Andrew Yang offers entrepreneurial advice to startups in the thriving Innovation Corridor seated in midtown Houston. Photo courtesy of Lauren M. Postler/Andrew Yang.

It’s not every day that an entrepreneur gets grilled on their go-to-market-plans by a former presidential candidate, but for a few nascent businesses, that’s just what happened last Friday at Greentown Labs Houston.

Grilled is perhaps too strong a term, as Andrew Yang, an entrepreneur turned politician, conversed convivially with a half-dozen growing businesses in the thriving Innovation Corridor seated in midtown Houston. Yang listened carefully to each company’s elevator pitch, interrupting only to exclaim, “that’s so cool!” and “congratulations, man!” like an awestruck coed before asking thoughtful questions about the journey ahead for each entrepreneur.

Lara Cottingham, vice president of strategy, policy, and climate impact at Greentown Labs Houston, set the tone for the tour with an overview of Greentown Labs and the entrepreneurial efforts in energy transition it supports.

“[Greentown Labs was] founded 12 years ago. We’ve supported about 550 startups. Our startups have created over 24,000 jobs – and that’s just in Boston and Texas,” says Cottingham. “We don’t really know how to fully measure everywhere, but they are operating globally.

“Our startups have raised about $4 billion dollars. Half of that was last year,” Cottingham continues. “When we talk about now being the time to be in climatetech, now is the time.”

The tour begins with WIP International Services, a start up solving the problem of thirst and water scarcity by extracting moisture from humid environments and converting it into usable water.

pouring water into tall glassesWIP International Services aims to make drinking water more readily available in humid locations. Image via Shutterstock.

“We can produce a purely distilled product, or a mineralized, pH balanced product for potable water,” explains Tracy L. Jackson, CEO of WIP International Services LLC.

The small group tagging along with Yang cheers the idea of creating clean water to drink while lowering the humidity of their homes, and effectively, their demand on energy for air-conditioning in a city that is now well into three-digit summer temperatures with average outdoor humidity above 70 percent.

Jackson almost stumbled into her startup by accident 8 years ago. She was visiting a site in Louisiana working on algae solutions, where she encountered an earlier (and much larger and noisier) model of the unit that stood in front of her now, no bigger than a standard water cooler. Inspired by scenes she witnessed in Africa during her tenure with an oilfield services company, Jackson knew this was a solution too good to keep quiet.

“Because I had been in Africa – I worked in an oil and gas services company – I had seen people standing in line for water from a water well in a village. And I thought, ‘this would be perfect for that situation,’” Jackson tells the tour group. “We now have developing relationships in Africa as well as Mexico on large scale projects for atmospheric water generation.”

At the next stop, Reid Carrazzone, president and CEO of Top Grain Technologies, softly explains how he and Zack Cordero, chief scientific officer, address the challenges of long-lead times and harsh environments impeding the ability to get hydrogen-fired turbines 100 percent hydrogen-fired.

close up of 3D printer making metal objectTop Grain Technologies resolves how to make 3D printed metals more heat resistant. Image via Shutterstock.

“We are commercializing a heat treatment invented at MIT that will enable 3D-printed metal materials to serve in combustion turbine engines,” Carrazzone tells Yang. “Traditionally, 3D-printed metals are not well-suited to serving the environments of high temperature/high stress that you’d find in jet engines and natural gas settings.

“These [3D-printed] materials, certain classes of them, can be uniquely hydrogen-compatible, as well as have temperature capabilities in excess of the existing materials today,” Carrazzone says. “They will need our heat treatment to bridge that final gap in properties.”

Yang lights up with at the prospect that the duo may have come up with a truly unique solution, even suggesting the company may be in a name-your-own-price situation. The Top Grain Technologies team accepts the compliment with humility, insisting it’s more about solving the simple problems one step at a time.

Companies that Yang met along the Greentown Labs workshop floor represent just a fraction of the innovation proliferating across Houston in recent years, each with a different focus on energy sustainability and the circular economy. Maybe one day Yang, Jackson, and Carrazzone will look back on this interaction and think, “I knew them when…” Only time, and continued tending to the entrepreneurial spirit, will tell.

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Houston hub for clean energy startups names global founding partners

green team

EnergyTech Nexus, a Houston-based hub for clean energy startups, announced its coalition of Global Founding Partners last month at its Pilotathon event during Houston Energy and Climate Week.

The group of international companies will contribute financial and technical resources, as well as share their expertise with startup founders, according to a news release from EnergyTech Nexus.

“Our Global Founding Partners represent the highest standards of industrial leadership, technical expertise and commitment to innovation,” Juliana Garaizar, co-founding partner of EnergyTech Nexus, added in the release. “Their collaboration enables us to connect groundbreaking technologies with the resources, infrastructure, and markets needed to achieve global scale.”

Houston-based partners include:

  • Cemvita Inc.
  • Chevron Technology Ventures
  • Collide
  • Greentown Labs
  • Kauel
  • Oxy Technology Ventures
  • Revterra
  • Sunipro

“At Collide, we believe progress happens when the right people, data, and ideas come together. Partnering with EnergyTech Nexus allows us to support innovators with the insights and community they need to accelerate deployment at scale,” Collin McLelland, co-founder and CEO of Collide, a provider of generative artificial intelligence for the energy sector, said in the release.

