May 12, 2022 · 52m · catalyst
Shayle’s “ask me anything” episode
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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 special mailbag episode of Catalyst, host Shayle Khan and guest co-host Sarah Golden answer listener questions covering renewable cost curves, biomass limitations, grid infrastructure bottlenecks, and policy frameworks for deep decarbonization.
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 77.8% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 7.0 Guest teaching 0.0 Guest disagreement 0.1 Shayle pushing back 0.6
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 39:47 Sarah gently pressing on finite engineering resources
In a very collegial episode, Sarah offers the closest thing to pushback by suggesting that engineers should unite behind all climate solutions rather than pitting direct air capture against mitigation.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 40:56 Shayle rejecting extreme framing on Bitcoin emissionsShayle rejects the premise of the audience question, arguing that Bitcoin mining is not threatening to erase all clean energy progress and is better understood as standard inflexible data load.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 49:24 Sarah revealing the numbered list drinking gameSarah catches Shayle completely off guard by revealing that his wife invented a drinking game centered on his habitual use of numbered lists during discussions.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 15:10 Shayle detailing novel agricultural decarbonization pathwaysShayle demonstrates deep technical mastery explaining Haber-Bosch market concentration, distributed electrochemical nitrogen synthesis via Nitricity, and microbial nitrogen-fixing solutions.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Welcoming Co-Host Sarah Golden for the Mailbag Format | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle and Sarah banter about how she invited herself to co-host the mailbag episode. The tone is entirely friendly, warm, and lighthearted with zero tension or schooling. | |
| Solar Cost Trajectories and Renewable Deployment Challenges | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Shayle breaks down complex dynamics driving near-term solar cost plateaus, including commodity inflation, trade disputes, and interconnection queue bottlenecks, before explaining long-term trends. | |
| Overlooked Bottlenecks in the Clean Energy Transition | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Shayle articulates unappreciated transition bottlenecks, highlighting land use constraints, bioreactor shortages, and electrical grid infrastructure scaling limits. | |
| Fertilizer Innovation, Geopolitics, and Agricultural Emissions | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle displays exceptional domain expertise detailing Haber-Bosch facility centralization, geopolitical impacts on natural gas inputs, and novel microbial/electrochemical nitrogen alternatives. | |
| Biomass Utilization Pathways and Land Use Concerns | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle explains the complexity of biomass utilization pathways, comparing waste biomass pyrolysis and bio-oil injection against purpose-built crops and land competition. | |
| Sustainable Aviation Fuels and Synthetic Liquid E-Fuels | 8 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Shayle compares the scaling timelines and long-term ceilings of bio-based SAFs versus synthetic e-fuels, tempering expectations about immediate replacement capacities. | |
| Mid-Episode Sponsor Messages from Bloom Energy and Engie | 7 | 0 | 0 | 1 | Following mid-roll sponsor reads, Sarah brings up federal procurement and Shayle analyzes how government purchasing can jumpstart early markets while cautioning against incumbent lock-in. | |
| Technology Learning Curves: Manufactured Products versus Engineered Projects | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle provides a conceptual framework distinguishing manufactured, modular products with steep learning curves from bespoke engineered projects like traditional nuclear. | |
| Direct Air Capture Scaling and Grid Interdependencies | 8 | 0 | 1 | 1 | Shayle discusses DAC sensitivity to electricity prices over grid carbon intensity, offering a balanced middle view between carbon removal absolutists and skeptical engineers. | |
| Cryptocurrency Energy Consumption and Carbon Offsets | 7 | 0 | 0 | 2 | Shayle pushes back on the listener premise that Bitcoin will erase all clean energy progress, contextualizing crypto mining as static baseload load similar to data centers, and critiques low-quality offsets. | |
| Podcast Preparation Process and Investment Research Focus | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle explains his investment research process and podcast topic selection, discussing how deep dives into specific technologies feed his mental bank of venture hypotheses. | |
| Science Fiction Depictions of Future Energy Systems | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Shayle and Sarah reflect on energy tropes in science fiction and joke about Sarah's drinking game based on Shayle's numbered lists in a jovial wrap-up. |
Statements from this episode (25)
Kann: Solar power prices may stay steady or rise over next few years
“Though the long-term trajectory for solar is probably still going to be cost declines it's possible for the next couple of years, at least, we will see steady to increasing Prices for solar projects or for electricity from solar”
Kann: Soft costs are largest remaining area for US solar cost reductions
“In the US, soft costs remain the biggest area to run downward.”
