Catalyst Cooperative

What Catalyst Cooperative does

Catalyst Cooperative is a Boulder, Colorado-based worker-owned cooperative, founded in late 2016, that builds and maintains the Public Utility Data Liberation (PUDL) project — an open-source Python ETL pipeline that ingests, cleans, standardizes, validates, and publishes US electricity-sector data from federal agencies (EIA Forms 860/861/923/176, FERC Forms 1/2/714/EQR, EPA CEMS, PHMSA, ISO/RTO, MSHA). The pipeline integrates these sources into a unified database with consistent cross-agency identifiers, addressing the practical reality that public utility data is poorly documented, released in inconsistent formats, and otherwise only available through expensive commercial vendors. PUDL outputs are distributed as Apache Parquet files on AWS S3 (AWS Open Data Registry), SQLite databases on Zenodo, a web-based PUDL Data Viewer, and interactive Kaggle notebooks, all under MIT software and CC BY 4.0 data licenses.

Catalyst generates revenue through three streams: (1) fee-for-service consulting and custom data engineering for clean energy advocates, environmental NGOs, researchers, journalists, and select for-profit clients, with discounted or pro-bono rates for grassroots organizations; (2) the PUDL Sustainers Program, a recurring subscription tier launched in 2022 with inaugural Gigawatt-tier members Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and GridLab; and (3) grants from foundations including the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (Open Energy Data for All program), NSF (POSE Phase I, 2024), the Mozilla Foundation (2024 Technology Fund cohort), and Climate Change AI (Innovation Grant). Named collaborators include RMI (Utility Transition Hub, Optimus), Energy Innovation (Coal Cost Crossover 2.0), Vibrant Clean Energy (WIS:dom model), Carbon Tracker, Singularity Energy/OGEI, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, PowerGenome, and UC Davis.

The organization operates as a fully remote cooperative of 7 active members distributed across North America, with a co-founder/President (Christina Gosnell), Treasurer (Zane Selvans), Vice President (Austen Sharpe), Secretary (Kathryn Mazaitis), and a second President per the team page (Dazhong Xia). The cooperative is funded entirely through grants, sustainers, and consulting revenue, with no disclosed venture capital or private equity investment. As of 2025, PUDL data was accessed by 24,000 unique IPs from cloud storage, 577 registered Data Viewer users, 70+ academic institutions, and cited in 14 academic publications.

Name

Catalyst Cooperative

Legal name

Catalyst Cooperative

Website

https://catalyst.coop

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

1–10 employees

Short description

Catalyst Cooperative is a worker-owned cooperative that builds and maintains PUDL, an open-source ETL pipeline integrating US federal energy data (EIA, FERC, EPA) for use by academic researchers, clean energy NGOs, and select commercial clients, funded by grants, the PUDL Sustainers Program, and consulting services.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Energy Data Analytics Software

NAICS

Software Publishers (5132)

SIC

Electric & Other Services Combined (4931)

akta.pro primary industry

Market Standards & Methodology Infrastructure (Standards bodies, methodologies, program rule systems) (EUABAAAH)

Keywords

• Open source energy data
• Electricity data ETL
• Public utility data
• Clean energy research
• Utility regulatory data

Headquarters

HQ city

Boulder

HQ country

United States

HQ region

North America

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure

Revenue model

1. Consulting & Custom Data Services: Hourly fee-for-service consulting work for custom data wrangling, custom dataset compilation, analysis, web scraping, OCR, and data product building. Clients include clean energy advocates, environmental non-profits, researchers, journalists, and for-profit companies. Also includes discounted or pro-bono support for grassroots activist organizations.
2. PUDL Sustainers Program: Ongoing membership/sponsorship program for organizations that rely heavily on PUDL data. Launched in 2025 with inaugural Gigawatt-tier sustainers RMI and GridLab. Sustainers receive closer relationships, input on roadmap, and assurance of ongoing data reliability and updates.
3. Grants & Foundation Funding: Catalyst receives grants from foundations including Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NSF POSE, Climate Change AI Innovation Grant, Mozilla Technology Fund, and others to fund specific development work (new dataset integrations, documentation improvements, community building, entity matching tools).

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels6 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

Catalyst Cooperative operates the Public Utility Data Liberation (PUDL) project, an open-source Python ETL pipeline that automatically cleans, integrates, validates, and publishes US electricity sector data from federal agencies (EIA, FERC, EPA, PHMSA, ISO/RTO, MSHA) into unified, standardized datasets. It distributes the data as SQLite databases and Apache Parquet files via AWS S3, Zenodo, a web-based PUDL Data Viewer, and Kaggle notebooks. Beyond the core open-source PUDL product, Catalyst sells fee-based custom data engineering and data analysis services and offers the PUDL Sustainers Program subscription for organizational users.