"Revterra is thrilled to be a founding member of the EnergyTech Nexus community," Ben Jawdat, founder and CEO of kinetic battery technology company Revterra, added. "Building a strong network of collaborators, customers, and investors is critical for any startup — particularly when you're building novel hardware. The Energytech Nexus community has been incredible at bringing all of the right stakeholders together."

Other partners, many of which have a strong presence in Houston, include:

  • BBVA
  • EarthX
  • Endress+Hauser
  • Goodwin
  • Greenbackers Investment Capital
  • ISR Energy
  • Latham & Watkins LLP
  • Ormazabal
  • Repsol
  • STX Next
  • XGS Energy

Jason Ethier, co-founding partner of EnergyTech Nexus, said that partnerships with these companies will be "pivotal" in supporting the organization's community of founders and Houston's broader energy transition sector.

“The Energy and Climate industry deploys over $1.5 trillion in capital every year to meet our growing energy demands. Our global founding partners recognize that this energy must be delivered reliably, cost effectively, and sustainably, and have committed to ensuring that technology developed without our ecosystem can find a path to market through testing and piloting in real-world conditions," Ethier said. "The ecosystem they support here solidifies Houston as the global nexus for the energy transition.”

EnergyTech Nexus also recently announced a "strategic ecosystem partnership" with Greentown Labs, aimed at accelerating growth for clean energy startups. Read more here.

CenterPoint launches $65B capital improvement plan

grid growth

To support rising demand for power, Houston-based utility company CenterPoint Energy has launched a $65 billion, 10-year capital improvement plan.

CenterPoint said that in its four-state service territory — Texas, Indiana, Minnesota and Ohio — the money will go toward building and maintaining a “resilient” electric grid and a safe natural gas system.

In the Houston area, CenterPoint forecasts peak demand for electricity will increase nearly 50 percent, to almost 31 gigawatts, by 2031 and peak demand will climb to almost 42 gigawatts by the middle of the next decade. CenterPoint provides energy to nearly 2.8 million customers in the Houston area.

In addition to the $65 billion capital improvement budget, which is almost 40 percent higher than the 2021 budget, CenterPoint has identified more than $10 billion in investment opportunities that could further improve electric and natural gas service.

“Every investment we make at CenterPoint is in service of our approximately seven million metered customers we have the privilege to serve,” CenterPoint president and CEO Jason Wells said in a news release.

“With our customer-driven yet conservative approach to growth, we continue to see significant potential for even more investment for the benefit of our customers that is not yet reflected in our new plan,” he added.

UH projects propose innovative reuse of wind turbines and more on Gulf Coast

Forward-thinking

Two University of Houston science projects have been selected as finalists for the Gulf Futures Challenge, which will award a total of $50 million to develop ideas that help benefit the Gulf Coast.

Sponsored by the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine’s Gulf Coast Research Program and Lever for Change, the competition is designed to spark innovation around problems in the Gulf Coast, such as rising sea levels, pollution, energy security, and community resiliency. The two UH projects beat out 162 entries from organizations based in Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas.

“Being named a finalist for this highly competitive grant underscores the University of Houston’s role as a leading research institution committed to addressing the most pressing challenges facing our region,” said Claudia Neuhauser, vice president for research at UH.

“This opportunity affirms the strength of our faculty and researchers and highlights UH’s capacity to deliver innovative solutions that will ensure the long-term stability and resilience of the Gulf Coast.”

One project, spearheaded by the UH Repurposing Offshore Infrastructure for Continued Energy (ROICE) program, is studying ways to use decommissioned oil rig platforms in the Gulf of Mexico as both clean energy hydrogen power generators as well a marine habitats. There are currently thousands of such platforms in the Gulf.

The other project involves the innovative recycling of wind turbines into seawall and coastal habitats. Broken and abandoned wind turbine blades have traditionally been thought to be non-recyclable and end up taking up incredible space in landfills. Headed by a partnership between UH, Tulane University, the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, the city of Galveston and other organizations, this initiative could vastly reduce the waste associated with wind farm technology.

wind turbine recycled for Gulf Coast seawall.Wind turbines would be repurposed into seawalls and more. Courtesy rendering

"Coastal communities face escalating threats from climate change — land erosion, structural corrosion, property damage and negative health impacts,” said Gangbing Song, Moores Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at UH and the lead investigator for both projects.

“Leveraging the durability and anti-corrosive properties of these of decommissioned wind turbine blades, we will build coastal structures, improve green spaces and advance the resilience and health of Gulf Coast communities through integrated research, education and outreach.”

The two projects have received a development grant of $300,000 as a prize for making it to the finals. When the winner are announced in early 2026, two of the projects will net $20 million each to bring their vision to life, with the rest earning a consolation prize of $875,000, in additional project support.

In the event that UH doesn't grab the grand prize, the school's scientific innovation will earn a guaranteed $1.75 million for the betterment of the Gulf Coast.

---

This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.