who's who

Houston organization names annual energy industry award winners

ALLY Energy's eighth annual GRIT Awards and Best Energy Workplaces named its winners this week across nine categories plus several people's choice winners. Photo via ALLY Energy/LinkedIn

A Houston company identified the top players in the energy industry — with this year's honorees being recognized for their growth, resilience, innovation, and talent.

ALLY Energy's eighth annual GRIT Awards and Best Energy Workplaces named its winners this week across nine categories plus several people's choice winners.

"The GRIT Awards honor those who have shaped the industry and continue to inspire future generations. These winners have demonstrated extraordinary leadership and dedication to driving innovation across the energy landscape," says Katie Mehnert, founder and CEO of ALLY Energy, in a news release.

According to ALLY, submissions are open to the public and a group of judges evaluate and decide on each of the GRIT Award finalists, which were announced in September, as well as the winners.

The 2024 winners were:

  • The Professional Award - Obianuju Igbokwe, technology strategy consultant at SLB
  • The Executive Award - Sandhya Ganapathy, CEO of EDP Renewables North America
  • The Entrepreneur Award - Tara Karimi, co-founder and chief science officer at Cemvita
  • The Sustainability Award - Maru Williams, ESG manager at Chevron
  • The Best Affinity Group, Employee Resource Group, or Business Resource Group Award - Occidental Petroleum, FRIEND
  • The Best Energy Team Award - 1PointFive, Direct Air Capture
  • The Top Energy Voices Award - Kithairos Solutions
  • The Best Energy Workplaces Award - EDP Renewables North America
  • The Best Energy or Climate Startup Award - Syzygy Plasmonics

The People's Choice awards, decided by online judging, named winners, including:

  • The Best Affinity Group, Employee Resource Group, or Business Resource Group Award - Baker Hughes, Multicultural ERG
  • The Best Energy Team Award - ADNOC Offshore, Project Light PMO
  • The Best Energy Workplace Award - Baker Hughes
  • The Best Energy or Climate Startup Award - Solaires Enterprises Inc.
  • The Top Energy Voices Award - Sarah Magruder, Founder and President of Savvy Oil & Gas Consulting
In addition to these winners, the 2024 Lifetime Achievement Awards honorees were recognized too. The recipients were:
  • Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental
  • Jan E. Odegard, consultant and former executive director of Ion
  • Sivasankaran "Soma" Somasundaram, president and CEO of ChampionX

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A View From HETI

Utility Global’s H2Gen technology aims to decarbonize the heavy industrial sector. Photo courtesy of Utility Global

Houston-based Utility Global has raised $100 million in an ongoing Series D round to globally deploy its decarbonization technology at an industrial scale.

The round was led by Ara Partners and APG Asset, according to a news release. Utility plans to use the funding to expand manufacturing, grow its teams and support its commercial developments and partnerships.

“This financing marks a critical step in Utility’s transition from a proven technology to full-scale global commercial execution,” Parker Meeks, CEO and president of Utility Global, said in the release. “Industrial customers are no longer looking for pilots or promises; they need deployable solutions that work within existing assets and deliver true economic industrial decarbonization today that is operationally reliable and highly scalable. Utility’s technology produces both economic clean hydrogen and capture-ready CO2 streams, and this capital enables us to scale and deploy that impact globally with speed, discipline, and rigor.”

Utility Global's H2Gen technology produces low-cost, clean hydrogen from water and industrial off-gases without requiring electricity. It's designed to integrate into existing industrial infrastructure in hard-to-abate assets in the steel, refining, petrochemical, chemical, low-carbon fuels, and upstream oil and gas sectors.

“Utility is tackling one of the most difficult challenges in the energy transition: decarbonizing hard‑to‑abate industrial sectors,” Cory Steffek, partner at Ara Partners and Utility Global board chair, said in the release. “What sets Utility apart is its ability to compete head‑to‑head with conventional fossil‑based solutions on cost and reliability, even as it materially reduces emissions. With this new funding, Utility is well-positioned for its next chapter of commercial growth while maintaining the technical excellence and capital discipline that have defined its development to date.”

Utility Global reached several major milestones in 2025. After closing a $53 million Series C, the company agreed to develop at least one decarbonization facility at an ArcelorMittal steel plant in Brazil. It also signed a strategic partnership with California-based Kyocera International Inc. to scale global manufacturing of its H2Gen electrochemical cells.

The company also partnered with Maas Energy Works, another California company, to develop a commercial project integrating Maas’ dairy biogas systems with H2Gen to produce economical, clean hydrogen.

"These projects were never intended to stand alone. They anchor a deep and growing pipeline of commercial projects now in development globally across steel, refining, chemicals, biogas and other hard-to-abate sectors worldwide, Meeks shared in a 2025 year-in-review note. He added that 2026 would be a year of "focused acceleration to scale."

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