Product overview

Catalyst Cooperative operates as a worker-owned cooperative offering the Public Utility Data Liberation (PUDL) project as its core open-source product—a Python ETL pipeline that automatically cleans, integrates, validates, and publishes US energy data from federal agencies (EIA, FERC, EPA, PHMSA, MSHA, ISO/RTO). PUDL distributes data via SQLite databases, Apache Parquet files on AWS S3, Zenodo archives, web-based Datasette/PUDL Data Viewer interfaces, and Kaggle notebooks. Beyond the core open-source PUDL product, Catalyst offers fee-based custom data engineering services (building pipelines, integrating proprietary or public datasets, extracting data from PDFs/XBRL, automated testing/CI/CD), data analysis services (record linkage, custom analyses, visualizations, policy research), and educational programs including the Sloan Foundation-funded 'Open Energy Data for All' workshop series and summer data labs. The PUDL Sustainers Program provides ongoing maintenance and support for organizational subscribers.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Brands

• PUDL (Public Utility Data Liberation Project): An open source Python ETL pipeline that takes publicly available information about the US electricity sector and makes it publicly usable by cleaning, linking, and standardizing data from agencies like EIA and FERC.

Products and services

• PUDL (Public Utility Data Liberation) Open-source Python ETL pipeline that automatically collects, cleans, standardizes, validates, and publishes US electricity sector data from EIA, FERC, EPA, and other agencies. Integrates power plant fuel use, generation, operating costs, emissions, and operational history into a unified database for academics, NGOs, energy advocates, and researchers.
• PUDL Data Viewer Web-based browser interface for non-technical users to explore PUDL data, run SQL queries, and download CSV subsets. Replaced the earlier Datasette deployment to handle larger data scales.
• Custom Data Engineering Services Fee-based consulting for building custom data pipelines, integrating new datasets, extracting data from difficult formats (scanned PDFs, XBRL), upgrading code with software best practices (automated testing, CI/CD), web scraping, and implementing data access controls. Hired by clean energy advocates, environmental non-profits, researchers, journalists, and for-profit companies.
• Data Analysis Services Fee-based consulting including record linkage across datasets without common IDs, custom analyses/maps/visualizations, policy research, data quality control, and image processing (OCR, table detection/extraction). Discounted or pro-bono rates are available for grassroots activist organizations, student groups, and volunteers.
• PUDL Sustainers Program Annual subscription/sponsorship program (Gigawatt tier) for organizations that rely heavily on PUDL data. Sustainers receive closer relationships, input on roadmap, and assurance of ongoing data reliability and updates. Inaugural sustainers include Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) and GridLab.
• VCE RARE Renewable Generation Profiles Hourly, county-level wind and solar generation profiles dataset integrated into PUDL, based on NOAA's High Resolution Rapid Refresh (HRRR) weather model. Published in Apache Parquet format under CC-BY-4.0.
• FERC EQR Data Integration Integrated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Electric Quarterly Reports containing transaction-level US wholesale electricity market data (prices, quantities, contractual terms) from 2013-present, with billions of records at 5-minute to multi-year time resolutions.

Quantifiable outcome

• 24,000 unique IPs accessed PUDL data from cloud storage in 2025; 577 registered users on the PUDL Data Viewer; 70+ academic institutions using the data; cited in 14 academic journals and theses
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers10 records

Segments4 records

Ideal customer profiles4 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration4 records

AI capability4 records

Feature5 records

Partnerships

Eight partnerships are on record, tiered flagship, core and supporting.

