Catalyst with Shayle Kann

Soil is a massive carbon sink that’s stored away emissions for centuries. But years of destructive farming practices have released much of this carbon. Could incentivizing farmers help restore—and expand—soil’s carbon-carrying capacity?

In theory, yes. But the market for soil carbon credits—literally paying farmers to improve their practices—needs serious reform.

In this episode, Shayle talks with Freya Chay, program manager for carbon removal at CarbonPlan. The fundamental problem is that the existing carbon credits don’t do what they say they will do: permanently lock away additional carbon. Freya and Shayle survey the big challenges of the market and explore potential fixes, covering questions like:

• How do we measure—using models, samplings and satellites—the amount of carbon in a plot of soil?
• What tools do we have to make sure the carbon will stay in the ground, such as buffer pools and ton-year accounting?
• The additionality question: Without the credit, would the carbon have been captured anyway? Or would it have remained locked away anyway?
• What role could third-party grading systems play in differentiating high-quality credits from low-quality ones?

Resources:

• CarbonPlan: A buyer’s guide to soil carbon offsets
• CarbonPlan: Unpacking ton-year accounting
• Canary Media: Carbon storage gets dirty: The movement to sequester CO2 in soils
• Sylvera: Carbon Credit Ratings: Frameworks & Processes White Paper

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Antenna Group. For 25 years, Antenna has partnered with leading clean-economy innovators to build their brands and accelerate business growth. If you're a startup, investor, enterprise, or innovation ecosystem that's creating positive change, Antenna is ready to power your impact. Visit antennagroup.com to learn more.

Solar Power International and Energy Storage International are returning in-person this year as part of RE+. Come join everyone in Anaheim for the largest, B2B clean energy event in North America. Catalyst listeners can receive 15% off a full conference, non-member pass using promo code CANARY15. Register here.

The metals used to make batteries are in hot demand. In 2021, the price of one form of lithium skyrocketed by over 400%. Automakers are racing to lock up supply deals for key minerals as they roll out new electric-vehicle models. And the market value of companies with mining assets, or new technologies to unlock them, has skyrocketed.

What’s behind this scramble for metals and what does it mean for the energy transition?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Kurt House, chief executive officer and co-founder of KoBold Metals. Kobold uses artificial intelligence to discover and characterize new sources of key battery metals.

Kurt and Shayle survey five key materials of the energy transition — lithium, nickel, copper, cobalt and rare earth metals. They compare the roles of each one in different types of batteries and discuss how the changing battery cell chemistries are shaping metal markets. Kurt explains the different factors shaping supply, including recycling, new mineral discoveries and shifting geopolitics.

We want to hear from you! Take our quick survey for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. This will help us bring you more relevant content.

Catalyst is brought to you by Arcadia. Arcadia allows innovators, businesses and communities to break the fossil fuel monopoly through its technology platform, Arc. Join Arcadia’s mission and find out how you or your business can help turn a fully decarbonized grid into a reality at arcadia.com/catalyst.

Catalyst is supported by Advanced Energy Economy. AEE is on the front lines of transforming policy that accelerates the move to 100 percent clean energy and electrified transportation in America. To learn how your business can play a key role in transforming policy and expanding markets, visit aee.net/join.

A massive green hydrogen project in Utah has won a $504.4 million conditional loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office. The project, called Advanced Clean Energy Storage (ACES), will generate hydrogen from renewables and store it deep underground in what’s called a salt dome. ACES will use that stored hydrogen to generate electricity in a hybrid power plant, running on both natural gas and hydrogen.

ACES is one of the many planned hydrogen hubs in the U.S., and once completed it would be one of the largest in the country. The loan will finance an initial 220 megawatts of hydrogen production and 300 gigawatt hours of storage.

What did it take to put this deal together, and what does it say about the future of hydrogen hubs more broadly?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Jigar Shah, director of the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office (LPO) about the project. The LPO is the government agency behind the conditional loan guarantee.

