Houston innovation awards

4 biggest challenges of Houston-based sustainability startups

The six finalists for the sustainability category for the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards weigh in on their challenges overcome. Photos courtesy

Six Houston-area sustainability startups have been named finalists in the 2023 Houston Innovation Awards, but they didn't achieve this recognition — as well as see success for their businesses — without any obstacles.

The finalists were asked what their biggest challenges have been. From funding to market adoption, the sustainability companies have had to overcome major obstacles to continue to develop their businesses.

The awards program — hosted by EnergyCapital's sister site, InnovationMap, and Houston Exponential — will name its winners on November 8 at the Houston Innovation Awards. The program was established to honor the best and brightest companies and individuals from the city's innovation community. Eighteen energy startups were named as finalists across all categories, but the following responses come from the finalists in the sustainability category specifically.

    Click here to secure your tickets to see who wins.

    1. Securing a commercial pilot

    "As an early-stage clean energy developer, we struggled to convince key suppliers to work on our commercial pilot project. Suppliers were skeptical of our unproven technology and, given limited inventory from COVID, preferred to prioritize larger clients. We overcame this challenge by bringing on our top suppliers as strategic investors. With a long-term equity stake in Fervo, leading oilfield services companies were willing to provide Fervo with needed drilling rigs, frack crews, pumps, and other equipment." — Tim Latimer, founder and CEO of Fervo Energy

    2. Finding funding

    "Securing funding in Houston as a solo cleantech startup founder and an immigrant with no network. Overcome that by adopting a milestone-based fundraising approach and establishing credibility through accelerator/incubator programs." — Anas Al Kassas, CEO and founder of INOVUES

    "The biggest challenge has been finding funding. Most investors are looking towards software development companies as the capital costs are low in case of a risk. Geothermal costs are high, but it is physical technology that needs to be implemented to safety transition the energy grid to reliable, green power." — Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems

    3. Market adoption

    "Market adoption by convincing partners and government about WHP as a solution, which is resource-intensive. Making strides by finding the correct contacts to educate." — Janice Tran, CEO and co-founder of Kanin Energy

    "We are creating a brand new financial instrument at the intersection of carbon markets and power markets, both of which are complicated and esoteric. Our biggest challenge has been the cold-start problem associated with launching a new product that has effectively no adoption. We tackled this problem by leading the Energy Storage Solutions Consortium (a group of corporates and battery developers looking for sustainability solutions in the power space), which has opened up access to customers on both sides of our marketplace. We have also leveraged our deep networks within corporate power procurement and energy storage development to talk to key decision-makers at innovative companies with aggressive climate goals to become early adopters of our products and services." — Emma Konet, CTO and co-founder of Tierra Climate

    4. Long scale timelines

    "Scaling and commercializing industrial technologies takes time. We realized this early on and designed the eXERO technology to be scalable from the onset. We developed the technology at the nexus of traditional electrolysis and conventional gas processing, taking the best of both worlds while avoiding their main pitfalls." — Claus Nussgruber, CEO of Utility Global

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    A View From HETI

    Ten climatetech startups were named most-promising at this annual Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum. Photo courtesy Rice Alliance.

    Investors at the Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum have named the 10 most-promising startups among the group of 100 clean tech companies participating in the event.

    The 22nd annual event was held yesterday, Sept. 18, at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business and was part of the second Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week.

    The most-promising startups will receive $7,000 in in-kind legal services from Baker Botts.

    The 10 most-promising companies included:

    • Houston-based Xplorobot, which has developed laser gas imaging technology for the first handheld methane detection device approved by the EPA as an alternative test method
    • Seattle-based Badwater Alchemy, a desalination company that uses nano materials to purify saline water at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods
    • San Francisco-based Ammobia, which is developing a clean ammonia production process
    • Illinois-based Celadyne Technologies, which is building hydrogen for industrial decarbonization with durable and efficient fuel cells and electrolyzers
    • Massachusetts-based MacroCycle Technologies, which converts plastic waste in the form of bottles, food trays and polyester textiles into virgin-grade mPET resin
    • Yorkshire, England-based AtoMe, a global developer of zero-carbon fertiliser products
    • Colorado-based Advanced Thermovoltaic Systems (ATS) Energy, a renewable energy semiconductor manufacturing company
    • North Carolina-based Lukera Energy, which is converting waste methane into high-value fuel
    • Midland, Texas-based AI Driller, a company that uses AI and machine learning to enable remote operations and provide historical drilling data for survey management, anti-collision monitoring and iob reporting
    • New York-based Fast Metals Inc., which has developed a chemical process to extract valuable metals from complex toxic mine tailings that is capable of producing iron, aluminum, scandium, titanium and other rare earth elements using industrial waste and waste CO2 as inputs

    Arculus Solutions won the People's Choice Award. The New Jersey-based company retrofits natural gas pipelines for safe hydrogen transportation. It also won Track A: Hydrogen, Fuel Cells, Buildings, Water, & Other Energy Solutions at the Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek earlier this year.

    The 100 energy technology ventures selected to participate in the forum were named earlier this year. See the full list here.

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