Jun 2, 2022 · 39m · catalyst
Climate tech’s surprising bottleneck – land access
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In this episode of Catalyst, host Shayle Kann and Energy Impact Partners' Andy Lubershane explore how physical land access, electric transmission siting, subsurface pore space, and mineral geography represent underappreciated bottlenecks in the global 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 36.1% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 5.1 Guest teaching 3.8 Guest disagreement 1.0 Shayle pushing back 1.0
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 17:25 Guest rejects net-zero planning assumptions
Andy forcefully argues that decarbonization scenario planners and the wider market are failing to contend with the intense public rejection and siting hurdles facing massive renewable buildouts.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 15:05 Host pushes back on raw land area focusShayle redirects the discussion away from raw solar acreage in places like the Mojave, insisting that interstate transmission lines are the true insurmountable siting barrier.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 33:20 Cropland expansion quiz schoolingAndy prompts Shayle to guess global agricultural land expansion over the past 38 years; when Shayle guesses a 50% expansion, Andy corrects him with the surprising fact that net growth was 0%.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 7:27 Host details solar conversion efficiency and BOS costsShayle demonstrates deep market expertise by stepping in to explain why module efficiency matters far beyond land area—specifically driving balance-of-systems costs.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Featured Podcast Recommendation: Reversing Climate Change | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Solo host intro and recommendation for the Reversing Climate Change podcast, followed by setting up the episode's land theme. As a monologue segment, all dynamic scores are zeroed. | |
| Historical Context: From Photosynthesis to Fossil Fuels | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Andy provides a long historical narrative on photosynthesis and energy density. Shayle demonstrates strong domain knowledge by contextualizing how conversion efficiency directly impacts balance-of-systems costs. | |
| The Land Footprint of Renewables and the Transmission Dilemma | 7 | 3 | 1 | 2 | Shayle intervenes to reframe the renewable land challenge, arguing that transmission siting and inter-regional wheeling are much harder barriers than raw generation land footprint. Andy completely agrees and elaborates on megawatt-miles. | |
| Alternative Transport: Clean Hydrogen and Pipeline Economics | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Shayle prompts alternatives to electric transmission, and Andy breaks down the volumetric transport economics of hydrogen pipelines being three to five times cheaper than power lines per unit energy. | |
| Industrial Load Relocation and Thermal Storage | 7 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Shayle articulates the concept of industrial grid defection and co-locating heavy industry near remote generation. Both host and guest cite their fund's specific portfolio investments in thermal storage and hydrogen. | |
| Underground Pore Space: Geological Storage for Hydrogen and Carbon | 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Andy introduces underground pore space rights and technical constraints for hydrogen and carbon sequestration. Shayle adds color regarding the ongoing land grab for salt caverns and geologic storage. | |
| Metals, Minerals, and the Geopolitics of the Transition | 5 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Andy differentiates between bulk structural materials like steel/cement and critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, and nickel that concentrate geopolitical power around specific geographic locations. | |
| Biomass, Agricultural Land Competition, and BECCS | 5 | 7 | 2 | 1 | Andy quizzes Shayle on net agricultural land expansion over his lifetime; Shayle guesses an increase of 50%, but Andy reveals it is net zero due to synthetic fertilizer intensification. Andy then details limits on dedicated biomass crops. | |
| Conclusion: Assessing Land as a Decarbonization Bottleneck | 5 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Shayle asks Andy to rank land among decarbonization bottlenecks. Andy underscores his skepticism that net-zero scenario models have properly accounted for permitting and public acceptance hurdles. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Lubershane: Solar PV and motors require 50x less land than animal power
“But the total efficiency, if you take solar PV and then run that electricity through an electric motor to do useful work, It's on the order of probably 15 to 20%. So the upshot here is we need like 50 times less land today to get the same amount of energy, use…”
Lubershane: Net-zero scenarios require tripling US electric transmission capacity
“The same studies which show, you know, that level of wind and solar Deployment and land consumption for in, for, you know, a net zero scenario end up with something on the order of three times or more than three times the number of megawatt miles, which is a w…”
Maine voters rejected a transmission line delivering hydropower to Massachusetts
“We just had a citizen referendum that, that rejected a transmission line moving through Maine to deliver hydropower to Massachusetts.”
Lubershane: Pipeline energy transport is 3-5x cheaper than electric transmission
“Moving energy by pipeline historically even in, you know, in the past 10 years when there's been a lot of pushback on new natural gas pipeline development in some parts of the country. You know, it's still typically less than three times, often less than five …”
Lubershane: Clean hydrogen's best use is replacing transmission lines via pipelines
“I really think that one of the highest and best uses for clean hydrogen is as a transmission mechanism, where you can go out to these really remote areas where no one's gonna, gonna care as much. Your hypothetical Mojave Desert example, build just incredible a…”
Kann: Active land grab underway for salt domes and CCS sites
“If you're looking for salt domes to store hydrogen, there's absolutely a bunch of, I don't know what to call it, but there's a bunch of exploration and there's a land grab around. There are only so many of those really big salt domes. Same thing you're startin…”
Lubershane: Wind requires 7-8x more steel and cement per GWh than gas
“It takes more steel. It takes more cement to build a wind farm than it does on, on a, you know, a normalized basis that the amount of material to produce a gigawatt hour, say of energy per year it, you know, we're on the order of probably something like seven …”
Lubershane: Renewable energy demand will marginally impact global steel production
“The total impact at least according to the analysis we've done on say the steel market is meaningful and especially maybe meaningful in, in some regional contexts, North America being one of them, but it's kind of marginal in terms of sort of global steel prod…”
Lubershane: Critical mineral supply is sufficient but concentrated, reshaping geopolitics
“There's rarer metals, lithium being the by far most obvious one. But also things like cobalt and zinc and nickel where You know, we see in most cases global supply being sufficient to meet the needs of the energy transition, but just an enormous concentration …”
Lubershane: Net global agricultural land area has remained flat for 40 years
“We, we've increased total crop land by zero. Because we've grown so much more efficient. Yes. On net, the exact same amount of agricultural land, globally speaking, that we used when I was born.”
Lubershane: Global nitrogen and phosphate fertilizer use nearly doubled since 1984
“The amount of fertilizer we use in both nitrogen fertilizer and phosphate-based fertilizer has increased by about that same percentage. So it's about doubled not quite over that period.”
Lubershane: Decarbonization will trigger intense competition for waste biomass
“You need new dedicated land growing crops for that biomass, and I, you know, jury's still out, right, but I'm skeptical we're going to see that happen, and what that means is actually you have a run not, not on new land, but probably a run on what's called, wh…”
Lubershane: Markets underestimate siting and permitting risks for net-zero renewables
“I really just don't believe that the market has digested the public acceptance and siting and environmental permitting risks to net zero scale. Renewables and transmission.”
Lubershane: Renewables alone cannot decarbonize power; high-density sources like nuclear are needed
“I believe that renewables are not all we'll ever need for power sector decarbonization. Like, I do think we need some additional form of very power-dense, you know, something that can replace coal power from a land use standpoint. Something on, you know, new, …”