Shayle and Jigar talk about what made this particular project attractive to the LPO. They talk about why the salt dome storage was essential to making the project work, and the other uses for hydrogen beyond power, such as a feedstock for ammonia production and other heavy industries. They also break down the difficulties in transporting hydrogen and the need to site hydrogen production near consumption.

Catalyst is brought to you by Arcadia. Arcadia allows innovators, businesses and communities to break the fossil fuel monopoly through its technology platform, Arc. Join Arcadia’s mission and find out how you or your business can help turn a fully decarbonized grid into a reality at arcadia.com/catalyst.

Catalyst is supported by Advanced Energy Economy. AEE is on the front lines of transforming policy that accelerates the move to 100 percent clean energy and electrified transportation in America. To learn how your business can play a key role in transforming policy and expanding markets, visit aee.net/join.

Can investors win by betting on early-stage innovations in hard-to-decarbonize sectors such as energy, transportation, agriculture and heavy industry?

The answer doesn’t matter only to venture capitalists. If you believe that we need fundamental science and engineering innovation to climb our way out of the climate crisis, it's an important question.

Plenty of reasonable observers say the answer is no. Case in point: The 2016 MIT report Venture Capital and Cleantech: The Wrong Model for Clean Energy Innovation by Ben Gaddy and Varun Sivaram.

But things have changed since “Cleantech 1.0,” the first wave of investment in the sector that resulted in a lot of bankruptcies -- but also some big hits like Tesla, Sunrun, and Nest.

Capital is flowing back into the sector at stunning rates, as venture investors all turn their attention to climatetech. So do the arguments against deeptech climate venture capital hold up today?

To explore this question, Shayle turns to Ramez Naam, another veteran of Cleantech 1.0. Ramez and Shayle go point by point, covering questions such as: Does climatetech take too much capital to scale? Is the time to commercialization too long? Is the exit landscape still relatively unattractive? Will this new climatetech boom lead to another bust?

Catalyst is a co-production of Post Script Media and Canary Media.

Catalyst is supported by Atmos Financial. Atmos offers FDIC-insured checking and savings accounts that only invest in climate-positive assets like renewables, green construction, and regenerative agriculture. Modern banking for climate-conscious people. Get an account in minutes at joinatmos.com.

Support strong climate journalism! Donate to Canary Media to celebrate its one-year anniversary.

Conventional livestock agriculture, especially beef production, is a huge climate problem. It makes up 14.5% of global greenhouse gas emissions.

But there’s good news: alternative proteins are hot. Brands like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat rely on alternative proteins to replicate the taste and texture of conventional meat and dairy – but with drastically less carbon pollution.

Alternative proteins are starting to show up in fast food, fine dining and grocery stores. They’re garnering big-time investment, and they have the potential to shake up the conventional livestock industry.

But the term alternative proteins includes a smorgasbord of technologies. What are they and how do they work? And where do we need research and development?

In this episode, Shayle talks to Dr. Liz Specht, vice president of science and technology at the Good Food Institute. Liz explains the three main pillars of alternative protein technology – plant-based proteins, microbial fermentation and cultivated (or lab-grown) meat. Shayle and Liz discuss the technical bottlenecks to production, like addressing the global shortage of bioreactors, developing new crops and deriving new cell lines. And they talk about designing alternative proteins that are tastier and healthier than their conventional counterparts. Plus, Liz recommends her favorite alternative meat to try this weekend.

Catalyst is supported by Advanced Energy Economy. AEE is on the front lines of transforming policy that accelerates the move to 100 percent clean energy and electrified transportation in America. To learn how your business can play a key role in transforming policy and expanding markets, visit aee.net/join.

Catalyst is brought to you by Arcadia. Arcadia allows innovators, businesses and communities to break the fossil fuel monopoly through its technology platform, Arc. Join Arcadia’s mission and find out how you or your business can help turn a fully decarbonized grid into a reality at arcadia.com/catalyst.

We want to hear from you! Take our quick survey for a chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card. This will help us bring you more relevant content.