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US awards $3B for EV battery production in Texas, other states

charging up

The grants will fund a total of 25 projects in 14 states, including Texas. Photo via Getty Images

The Biden administration is awarding over $3 billion to U.S. companies to boost domestic production of advanced batteries and other materials used for electric vehicles, part of a continuing push to reduce China’s global dominance in battery production for EVs and other electronics.

The grants will fund a total of 25 projects in 14 states, including Texas, as well as Ohio, South Carolina, Michigan, North Carolina, and Louisiana.

The grants announced Friday mark the second round of EV battery funding under the bipartisan infrastructure law approved in 2021. An earlier round allocated $1.8 billion for 14 projects that are ongoing. The totals are down from amounts officials announced in October 2022 and reflect a number of projects that were withdrawn or rejected by U.S. officials during sometimes lengthy negotiations.

The money is part of a larger effort by President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to boost production and sales of electric vehicles as a key element of their strategy to slow climate change and build up U.S. manufacturing. Companies receiving awards process lithium, graphite or other battery materials, or manufacture components used in EV batteries.

“Today’s awards move us closer to achieving the administration’s goal of building an end-to-end supply chain for batteries and critical minerals here in America, from mining to processing to manufacturing and recycling, which is vital to reduce China’s dominance of this critical sector,'' White House economic adviser Lael Brainard said.

The Biden-Harris administration is "committed to making batteries in the United States that are going to be vital for powering our grid, our homes and businesses and America’s iconic auto industry,'' Brainard told reporters Thursday during a White House call.

The awards announced Friday bring to nearly $35 billion total U.S. investments to bolster domestic critical minerals and battery supply chains, Brainard said, citing projects from major lithium mines in Nevada and North Carolina to battery factories in Michigan and Ohio to production of rare earth elements and magnets in California and Texas.

“We’re using every tool at our disposal, from grants and loans to allocated tax credits,'' she said, adding that the administration's approach has leveraged more $100 billion in private sector investment since Biden took office.

In recent years, China has cornered the market for processing and refining key minerals such as lithium, rare earth elements and gallium, and also has dominated battery production, leaving the U.S. and its allies and partners "vulnerable,'' Brainard said.

The U.S. has responded by taking what she called “tough, targeted measures to enforce against unfair actions by China.” Just last week, officials finalized higher tariffs on Chinese imports of critical minerals such as graphite used in EV and grid-storage batteries. The administration also has acted under the 2022 climate law to incentivize domestic sourcing for EVs sold in the U.S. and placed restrictions on products from China and other adversaries labeled by the U.S. as foreign entities of concern.

"We're committed to making batteries in the United States of America,'' Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

If finalized, awards announced Friday will support 25 projects with 8,000 construction jobs and over 4,000 permanent jobs, officials said. Companies will be required to match grants on a 50-50 basis, with a minimum $50 million investment, the Energy Department said.

While federal funding may not be make-or-break for some projects, the infusion of cash from the infrastructure and climate laws has dramatically transformed the U.S. battery manufacturing sector in the past few years, said Matthew McDowell, associate professor of engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

McDowell said he is excited about the next generation of batteries for clean energy storage, including solid state batteries, which could potentially hold more energy than lithium ion.

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Texas joined Nebraska's latest action against the EPA, along with Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and several others. Photo by Sander Yigin/Unsplash

Texas joins in on lawsuit over rules on gas-powered trucks in California

road block

A large group of Republican attorneys general on Monday took legal action against the Biden administration and California over new emissions limits for trucks.

Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers is leading the group of GOP attorneys general who filed a petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit to overturn an Environmental Protection Agency rule limiting truck emissions.

Texas joined Nebraska's latest action against the EPA, along with Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and several others.

A separate lawsuit against California claims a phased-in ban on internal-combustion trucks is unconstitutional and will hurt the U.S. economy.

Hilgers in a statement said the EPA and California rules “will devastate the trucking and logistics industry, raise prices for customers, and impact untold number of jobs across Nebraska and the country.”

“There’s not one trucking charging station in the state of Nebraska,” Hilgers later told reporters. “Trying to take that industry, which was built up over decades with diesel and fossil fuels-based infrastructure, and transforming it to an electric-based infrastructure – it’s probably not feasible.”

EPA officials have said the strict emissions standards will help clean up some of the nation’s largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The new EPA rules are slated to take effect for model years 2027 through 2032, and the agency has said they will avoid up to 1 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions over the next three decades.

