron Range, a collection of mining districts around Lake Superior. Today, she’s the tribal relations advisor for NewRange.
Together, they’re taking a proactive approach to harnessing tribal support for the critical minerals boom.
NewRange is a Minnesota company pursuing a new copper, nickel, and cobalt mine in the northeastern part of the state, called NorthMet. It would supply minerals for a wide range of clean energy technologies.
But under a previous owner, the project faced setbacks – in part because of a lack of engagement with local tribes.
“I think part of that came from a lack of understanding of the tribe's sovereignty and their water quality standards,” said McCoy.
In this episode, produced in collaboration with NewRange, Tannice McCoy and Jenna Lehti sit down with Stephen Lacey. They explain what has changed with the NorthMet project, the importance of working with tribes, and the future of critical minerals mining in America.
“It's really about how we are partnering with the tribes to move forward and progress,” said Lehti.
This episode was produced in collaboration with NewRange Copper Nickel. -
The world’s first large-scale, commercial direct-air capture (DAC) plants are coming online – or are about to. How soon will we see a boom in high-quality, durable DAC supply?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Andreas Aepli, chief financial officer of Climeworks, the world’s largest provider of DAC. They talk about Climeworks’ challenges with its two commercial plants – the kinds of challenges Andreas argues the industry needs to be transparent about in order to earn the trust of skeptical buyers. Shayle and Andreas also cover topics like:
The real-world challenges of building a DAC plant, like extreme weather, supply-chain quality issues, CO2 purity, and more
Why Andreas advocates a step-by-step scale-up of progressively larger deployments
How to set pricing and and structure a carbon removal contract
How to build a capital stack for a carbon removal plant
Why Andreas believes the market will become even more supply-constrained in the next few years
Recommended resources
Latitude Media: Google says it's the first to purchase direct air capture for $100 per ton
Latitude Media: Can a new generation of DAC companies overcome the tech’s big challenges?
Latitude Media: Climeworks begins to offer “PPAs” for carbon removal
Catalyst: Fixing the messy voluntary carbon market
Catalyst is brought to you by EnergyHub. EnergyHub is working with more than 70 utilities across North America to help scale VPP programs to manage load growth, maximize the value of renewables, and deliver flexibility at every level of the grid. To learn more about their Edge DERMS platform and services, go to energyhub.com.
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, learn how Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid at kraken.tech.
On December 3 in Washington, DC, Latitude Media is bringing together a range of experts for Transition-AI 2024, a one-day, in-person event addressing both sides of the AI-energy nexus: the challenges AI poses to the grid, and the opportunities. Our podcast listeners get a 10% discount on this year’s conference using the code LMPODS10. Register today here! -
Editor’s note: There’s some big money flowing into low carbon ammonia right now. Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy announced a $1.56 billion conditional loan guarantee for Wabash Valley Resources, an Indiana low-carbon ammonia facility. In August, oil and gas producer Woodside Energy spent $2.35 billion on a low-carbon ammonia plant in Texas. Both of these facilities will produce low-carbon ammonia while using carbon capture and storage. We thought it would be a good time to revisit an episode with Julio Friedmann, chief scientist at Carbon Direct. He explains how ammonia could be used as a low-carbon fuel in everything from ships to heavy industry.
The irony of ammonia is that it accounts for a whopping 2% of global emissions, but it could also become an important low-carbon fuel.
It’s the primary ingredient in agricultural fertilizer. But when combusted, it also emits no carbon, making it a promising low-carbon fuel, too — for ships, heavy industry, and even thermal power plants.
But making the stuff takes massive amounts of energy, and ammonia’s feedstocks – hydrogen and nitrogen – also require energy.
So what would it take to slash emissions from ammonia production? And how would we actually use ammonia as a low-carbon fuel?
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?
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a revolutionary platform enabling solar and energy storage equipment buyers and developers to save time, increase profits, and reduce risk. Instantly see pricing, product, and counterparty data and comparison tools. Learn more at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
The U.S. and U.K. could see 500 gigawatts of distributed resources hitting the power system in the next few years.
But after years of watching DERs grow quickly, utilities and grid operators are still figuring out how to utilize them. Are we finally reaching an inflection point?
“When you move to a world where you have millions and millions of generators, that whole system falls apart. And that's where you need not only digitalization, but also automation. They're the two things that we can't do the energy transition without,” says Charlotte Johnson, global director of markets at Kraken, which has 40 GW of DERs under management.
In this episode, Charlotte Johnson sits down with Stephen Lacey to talk about the state of connected distributed energy resources – and why Kraken is so focused on expanding into the U.S. market.
