The Fort Bend County project is expected to begin construction early next year. Photo by Red Zeppelin/Pexels

A solar project in Fort Bend County has secured funding and an engineering firm this month.

Impact investment firm Advantage Capital has committed to provide a $185 million investment to Sabanci Renewables Inc., a North American subsidiary of Sabanci Holding based in Austin, to complete the financing of its Cutlass Solar II project 40 miles southwest of Houston. Cutlass II is a 272 MWdc utility-scale solar project under construction in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT).

The project will be located in Fort Bend County. Advantage Capital’s tax equity investment will provide the external capital for Sabanci to complete the project. Sabanci Renewables will own and operate the facility.

“This investment with Sabanci Renewables perfectly aligns with Advantage Capital’s commitment to funding clean energy projects nationwide and will especially have a positive impact on the community in greater Fort Bend County, Texas,” Tom Bitting, Principal at Advantage Capital, says in a news release. “We are thrilled to be working with Sabanci, a trusted name in the global energy industry, in bringing this project online for the benefit of its stakeholders.”.

Operations for Cutlass II are expected in April 2024. The project includes over 500,000 solar panels situated on over 1,000 acres of land. The solar panels are expected to help provide sustainable electricity to more than 80,000 homes in Texas, help to mitigate energy supply security concerns due to hotter weather, and create jobs.

“We are happy to partner up with Advantage Capital in our first renewable energy project in the U.S. and proud to demonstrate our execution capabilities in such a competitive market under such a challenging environment,” Ismail Bilgin, CEO of Sabanci Renewables, said in a news release.

Virginia-headquartered Bechtel, which has a big presence in Houston, has been selected to build the facility for Sabanci Renewables. Sabanci Renewables will own and operate the facility.

"Bechtel is honored to partner with Sabanci Renewables to support a clean energy future," says Kelley Brown, EPC Operations manager, North America Core Renewables, Bechtel Infrastructure, in another news release. "Bechtel's use of new technology in robotics and digital management will help move Cutlass Solar Two from construction to operations in record time, bringing additional renewable energy generation to Texas."

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Gold H2 harvests clean hydrogen from depleted California reservoirs in first field trial

breakthrough trial

Houston climatech company Gold H2 completed its first field trial that demonstrates subsurface bio-stimulated hydrogen production, which leverages microbiology and existing infrastructure to produce clean hydrogen.

Gold H2 is a spinoff of another Houston biotech company, Cemvita.

“When we compare our tech to the rest of the stack, I think we blow the competition out of the water," Prabhdeep Singh Sekhon, CEO of Gold H2 Sekhon previously told Energy Capital.

The project represented the first-of-its-kind application of Gold H2’s proprietary biotechnology, which generates hydrogen from depleted oil reservoirs, eliminating the need for new drilling, electrolysis or energy-intensive surface facilities. The Woodlands-based ChampionX LLC served as the oilfield services provider, and the trial was conducted in an oilfield in California’s San Joaquin Basin.

According to the company, Gold H2’s technology could yield up to 250 billion kilograms of low-carbon hydrogen, which is estimated to provide enough clean power to Los Angeles for over 50 years and avoid roughly 1 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

“This field trial is tangible proof. We’ve taken a climate liability and turned it into a scalable, low-cost hydrogen solution,” Sekhon said in a news release. “It’s a new blueprint for decarbonization, built for speed, affordability, and global impact.”

Highlights of the trial include:

  • First-ever demonstration of biologically stimulated hydrogen generation at commercial field scale with unprecedented results of 40 percent H2 in the gas stream.
  • Demonstrated how end-of-life oilfield liabilities can be repurposed into hydrogen-producing assets.
  • The trial achieved 400,000 ppm of hydrogen in produced gases, which, according to the company,y is an “unprecedented concentration for a huff-and-puff style operation and a strong indicator of just how robust the process can perform under real-world conditions.”
  • The field trial marked readiness for commercial deployment with targeted hydrogen production costs below $0.50/kg.

“This breakthrough isn’t just a step forward, it’s a leap toward climate impact at scale,” Jillian Evanko, CEO and president at Chart Industries Inc., Gold H2 investor and advisor, added in the release. “By turning depleted oil fields into clean hydrogen generators, Gold H2 has provided a roadmap to produce low-cost, low-carbon energy using the very infrastructure that powered the last century. This changes the game for how the world can decarbonize heavy industry, power grids, and economies, faster and more affordably than we ever thought possible.”

Rice University spinout lands $500K NSF grant to boost chip sustainability

cooler computing

HEXAspec, a spinout from Rice University's Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, was recently awarded a $500,000 National Science Foundation Partnership for Innovation grant.

The team says it will use the funding to continue enhancing semiconductor chips’ thermal conductivity to boost computing power. According to a release from Rice, HEXAspec has developed breakthrough inorganic fillers that allow graphic processing units (GPUs) to use less water and electricity and generate less heat.

The technology has major implications for the future of computing with AI sustainably.

“With the huge scale of investment in new computing infrastructure, the problem of managing the heat produced by these GPUs and semiconductors has grown exponentially. We’re excited to use this award to further our material to meet the needs of existing and emerging industry partners and unlock a new era of computing,” HEXAspec co-founder Tianshu Zhai said in the release.

HEXAspec was founded by Zhai and Chen-Yang Lin, who both participated in the Rice Innovation Fellows program. A third co-founder, Jing Zhang, also worked as a postdoctoral researcher and a research scientist at Rice, according to HEXAspec's website.

The HEXASpec team won the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge in 2024. More recently, it also won this year's Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek in the TEX-E student track, taking home $25,000.

"The grant from the NSF is a game-changer, accelerating the path to market for this transformative technology," Kyle Judah, executive director of Lilie, added in the release.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.