Nov 9, 2023 · 54m · catalyst
Mailbag episode! Interest rates, carbon dioxide removal, load growth, and more
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this 'Ask Me Anything' mailbag episode of Catalyst, host Shayle Kann and guest host Sarah Golden answer listener questions addressing surging electricity load growth, macroeconomic interest rate pressures, Inflation Reduction Act implementation challenges, and the evaluation of carbon dioxide removal technologies.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Shayle holds 72.2% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 7.4 Guest teaching 0.7 Guest disagreement 0.6 Shayle pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 33:39 Guest calls out host's non-answer
Sarah directly and humorously points out that Shayle's historical tangent about Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein did not actually answer the listener's question about volcanic solar impacts.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 25:58 Pushback on listener terminology conflationShayle pauses the listener's framing to firmly separate distributed energy resources from islandable microgrids before answering the question on grid bottlenecks.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 34:06 Guest redirects to real-world wildfire modelingSarah brings the conversation back on track from an urban legend about 1815 volcanoes to the tangible precedent of wildfire smoke suppressing solar generation and affecting capacity models.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 37:50 Host outlines 4-pillar CDR rubricShayle demonstrates deep expertise by breaking down the four necessary criteria (cost, scalability, durability, and verifiability) explaining why no single CDR technology has emerged as a clear winner.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Commercial Break: Bloom Energy, Engie, and Energy Hub | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | The opening segment consists of commercial sponsor messages followed by casual intro banter about Shayle's name, nominative determinism, and childhood rock collecting. | |
| Regional Electricity Load Growth and Data Centers | 8 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Shayle demonstrates strong domain knowledge detailing regional load growth drivers, contrasting gradual EV adoption S-curves against regional data center surges in Northern Virginia and Georgia. | |
| Falling Solar Module Prices and the IRA | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle explains solar module price cycles, IRA production versus investment tax credit dynamics, and the tension between cheap imported modules and domestic manufacturing incentives. | |
| IRA Implementation Progress and Carbon Pipeline Obstacles | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle analyzes delays in Treasury guidance for hydrogen alongside the regulatory and permitting roadblocks facing Midwest CO2 pipeline projects like Summit and Navigator. | |
| The Impact of High Interest Rates on Clean Energy | 7 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Shayle articulates the impact of macroeconomic interest rates on capital-intensive assets like offshore wind and residential solar, politely clarifying Sarah's summary regarding PPA unit economics. | |
| Rural Edge-of-Grid Decarbonization and Microgrid Dynamics | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Shayle pushes back against the premise that edge-of-grid towns should island completely, explaining why upgrading macrogrid capacity remains economically superior while utilizing microgrids purely for localized resilience. | |
| Distributed Energy Resources and Grid Valuation Mechanics | 8 | 1 | 1 | 3 | Shayle clarifies terminology between DERs and islandable microgrids, providing a technical breakdown of California's NEM reform and evening duck curve valuation. | |
| Commercial Break: Bloom Energy, Engie, and Energy Hub | 6 | 2 | 2 | 1 | Sarah playfully calls out Shayle for dodging a listener question about volcanic eruptions with an anecdote about Mary Shelley writing Frankenstein, leading to a discussion on wildfire smoke and grid reserve modeling. | |
| Evaluating Carbon Dioxide Removal Pathways and Verification | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Shayle delivers an authoritative framework for evaluating carbon removal technologies based on cost, scalability, durability, and MRV (measurement, reporting, and verification). | |
| European Energy Conglomerate Investments in U.S. Clean Tech | 8 | 1 | 1 | 2 | Shayle turns the table to ask Sarah for her journalistic perspective before analyzing structural differences between European utility conglomerates and US power companies. | |
| Climate Tech Venture Capital in the Global South | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Shayle discusses global climate tech venture investing, distinguishing global commoditized tech like steelmaking from regional markets like two-wheeler electrification, and explains the utility concept of 'least cost, best fit'. |
Statements from this episode (18)
Kann: Green hydrogen will bring regional clusters of grid connection requests
“I think coming in the next few years, green hydrogen is going to be another example that's also going to be sort of regionally focused in a few key regions for a number of reasons, and that's going to be a bunch of large projects all trying to get grid connect…”
Kann: Northern Virginia data center power queue exceeds current grid capacity
“Northern Virginia, where, like, there is a, the queue for new load coming from data centers alone, I think, is larger than the entire capacity of the system today in that region.”