This episode was produced in partnership with Kraken. Kraken's end-to-end platform offers full network intelligence, DER controls, asset health, and reporting for power providers around the world. To learn more about Kraken's capabilities, go to kraken.tech. -
AI is working its way across climate tech, helping companies discover giant lodes of ore, catch battery defects, and monitor energy infrastructure. Could it help us find revolutionary new materials, too?
Turns out, it’s complicated.
In this episode, Shayle talks to Ekin Dogus Cubuk, or Dogus, a researcher focused on materials at Google DeepMind. DeepMind is one of several players, including Microsoft, trying to discover new materials that could be used in things like better battery chemistries, powerful carbon-capture sorbents, and room-temperature superconductors. But so far, Dogus says AI-powered approaches haven’t actually yielded any commercially-deployable materials.
Shayle and Dogus cover topics like:
Existing approaches to materials discovery, like experimentation and density functional theory, and how AI could complement those techniques
Why AI may actually require a lot more lab work – and larger datasets – before it becomes useful for material discovery
The types of material properties that AI may be especially useful for, such as optical or electric qualities
Recommended resources
Latitude Media: Armed with AI, Microsoft found a new battery material in just two weeks
Google DeepMind: Millions of new materials discovered with deep learning
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a revolutionary platform enabling solar and energy storage equipment buyers and developers to save time, increase profits, and reduce risk. Instantly see pricing, product, and counterparty data and comparison tools. Learn more at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
Deploy or innovate? Scale up an existing technology or develop a breakthrough? Build, build, build, or invent a better mousetrap?
The question isn’t which strategy to follow; it’s which strategy to use in which sector. Virtually no one thinks that solar needs brand new tech breakthroughs to scale. Crystalline silicone took the lion’s share of the market years ago from cadmium telluride, amorphous silicon, CIGS and other early solar technologies.
But in carbon removal, batteries, nuclear, and other industries — should we develop new technologies, or scale up a promising few?
In this episode, Shayle talks to his colleague Andy Lubershane about the better mousetrap fallacy in climate tech. Andy is the head of research and a partner at Energy Impact Partners. He argues that, in certain industries, investing in building a better mousetrap is a bad use of capital, and that too many options causes analysis paralysis for would-be customers.
Shayle and Andy cover topics like:
How scaling up technologies – as Chinese manufacturers have scaled up solar and batteries – drives down cost
Why new technologies that aren’t five or 10 times better than an incumbent may fail to beat the cost curve
Whether batteries need breakthroughs, and how Andy thinks about lithium-iron-phosphate, sodium-ion, thermal, and iron-air
Why Andy thinks that the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions should license more new projects than new technologies
The challenge of having more direct air capture technologies than buyers
Recommended resources
Catalyst: The cost of nuclear
Latitude Media: Is large-scale nuclear poised for a comeback?
Catalyst: Seeking the holy grail of batteries
Catalyst: Growing the carbon dioxide removal market
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a revolutionary platform enabling solar and energy storage equipment buyers and developers to save time, increase profits, and reduce risk. Instantly see pricing, product, and counterparty data and comparison tools. Learn more at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
Cutting emissions is essential to avoiding the worst of climate change, but we also have to deal with the impacts of climate change happening now. Fortunately, there’s a growing list of technologies that could help us adapt — and potentially turn a profit for investors, too. Will these emerging adaptation and resilience (A&R) technologies take off as an investment category?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Katie MacDonald, co-founder and managing partner at Tailwind. They talk about the areas of application – like wildfire prevention, air filtration, health monitoring, and more – that are attracting the attention of governments, corporations, and investors. But the space is young and still needs metrics and definitions, which is why Tailwind developed a taxonomy of A&R themes and sectors and plans to release an “innovation playbook” with market insights in the fall.
Shayle and Katie cover topics like:
Defining the scope of A&R
Attracting resilience-curious investors to the space
The co-benefits with mitigation
How to measure the success of A&R
Growing demand signals from governments, such as California’s climate risk disclosure requirements
Recommended resources
Tailwind: Taxonomy for Climate Adaptation and Resilience Activities
S&P Global: Risky Business: Companies' Progress On Adapting To Climate Change
Bloomberg Law: States Forge Ahead on Climate Disclosures as SEC’s Plan Drags on
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
Oil producers waste a lot of natural gas. Last year they flared 150 billion cubic meters of associated gas into the atmosphere, equivalent to about half the global carbon emissions of aviation over a 30-year period.
