Feb 2, 2023 · 48m · catalyst
Mailbag episode! Biotech, layoffs, battery recycling and more
0:00 / 0:00
gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this mailbag episode of Catalyst, host Shayle Kann and co-host Sarah Golden answer listener questions covering climate tech finance, biological solutions, solar geoengineering, grid transmission bottlenecks, battery recycling, and fertilizer decarbonization. Together, they evaluate emerging technologies and debunk common misconceptions surrounding the economics of the clean energy transition.
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 78.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 6.7 Guest teaching 0.2 Guest disagreement 0.2 Shayle pushing back 1.1
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 31:50 Playful challenge on draft judging
Sarah teasingly undercuts Shayle's draft confidence by declaring upfront that his wife would ensure he loses any fantasy-style barrier draft.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 35:35 Rejecting zero marginal cost energy premiseShayle explicitly refuses the listener's premise, explaining that spot solar generation trends do not translate to zero marginal delivered electricity costs.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 30:31 Framing socially constructed barriersSarah distills why transmission and permitting are uniquely intractable compared to hardware problems, leading Shayle to concede she articulated the core issue better than he did.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 41:35 Quantifying agricultural nitrous oxide emissionsShayle demonstrates authoritative domain mastery by citing global emission percentages to explain why soil nitrous oxide is a far larger issue than fertilizer manufacturing.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Banter on Guest Rapport and Audio Self-Listening | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 | The episode opens with lighthearted banter between Shayle and Sarah regarding their prior recording chemistry and habits around re-listening to their own podcast audio. | |
| Biological Solutions and Genetic Engineering in Green Tech | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle delivers an extensive overview of synthetic biology in climate tech, contrasting biological pathways against electrochemistry and citing commercial examples like Solugen. | |
| Controversy and Regulation in Solar Geoengineering | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle details the economics, governance challenges, and geopolitical risks of solar radiation management, discussing the controversial unpermitted test by startup Make Sunsets. | |
| Deep Tech Definitions and the Project Finance Bottleneck | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle defines deep tech as physical hardware innovation and details the structural financing bottlenecks for first-of-a-kind (FOAK) commercial facilities. | |
| Inflation Reduction Act Impact on First-of-a-Kind Facilities | 8 | 0 | 1 | 2 | Shayle analyzes how the IRA and DOE Loan Programs Office support FOAK projects, and offers a measured counter to the notion that tech sector layoffs are an unalloyed good for climate tech. | |
| Sponsor Message: Bloom Energy Fast On-Site Power | 8 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Following an ad read, Shayle systematically evaluates seven clean energy transition bottlenecks, citing LBNL grid interconnection cost research before endorsing Sarah's synthesis on non-market barriers. | |
| Battery Recycling Limitations in Near-Term Minerals Supply | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle explains the mathematical lag in EV battery recycling, demonstrating why existing scrap volume cannot satisfy virgin mineral demand during rapid adoption phases. | |
| Zero Marginal Cost Energy and the Viability of Desalination | 8 | 0 | 0 | 6 | Shayle directly challenges the listener question's core premise that marginal energy costs will collapse to zero, differentiating generation costs from 24/7 delivered transmission expenses. | |
| Decarbonizing Fertilizers and Tackling Soil Nitrous Oxide | 8 | 0 | 0 | 2 | Shayle contrasts upstream fertilizer manufacturing emissions with the larger, harder-to-abate problem of field-level nitrous oxide emissions from soil application. | |
| Personal Travel Perspectives and the Climate Lens | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Sarah and Shayle conclude the mailbag with a personal conversation on upcoming travel to India and whether they filter everyday life through a climate lens. |
Statements from this episode (16)
Kann: Synbio chemical startups succeed in high-value, low-volume niches
“What we've seen so far is some companies having a lot of success producing sort of More complex chemicals that are higher value, but smaller volume commodities. So solugen would be the sort of classic example of this. This is a private venture backed company w…”
Kann: Commodity chemical decarbonization may favor electrochemistry over synbio
“So we're talking about stuff like ethylene and propanol, a bunch of these big commodity chemical categories, which are much bigger markets, bigger decarbonization impact ultimately, but less complex molecules to create and processes where sort of traditional c…”
Kann: Solar radiation management offers ultra-cheap cooling compared to carbon removal
“One of the things that we do know as pretty likely is that it's possible you could do solar radiation management that would deliver substantial reduction in warming for a very, very, very low cost relative to all the other approaches that we're seeing out ther…”
Kann: Backlash against unfettered solar geoengineering is probably the right move
“I think a swift regulatory or political backlash to, like, totally unfettered solar geoengineering is probably the right thing.”
Kann: 90% of FOAK climate tech projects are funded with VC equity
“If you're an innovative company with a new technology, you need to bring a market, and you need to build the first One of them ever. You still, I, 90% of the time at the moment, I think, end up paying for it with your, the money you've raised from venture capi…”
Kann: FOAK project finance funds struggle to scale due to high diligence costs
“You have a hard time getting to scale, because the whole point is that this technology is going to graduate from the type of thing you would do to the type of thing that, that JP Morgan would do. And so you, if you're the one focused on just the sort of first …”
Kann: DOE Loan Programs Office will not take heavy technology risk
“The LPO is really well set up for big stuff, And even there, first of all, you know, they're not intending to take a ton of technology risk either, so you have to be fairly mature and at a fairly large scale for the LPO funding to make sense for you.”
Kann: Climate Tech VC Funding Has Declined Slower Than Broader Tech
“What I will say is that I would say climate tech funding has been slower to decline than traditional tech funding in the venture world. So there was a quicker, bigger kind of turn, downturn in broader tech world than there was in climate tech.”
Kann: Tech Layoffs Accelerating Talent Migration Into Climate Tech
“There already was a big wave of talent coming from traditional tech into climate tech that was happening. It's been happening for years. There've been all these great organizations spun up specifically to help people who are, you know, really high caliber indi…”
Kann: PJM interconnection costs surged 2x to 8x over three years
“There's actually just a study, I think maybe last week or a couple weeks ago that came out from, I think, Lawrence Berkeley National Labs that that found that permitting, I'm sorry, interconnection costs in PJM, which is the mid-Atlantic region of the US, but …”
Kann: Permitting is the single biggest bottleneck facing decarbonization
“I think if you forced me to pick, I would probably pick permitting just because it will affect a broader swath of the market.”
Kann: Markets solve supply chain bottlenecks, but not permitting or transmission
“The rest of these, I think, not that I'm like a
Pure Chicago-style economists, but I think the market ultimately solves most of them.
Transmission and permitting don't fall into a category that the market ultimately solves, necessarily, because, as you said,…”
Kann: Battery recycling cannot meet the majority of critical mineral demand today
“I mean, I think the short answer is that you, there is not enough supply of recyclable batteries today to make up for the majority or even close to the majority of the need for critical minerals.”
Kann: Rising transmission costs prevent delivered electricity prices from falling overall
“The second point is there's a difference between the marginal cost of produced electrons and the marginal cost of delivered energy. And this is where the trend lines have been really distinct, where the marginal cost of production could be going down, but the …”
Kann: Startups relying on zero-cost energy must show positive unit economics today
“We see a lot of startups who are doing something where their sort of fundamental assumption is marginal cost of energy is going towards zero, and maybe that, that could be true over a longer time horizon, but show me how you can deliver positive unit economics…”