Tech sector climate goals make data center load growth a net positive
“I generally think on balance, it's good because those customer sets tend to be particularly progressive when it comes to climate issues, and they're willing to put their money where their mouth is and take some risks that, that others will not.”
Kann: Google signed the first US enhanced geothermal PPA with Fervo
“The first PPA that ever got signed for enhanced geothermal in the United States from Fervo was with Google.”
Kann: Cost of delivered electricity matters more for solar than panel prices
“What matters at the end of the day for solar is not the cost of the panel. It's the cost of delivered electricity.”
Kann: High interest rates threaten solar far more than low panel prices
“I'm like more concerned about high interest rates impacting the solar market than I am about low module prices dampening domestic manufacturing. So on balance, I'll take lower panel prices.”
Kann: Offshore wind industry is reeling from higher interest rates
“That appears to be the straw that broke the camel's back, and like, the offshore wind industry is reeling, basically, as a result of that.”
Kann: Clean energy developers face a painful shakeout over next few years
“Some developers are going to lose a bunch of money because they price things, you know, rates that are untenable today. Like it's just going to be a pain, a painful shakeout at the asset level for some period of time. I don't know exactly how long, partially b…”
Kann: Residential solar market might contract over the next year
“Which the residential solar market between interest rates and some policy changes, particularly in California around net metering, that's a market that might be down over the next year. You know, relative to this year, and I think this year might be down relat…”
Kann: Going off-grid is never economical with existing macro grid access
“You just don't see that working out economically for any customer who has access to the macro grid.”
Kann: Distributed generation cannot fully solve grid generation turnover
“And I think the answer to that is, is yes. It's probably not a full-scale solution. We still need, the big picture reason why this is a challenge is that we're trying to turn over A massive fleet of electricity generation relatively quickly, because we're reti…”
Kann: California net metering reforms appropriately value grid-timed distributed energy
“In my mind, high level without sort of getting into the nuances of that specific policy, like that is appropriately valuing those resources. It's saying if you, if the resource can actually alleviate a challenge on the grid, which is a real thing in California…”
Grid models mistakenly treat recurring extreme weather as rare anomalies
“We've not yet woken up to how much we need to be modeling these more extreme weather events into electricity reserve allocation modeling, basically. There, there's a bunch of data around, so like Texas, another example of this, right? You know, where you see t…”
Kann: Clean energy transition increases grid reliance on increasingly volatile weather
“We are tethering ourselves to weather more in order to avoid the thing that we know is going to happen to weather, which is that it's going to get more volatile.”
Kann: Every carbon removal method fails on cost, scale, durability, or verifiability
“The reason for that is, the way that I Think about CDR is that you're looking, your mythical unicorn solution for removing CO two from the atmosphere has four characteristics. It is cheap, which is, you know, let's just call it sub a hundred dollars a ton, but…”
Kann: Cheaper nature-based carbon removal is harder to verify than engineered capture
“Generally speaking, the things that are cheaper today are harder to verify, because they tend to be nature-based. This is a broad strokes, but let's just, you know, I think this is true to a first approximation. And the things that are more expensive today ten…”
Kann: U.S. electric utilities operate domestically whereas European majors are global
“So if you think about U S based not oil and gas, but just like electricity companies, very few of them have significant operations outside the United States. AES would be an exception to that, but very few others. Whereas if you look at the European majors, an…”
Kann: Energy M&A flows almost exclusively from Europe into U.S. clean tech
“Added up on a ledger on one side, all the European energy companies that have acquired American clean energy enterprises of one kind or another, and then the American ones that have acquired Europeans, it would be a long list on one side and almost none on the…”