seeing green

Houston university's compost program reaches major milestone

Rice University, which works with Houston-based Moonshot Compost, reported a milestone achievement this month. Photo via Getty Images

Rice University and its campus community have officially diverted over 1 million pounds of food waste from landfills.

The university, which works with Houston-based Moonshot Compost, reported the milestone achievement this month. The program was originally launched in November 2020.

“The genesis of the current composting program was a partnership between Housing and Dining, the Office of Sustainability and an undergraduate student named Ashley Fitzpatrick,” says Richard Johnson, senior executive director for sustainability at Rice, in a news release.

“We spent quite a bit of time developing options for food waste composting at Rice with those efforts really ramping up in 2019. After a pilot project, further reflection and an interruption due to the pandemic, we found Moonshot Compost, and they proved to be the partner we needed.”

Fitzpatrick, the student who started it all went on to graduate and now works for Moonshot Compost. She did leave a legacy of student involvement in the program, and Isabelle Chang now serves as an undergraduate student intern in the Office of Sustainability. The role includes liaising with students and other major players on campus who have feedback for the program.

Rice previously had a composting program, but it never reached the same level of scale, per the news release.

“Many years ago — from the late 1990s to about 2007 — we had an on-campus composting device called the Earth Tub that provided food waste composting at one campus kitchen,” Johnson said. “However, the device failed, and frankly, the process of operating the device, getting the food waste into the device and maintaining it all proved onerous. Interest in composting remained after we decommissioned the Earth Tub, and for years we looked for alternatives [before finding Moonshot Compost].”

Launched in July 2020 by Chris Wood and Joe Villa, Moonshot operates with a team of drivers utilizing its data platform to quantify the environmental benefits of composting. The duo went on to team up with energy industry veteran Rene Ramirez to harness their compost into clean hydrogen power.

Last fall, Moonshot Hydrogen signed a memorandum of understanding with the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization. The agreement includes facilitating the first operating commercial pilot that biologically turns food waste into hydrogen.

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A View From HETI

CenterPoint has committed to "the largest investment in Greater Houston infrastructure in the company's nearly 160-year history." Photo via Getty Images

CenterPoint Energy disclosed that it's completed its core resiliency actions first phase of its Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative. The company also reports that it's outlined extra upcoming efforts.

Following the unprecedented outages of Hurricane Beryl, CenterPoint outlined its GHRI in August. As of last week, the first phase, which included more than 40 critical actions in total to strengthen the electric grid, has been completed ahead of schedule.

The company also announced a second phase of GHRI and approximately $5 billion in resiliency investment from 2026 to 2028, a figure that's around twice as much as initially promised.

"We have heard the call to action from our customers and elected officials, and we are responding with bold actions," says Jason Wells, CenterPoint president and CEO, in a statement. "Our defining goal, going forward, is this: to build the most resilient coastal grid in the country that can better withstand the extreme weather of the future. To achieve this ambition, we will undertake a historic level of resiliency actions and investment, because this is what the people of the Greater Houston area expect and deserve."

According to CenterPoint, the second phase will include system hardening, strategic undergrounding, self-healing grid technology, and further enhancements to the company's outage tracker.

CenterPoint outlined its recently completed efforts, including installing over 300 automation devices and more than 1,000 stronger poles, as well as removing hazardous vegetation from more than 2,000 miles of power lines. Next up, CenterPoint says it's near-term actions will include further grid strengthening, public communication improvements, and enhancements to local, community, and emergency partnerships. The details of this phase, which will take place between September 1 to June 1, will be released by September 30.

In the company's longer-term action plan, CenterPoint commits to $5 billion in upgrades from 2026 to 2028 — "the largest investment in Greater Houston infrastructure in the company's nearly 160-year history."

"The mission of this longer-term plan of action is to build the most resilient coastal grid in the country by investing in a smarter grid of the future that can better withstand a broad spectrum of risks," reads the statement. "The proposal, and the entire scope of these actions will be outlined in a new system resiliency plan that is expected to be filed with the Public Utility Commission of Texas on or before January 31, 2025."

CenterPoint reports that lawmakers have received this information directly, and that the plan will be shaped by feedback from its customers, experts, and stakeholders, including elected officials and local agencies.

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