• Deployment Gap Education FundflagshipStrategic or Co-development Partner · 1 January 2022Since 2022, Catalyst has worked with Deployment Gap Education Fund to build energy system data models and dashboards allowing foundations, advocates, and experts to prioritize geographies with outsized opportunities for deploying wind, solar, and storage resources. The work also highlights hotspots where new carbon-intensive infrastructure is being proposed, enabling educational resources to be more productively targeted to local stakeholders.
• Singularity Energy / Open Grid Emissions InitiativeflagshipStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe Open Grid Emissions Initiative (OGEI), developed under Singularity Energy, aims to provide public data resources for 24/7 zero-carbon energy procurement, academic research, and progressive energy transition policies. The OGEI open-source codebase borrows from PUDL and relies on PUDL data as one of its primary input data sources. OGEI grew out of the EPA EmPOWER Air Data Challenge research project initiated by UC Davis PhD student Greg Miller, which was advised by Catalyst. OGEI provides the most comprehensive, accurate, and granular public dataset of US electric greenhouse gas emissions.
• Energy InnovationcoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCatalyst worked with Energy Innovation as part of the Fossil Fuel Refinancing Project, compiling detailed estimates of fixed and variable operating costs and ongoing capital additions for fossil power plants nationwide. PUDL-derived marginal costs of electricity for coal and gas plants feed into Energy Innovation's interactive coal cost crossover map and Coal Cost Crossover 2.0 report. Energy Innovation is part of a broader coalition (with CPI, Sierra Club, Western Grid Group/Western Clean Energy Advocates) working on utility asset securitization legislation in multiple states.
• Vibrant Clean Energy (VCE)coreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCatalyst's compilation of power plant operating costs and other attributes (EIA 860, EIA 923, FERC Form 1) are inputs into VCE's WIS:dom energy system model. Catalyst is credited in VCE reports including Energy Imbalance Market Options for Colorado and Economic & Clean Energy Benefits of Establishing a Competitive Wholesale Electricity Market in the Southeast United States. Catalyst also helped distribute VCE's RARE (Renewable Generation Profiles) hourly county-level wind and solar generation dataset through PUDL v2024.10.0.
• Carbon Tracker InitiativecoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerCarbon Tracker uses Catalyst's PUDL data as a primary input into their model of US electricity generation costs. They model the economics of coal and natural gas fired power plants worldwide and publish outputs for clean energy advocates globally, highlighting the declining economic viability of existing fossil generation. Their work supports the Climate Action 100+ Initiative and helps make a purely economic case for replacing carbon-intensive generation with renewable energy.
• PowerGenomecoreTechnology or IntegrationPowerGenome is an open source project that translates original data into formats appropriate for use as input into capacity expansion and operational models. It relies on Catalyst's PUDL project for information about the current and historical state of the US electricity system. With support from the Spitzer Foundation, Greg Schivley has been using PowerGenome and PUDL to prepare inputs for the GenX capacity expansion model in collaboration with Jesse Jenkins at Princeton University.
• Lawrence Berkeley National LaboratorycoreStrategic or Co-development PartnerWith support from GridLab, Catalyst collaborated with researchers at Lawrence Berkeley Lab to estimate historical (2001-present) hourly electricity demand at the county level, based on FERC 714, EIA 861, US Census, and other datasets. This includes generating annual utility and balancing area service territory geometries. This work feeds into a higher spatial resolution version of the 2035 Report from UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.
• The CarpentriessupportingStrategic or Co-development PartnerThe Carpentries is collaborating with Catalyst on developing a hands-on energy data curriculum as part of the Open Energy Data for All initiative. The Carpentries is a nonprofit that teaches computational and data science skills to researchers.

Scale indicators12 records

Recent moves6 records

Expansion highlights5 records

Broad incumbents

• BloombergNEF: Commercial energy research and modeling firm publishing widely cited levelized cost and clean energy investment analyses. Adjacent peer because their analyses frequently cite EIA/FERC data that PUDL liberates.
• S&P Global Commodity Insights (Platts): Largest commercial vendor of US and global energy market data, including wholesale power and fuel price benchmarks. PUDL explicitly positions itself against the price barrier these vendors impose on smaller stakeholders.
• Wood Mackenzie: Global commercial energy research and data firm covering power, renewables, and fossil generation economics. Overlaps with the use cases RMI, Energy Innovation, and Carbon Tracker run on PUDL data.
• Enverus: Commercial energy data and analytics provider serving upstream, midstream, power, and renewables. Competes head-on with PUDL on integrated US energy datasets (EIA/FERC/EPA), but as a paid subscription platform rather than free open source.

Emerging players

• WattTime: Open data and software nonprofit focused on real-time and historical grid emissions data. Direct conceptual peer in mission (open energy data for climate), though WattTime focuses on emissions rather than operational/financial data.
• Open Climate Fix: Open-source nonprofit producing ML-ready weather and solar generation forecasts. Comparable as an open-data, open-source organization serving climate/energy analytics through community channels.

Others

• RMI (Rocky Mountain Institute): Flag Gigawatt-tier PUDL Sustainer and co-developer of the rmi-ferc1-eia-depreciation integration. Comparable as a think tank building analytical tools on top of open energy data; partner rather than competitor.
• GridLab: Clean energy analysis nonprofit and fellow Gigawatt-tier PUDL Sustainer. Comparable in mission, funding model, and reliance on integrated US federal energy data for policy analysis.
• Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: DOE national lab collaborating with Catalyst on county-level hourly electricity demand and the 2035 Report pipeline. Comparable in producing public-good US energy analysis that depends on integrated federal datasets.
• US Energy Information Administration (EIA): Primary upstream data source for PUDL; not a competitor but the agency whose outputs Catalyst integrates. Relevant because improving EIA's own data products or APIs directly affects PUDL's value proposition.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat4 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• Xx.com/catalystcoop
• GitHubgithub.com/catalyst-cooperative
• YouTubeyoutube.com/@CatalystCooperative
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/catalyst-cooperative

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles7 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds

Investors

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Catalyst Cooperative