Catalyst with Shayle Kann
Catalyst with Shayle Kann

More 2026 trends: Solar costs, oil oversupply, and the startup slump

January 22, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

🎙️ The Voices & The Context

  • The Format: Casual interview-style chat walking through Nat Bullard's 200-slide data deck on global energy trends, decarbonization, and market realities.
  • The Key Players:
    • Guest: Nat Bullard, longtime climate tech analyst, writer, and co-founder of Halcyon (AI-assisted research platform); famous for data-driven insights on energy transitions.
    • Host: Shale Kahn, leads early-stage venture strategy at Energy Impact Partners; sharp, optimistic banter with Nat on investments and trends.
  • The Vibe: Educational and optimistic, blending dense data dives with fun bets, witty asides, and "nobody knows anything" humility—energetic yet grounded.

🗝️ Key Themes & Topics

The episode unpacks real-world energy data amid hype around AI/data centers, politics, and electrification, emphasizing global trends over rhetoric.

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What you'll learn

  • 1 (00:00) **🎙️ Introduction: Nat Bullard**
  • 2 (02:00) **Clean Energy Public Market Performance**
  • 3 (04:37) **Decline in Energy Startup Investment**
  • 4 (07:15) **Redefining Energy Companies**
  • 5 (08:15) **Global Oil Oversupply**
  • 6 (11:40) **US Solar System Costs Rising**
  • 7 (13:48) **Boom in Australian Residential Batteries**

+ Full timestamped outline available in the app

Show Notes

We are back for Part 2 of Shayle’s double header conversation with the veteran energy analyst Nat Bullard, dissecting his annual presentation on the state of decarbonization.

If you missed it, we recommend you go back and listen to Part 1, which was released last week.

In this episode, Shayle and Nat shift their focus from data centers to exploring other intriguing trends found in the data that Nat assembled—from the surprising resilience of clean energy stocks to the rising costs of solar installations in the US.

Shayle and Nat dig into more topics including:

  • Why the S&P Global Clean Energy Transition Index outperformed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq last year

  • The steep drop in U.S. energy startup investment—from $8 billion in 2022 to just over $2 billion in 2025—and why Shayle thinks 2026 will see a massive rebound

  • The impacts of an enormous oversupply of oil

  • China’s skyrocketing share of global vehicle production

  • The remarkable pace of residential battery storage adoption in Australia


    Resources

  • Nat Bullard’s full 2026 presentation

  • Catalyst: 2026 trends: Gas turbines, Texas’ load queue, and China electrifies

  • Catalyst: 2025 trends: aerosols, oil demand, and carbon removal

  • Catalyst: More 2025 trends: DeepSeek, plug-in hybrids, and curtailment

  • Latitude: The year resiliency investment began to go mainstream 
    Credits: Hosted by Shayle Kann. Produced and edited by Max Savage Levenson. Original music and engineering by Sean Marquand. Stephen Lacey is our executive editor.

Catalyst is brought to you by Uplight. Uplight activates energy customers and their connected devices to generate, shift, and save energy—improving grid resilience and energy affordability while accelerating decarbonization. Learn how Uplight is helping utilities unlock flexible load at scale at uplight.com. 


Catalyst is brought to you by Antenna Group, the public relations and strategic marketing agency of choice for climate, energy, and infrastructure leaders. If y

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