Kann: Solar and wind produce cheapest bids in most open utility RFPs
“Solar is cheap enough now that in most places, Solar and wind, I should say. Most places it is true today that if a utility or somebody issues an open RFP and just says, I want the cheapest power I can get, like, give me the cheapest kilowatt hours, the respon…”
Kann: Land availability will become a major bottleneck for decarbonization
“Land, I think, will become a big one. Kind of no matter how you slice it in terms of what the big swaths of greenhouse gas emissions mitigation Solutions are going to be. They're going to be pretty land intensive. Solar and wind obviously are very land intensi…”
Kann: Electrical infrastructure will bottleneck cross-sector decarbonization
“My biggest fear is that we will hit a, an infrastructure bottleneck for decarbonization of a bunch of other sectors. So again, to the point of like, Think, think of how much renewables we need to build today just to decarbonize the grid. And then add to that t…”
Kann: Synthetic biology faces a substantial bioreactor capacity shortage
“We're already facing today a fairly substantial bioreactor capacity shortage in that market.”
Kann: Global ammonia production comes from roughly 300 Haber-Bosch facilities
“There are only three hundred-some Haber-Bosch plants in the world. So all of the ammonia that we produce basically today comes from like three hundred-some facilities.”
Kann: Nitrogen fertilizers account for roughly 6.5% of global emissions
“Nitrogen fertilizers represents like six and a half percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Like, one and a half percent from the production of it, and then another five percent or so from the application of it.”
Kann: Sustainable fertilizer tech will take 5–10 years to scale
“It's one of these things that I think will help save the world and, In five or 10 years, but probably isn't going to help solve the Ukraine crisis immediately.”
Kann: Subsidizing corn for ethanol was a bad idea for the climate
“This is the issue that we created with all of our ethanol subsidies. We grow a lot of corn, use it exclusively to Produce ethanol. I think generally that is viewed as having been a bad idea from a climate perspective, at least.”
Kann: Scaling biomass technologies will face intense competition for feedstock
“Anything that uses biomass as it scales up at some point is going to compete with alternative uses for that biomass. So if you're trying to source exclusively waste biomass, you need to be the best solution for whoever holds the keys to that waste biomass, be …”
Kann: Light-duty passenger transport will go entirely electric
“I think we don't end up using liquid fuels in light duty passenger transportation, right? That all goes electric.”
Kann: Bio-based fuels scale faster today due to existing manufacturing capacity
“Bio-based fuels scale faster today, right? Because they, we know how to produce them at scale already. We, you know, the inputs exist. There's a ton of manufacturing capacity ramping up right now”
Kann: Synthetic e-fuels may win long-term if input and process costs drop
“It's more of a cost problem, because as it stands today, basically, like, both input costs, hydrogen and CO₂, are too high, and then the process costs, turning those things into e-fuels, are too high. So you've got to solve for all three of those things and sc…”
Kann: Sustainable aviation fuel will ultimately displace less than 50% of demand
“What portion of 100% can we get to with sustainable aviation fuel? I don't have the number for you exactly because it's contingent on a bunch of these other Sort of like upstream questions, I think, but I don't think it's 50%, ultimately.”
Kann: Thirty new sustainable aviation fuel plants would immediately sell out
“There is more demand than there is supply for sustainable aviation fuel at the moment. If we had 30 new SAF plants, they would be selling at full capacity.”
Kann: Carbon removal cannot reach gigaton scale without policy mandates
“So the obvious example of this is carbon removal, where I think anybody who looks at this would admit that in the longterm, this market does not scale without substantial policy intervention. Like this has to become mandated in some fashion or another. Otherwi…”
Kann: The US government buys more cement and building materials than anyone
“There's new mandates around government procurement of building materials, cement, that are going to be a really big deal because the government buys a ton of that stuff more than anybody else, in fact.”
Kann: Modular manufacturability drives steep clean-tech learning curves
“I'm probably not the world's greatest expert on this question, but I think the fundamental thing that drives these learning curves is sort of manufacturability. Like, can you scale up manufacturing of the thing at, by number, not just by scale? So in the conte…”
Kann: Nuclear fission struggles on learning curves because it is an engineered project
“I think that's where things like nuclear fission have struggled in the past. It's not really a manufactured technology. It's an engineered project. And it's tougher to get the kind of learning rates with stuff like that.”
Kann: Hydrogen electrolyzers are already showing manufacturing learning curve declines
“I think we will see absolutely are already seeing the same thing in electrolyzers. Today for hydrogen, green hydrogen production.”
Kann: Direct air capture requires 1-cent rather than 10-cent power to scale
“If you have 10 cent per kilowatt hour power, no direct air capture system is going to be anywhere near in the money, no matter what you define in the money as. If you have one cent per kilowatt hour power, then it looks really, really promising.”
Kann: Limiting warming to 1.5°C or 2°C requires gigatons of carbon removal
“There is no realistic pathway for us to get to one and a half degrees Celsius of temperature rise or even really two degrees without substantial carbon, carbon removal. There's just no way we're going to do it. And substantial being gigatons.”