and the winners are...

3 Houston energy startups score awards at annual innovation event

Three energy tech startups secured wins at the Houston Innovation Awards. Photos courtesy

Three energy tech startups scored wins this week at the annual Houston Innovation Awards.

The awards program — hosted by EnergyCapital's sister site, InnovationMap, and Houston Exponential — named 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 Houston energy startups were named finalists last month across categories, and three won awards.

Syzygy Plasmonics, a deep decarbonization company that builds chemical reactors designed to use light instead of combustion to produce valuable chemicals like hydrogen and sustainable fuels, won in the Hardtech Business category. The company was founded in 2018 based on technology out of Rice University by Trevor Best, co-founder and CEO, who accepted the award.

ALLY Energy, a tech platform that's helping energy companies and climate startups find, develop, and retain great talent, secured a win in the Social Impact Business category, a new category that's celebrating a business providing a solution that would enhance humanity or society in a significant way. Katie Mehnert, founder and CEO, accepted the award.

The big climatetech winner of the evening was Fervo Energy, a startup leveraging proven oil and gas drilling technology to deliver 24/7 carbon-free geothermal energy. Fervo, founded in 2017 by Tim Latimer before relocating to Houston, won in the Sustainability Business category.

Click here to view all of the awards winners from the evening.

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The deal builds upon an existing partnership between Fervo and Google. Photo courtesy Fervo Energy

In its largest-ever purchase agreement, Houston-based geothermal company Fervo Energy will supply 396 megawatts of power to tech powerhouse Google.

The deal includes an option for Google to expand capacity by about 600 megawatts, for a total of 1 gigawatt, by June 2030, according to a news release from Fervo. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

Google will purchase carbon-free energy from Fervo for a potential data center in Utah, where Fervo is building its more than $2 billion Cape Station geothermal project.

Fervo applies oil-and-gas fracking technology to create geothermal reservoirs and generate electricity.

The first phase of Cape Station is expected to begin delivering geothermal power by late 2026, reaching about 100 megawatts of capacity by early 2027. The second phase, set for completion in 2028, will add 400 megawatts of capacity.

Fervo co-founder and CEO Tim Latimer said in a release that the Google agreement supports enhanced geothermal systems as a key power source for “the next generation of computing infrastructure.”

“The next chapter of advanced power generation technology is being written in Utah,” said Lucia Tian, director of advanced energy technologies at Google.

The Fervo-Google agreement builds on an existing partnership. Fervo’s Project Red pilot development in Nevada, which came online in 2023, supplies power to the local grid. Users of the grid power include Google’s data centers in Nevada.

Fervo subsequently signed a 115-megawatt purchase agreement with Google and NV Energy. The deal enabled Google to bring more geothermal energy to the Nevada grid while insulating everyday customers from the project’s costs.

The latest Google deal is part of the ongoing expansion of Cape Station beyond its initial 100-megawatt phase. Fervo says Cape Station will be the world’s largest enhanced geothermal facility.

The Google agreement comes during a milestone year for Fervo, which was founded in 2017. In May, Fervo’s IPO raised $2.2 billion. The company, whose early investors include Bill Gates, is now valued at $5.65 billion.

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