So why are oil producers burning a valuable commodity like gas?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Tomás de Oliveira Bredariol, an energy and environmental policy analyst focused on methane at the IEA. So far, multiple major global initiatives haven’t made a dent in flare volumes, which have remained largely flat since 2010. Shayle and Tomás talk about the reasons why and the potential solutions, covering topics like:
The nine countries responsible for about three quarters of flare volumes
Why we don’t just build more pipelines
Why oil wells may choose expensive diesel instead of powering their equipment with associated gas
Converting gas into more valuable forms, like compressed natural gas, liquid natural gas, or methanol
The potential for regulation and financial incentives to push producers to cut flare volumes
Recommended resources
International Energy Agency: Curtailing Methane Emissions from Fossil Fuel Operations
National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Stranded Natural Gas Roadmap
World Bank: Global Gas Flaring Data
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
Hydrogen has two big problems: cost and supply. As a low-carbon feedstock, it could decarbonize planes, industry, and power plants. It could even replace the oil in plastics and chemicals.
But the leading contenders for low-carbon hydrogen production — like using zero-carbon power for electrolysis and methane pyrolysis — just haven’t cut it yet. So far, the price points are too high and the scale of production is too low to spur a hydrogen revolution.
But instead of synthesizing hydrogen, what if we pumped naturally-occurring hydrogen reservoirs out of the ground, just like we drill for oil and natural gas?
In this episode, Shayle talks about geologic hydrogen with Pete Johnson, CEO of Koloma. Early estimates suggest vast quantities of the gas could be tapped for far cheaper than other production methods. That is, if some major challenges are solved, like finding economically viable reserves, managing leakage, and building infrastructure. In these early days, those are all big ifs.
A handful of startups are exploring geologic hydrogen, and Koloma, which has raised $300 million, is the most prominent in the space. (Shayle invests in Koloma and serves on its board. Prelude Ventures, which led Latitude Media’s fundraising round, also invests in Koloma.) Shayle and Pete cover topics like:
The key factors that lead to reservoirs of geologic hydrogen, like water, iron-rich rock, traps, and seals
Why geologic hydrogen could become the cheapest form of hydrogen, if found in large, economically viable reservoirs
The greenhouse gas impact of hydrogen, which interferes with the breakdown of methane in the atmosphere
Why Pete thinks that economically viable wells will attract new infrastructure, like clean ammonia plants, the way Houston attracted oil infrastructure
Stimulating geologic hydrogen production by injecting water into rock
What sort of watershed moment would prove the viability of geologic hydrogen
Recommended resources
Latitude Media: Should we be paying more attention to geologic hydrogen?
US Geological Survey: The Potential for Geologic Hydrogen for Next Generation Energy
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
Editor’s note: There’s new interest in nuclear power from electric utilities, the White House, and the public. While NuScale’s deal to build a small modular reactor failed last year, TerraPower is currently building the U.S.’s first advanced non-light water reactor in Wyoming. So we’re revisiting an episode from last November with The Good Energy Collective’s Dr. Jessica Lovering unpacking one of nuclear’s biggest challenges: cost.
Nuclear construction costs in the U.S. are some of the highest in the world. Recent estimates put the cost of building conventional nuclear reactors at more than $6,000 per kilowatt, as measured by overnight capital cost. But high costs are a problem for new small modular reactors (SMRs) too, killing what was going to be the country’s first SMR before it got built.
Meanwhile, South Korea has some of the lowest costs in the world. Estimated overnight capital costs for reactors in South Korea are closer to $2,200 per kilowatt.And then there are countries like China, France, and the United Arab Emirates that fall between those extremes.
So why the wide range in costs?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Jessica Lovering, co-founder and executive director at the Good Energy Collective, a non-profit that researches and promotes policies that support nuclear power. A former director of energy at the Breakthrough Institute, she also authored a comprehensive study of nuclear construction costs in 2016.
Shayle and Jessica talk about things like:
What goes into the cost of construction and South Korea’s secret sauce for low-cost nuclear reactors
Why Jessica thinks we should manufacture and regulate reactors like large aircraft
Driving down costs with modularity, small reactors, passive safety features, and more construction
Why changing regulations might be necessary, but not a silver bullet
Why the pro- and anti-nuclear camps talk past each other — and why Jessica says she’s somewhere in between
Recommended Resources:
Latitude Media: Is large-scale nuclear poised for a comeback?
Energy Policy: Historical construction costs of global nuclear power reactors
National Academy of Engineering: Chasing Cheap Nuclear: Economic Trade-Offs for Small Modular Reactors
Joule: Evaluating the Role of Unit Size in Learning-by-Doing of Energy Technologies
Science: Granular technologies to accelerate decarbonization
Canary: Future of small reactors at stake as NuScale deal flops
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza, a revolutionary platform enabling solar and energy storage equipment buyers and developers to save time, increase profits, and reduce risk. Instantly see pricing, product, and counterparty data and comparison tools. Learn more at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude.
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
America’s green bank – officially known as the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund – is ramping up.
Thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act, the federal government is sending $27 billion to a network of non-profit organizations, state green banks, and local private lenders to fund distributed energy projects.
The pressure is on to invest those dollars quickly and efficiently. The GGRF won’t be considered successful if it only deploys that $27 billion – it will be successful if it catalyzes 5x more in capital deployment.
That means building a transparent market with uniform lending standards for CDFIs and local banks – lenders that may be touching solar, storage or other distributed energy deals for the very first time.
The money is headed out the door. Are lenders ready to deploy it?
This week, we're featuring a conversation with Amanda Li of Banyan Infrastructure and Billy Briscoe of the Clean Energy Fund of Texas. It was recorded live as part of Latitude Media's Frontier Forum series.
We'll unpack the details, the urgency, any potential gaps, and the stakes for building a market.
This episode was produced in collaboration with Banyan Infrastructure. Read more of Banyan’s insights into the GGRF here. -
Editor’s note: There’s momentum behind permitting reform in the U.S. Congress right now. It could mean unstopping a serious bottleneck in climate tech — transmission. So we’re revisiting an episode from last May with Grid Strategies’ Rob Gramlich to understand how we got here, the impacts on climate tech, and the potential fixes.
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 buildout 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
How the backed up interconnection queue leads developers to submit speculative projects, hoping for one project, but filing six to see what they get
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
E&E News: Senators line up to support permitting package
Recommended resources
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
Little-known fact: The primary product of steel mills is CO2.
A conventional blast furnace produces almost two tons of carbon dioxide for every ton of steel. And with almost two billion tons of steel produced annually — roughly 500 pounds for every human, every year — that’s a lot of carbon: about 8% of global energy system emissions. And yet, steel is vital for vast parts of the economy, including the energy transition itself.
So why does steel production emit so much CO2? And what are the pathways to fixing it?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Rebecca Dell, senior director of the industry program at the Climateworks Foundation. They cover topics like:
How steelmaking generates emissions from both heat and the production process itself
Why coal is so useful for blast furnaces, and why natural gas can’t fully replace it
Why recycling cuts emissions but hits a ceiling
Direct reduced iron, which uses methane or hydrogen and requires high-quality ore
Less-developed but promising alternatives: molten oxide electrolysis and aqueous electrolysis, which can use low-quality ore
The limits of carbon capture and storage and material substitution
The major players building DRI facilities, like SSAB, ThyssenKrupp, and Salzgitter
Recommended resources
Canary Media: US pledges up to $1B for two pioneering ‘green steel’ projects
Latitude Media: H2's $5B fundraise is a 'test case' for financing green steel
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. -
Automakers got ahead of their skis. EV sales are up globally and in the U.S., but growth has been slower than expected and uneven. After enjoying a wave of growth driven by early adopters, automakers overestimated demand of more cautious consumers and ended up producing more than buyers wanted. Now auto dealers are slashing prices to move cars off the lot.
So how did the market get here? And how can EVs appeal to the next wave of consumers?
In this episode, Shayle talks to Gene Berdichevsky, co-founder and CEO of anode material manufacturer Sila Nanotechnologies. Shayle and Gene cover topics like:
How high-performance cells can lead to lower-cost batteries
Why Gene says lithium-iron-phosphate may hit a ceiling in the market
The potential of sodium-ion batteries
Who can take advantage of production overcapacity
The limitations of the Inflation Reduction Act in the face of weak demand
How manufacturing is competing with other major loads, like data centers, for electricity
Solving the challenges of vehicle-to-grid
Recommended resources
Bloomberg: The Slowdown in US Electric Vehicle Sales Looks More Like a Blip
The Wall Street Journal: EVs Are Cheaper Than Ever. Can Car Buyers Be Won Over?
Catalyst: What’s really happening in the US EV market?
Catalyst is brought to you by Anza Renewables, a data, technology, and services platform for solar and storage buyers. Anza’s real-time market intel equips buyers with the essential data they need to get the best deals. Download Anza’s free Q2 Module Pricing Insights Report at go.anzarenewables.com/latitude
Catalyst is brought to you by Kraken, the advanced operating system for energy. Kraken is helping utilities offer excellent customer service and develop innovative products and tariffs through the connection and optimization of smart home energy assets. Already licensed by major players across the globe, including Origin Energy, E.ON, and EDF, Kraken can help you create a smarter, greener grid. Visit kraken.tech.
Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the global leader in integrated marketing, public relations, creative, and public affairs for energy and climate brands. If you're a startup, investor, or enterprise that's trying to make a name for yourself, Antenna Group's team of industry insiders is ready to help tell your story and accelerate your growth engine. Learn more at antennagroup.com. - Show more