Emissions restrictions could especially benefit an estimated 72 million people in the U.S. who live near freight routes used by trucks and other heavy vehicles and bear a disproportionate burden of dangerous air pollution, the agency has said.

A spokesperson for the EPA declined to comment on the legal challenge to the new rules Monday, citing the pending litigation.

California rules being challenged by Republican attorneys general would ban big rigs and buses that run on diesel from being sold in California starting in 2036.

An email seeking comment from California’s Air Resources Board was not immediately answered Monday.

California has been aggressive in trying to rid itself of fossil fuels, passing new rules in recent years to phase out gas-powered cars, trucks, trains and lawn equipment in the nation’s most populous state. Industries, and Republican leaders in other states, are pushing back.

Another band of GOP-led states in 2022 challenged California’s authority to set emissions standards that are stricter than rules set by the federal government. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit last month ruled that the states failed to prove how California’s emissions standards would drive up costs for gas-powered vehicles in their states.

Texas Solar For All Coalition and Clean Energy Fund of Texas were two of the 60 recipients of the Solar for All grant competition. Photo via Getty Images

Two Texas coalitions part of $7B solar power federal grant program

shine on

The Biden administration delivered an Earth Day gift with the news that 60 grantees will receive $7 billion in grant awards.

Texas Solar For All Coalition and Clean Energy Fund of Texas were two of the 60 recipients of the Solar for All grant competition. The awardees will provide solar energy to 900,000 low-income households in all 50 states. This is expected to generate an estimated 200,000 jobs as part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, which includes $405,820,000 in Texas.

“President Biden’s clean energy plan is creating good-paying jobs, reducing emissions, and saving Americans money on their utility bills,” Climate Power Interim States Managing Director André Crombie says in a news release. “Thanks to President Biden, low-income families across Texas will have access to cleaner, cheaper power.”

The Solar for All Program, which was started by the Biden-Harris administration, aims to reduce carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 30 million metric tons over five years, and hopes to improve grid reliability and climate resilience. The award is also part of the Justice40 initiative that aims to ensure that historically underserved communities are given resources to help fight pollution and climate change.

Led by Harris County, Texas SFA is a coalition of Texas counties and cities (Dallas County, Tarrant County, Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Waco) that serve over 11 million low-income Texans.

“HARC is proud to be part of the Texas Solar for All Coalition and grateful for the significant support received from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to help bring the benefits of clean solar power to low-income and disadvantaged communities across Texas," John Hall, HARC’s President and CEO, says in a news release. "Low-income Texans find themselves facing rising energy bills, energy insecurity, and disconnection from the electric grid due to their limited incomes and health-compromising conditions during increasingly frequent extreme weather events.

"Through this Coalition’s delivery of distributed solar, we will be able to provide much-needed locally generated electricity, substantially reduced emissions, and improve the lives of many Texans."

Texas SFA will support home solar panel installation, support workforce training for residents, and battery storage upgrades. The Clean Energy Fund of Texas partnered with Texas Southern University to support clean energy investments at HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions in 19 states.

According to a news release, at least 35 percent of grant awardees have engaged local or national labor unions for the estimated 200,000 jobs that will be created.

The Sea Port Oil Terminal being developed off Freeport, Texas, will be able to load two supertankers at once, with an export capacity of 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. Photo via Getty Images

Houston company's $1.8B project off Texas coast gets Biden administration amid environmental protests

big oil

In a move that environmentalists called a betrayal, the Biden administration has approved the construction of a deepwater oil export terminal off the Texas coast that would be the largest of its kind in the United States.

The Sea Port Oil Terminal being developed off Freeport, Texas, will be able to load two supertankers at once, with an export capacity of 2 million barrels of crude oil per day. The $1.8 billion project by Houston-based Enterprise Products Partners received a deepwater port license from the Department of Transportation's Maritime Administration this week, the final step in a five-year federal review.

Environmentalists denounced the license approval, saying it contradicted President Joe Biden's climate agenda and would lead to “disastrous” planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to nearly 90 coal-fired power plants. The action could jeopardize Biden's support from environmental allies and young voters already disenchanted by the Democratic administration's approval last year of the massive Willow oil project in Alaska.

“Nothing about this project is in alignment with President Biden’s climate and environmental justice goals,'' said Kelsey Crane, senior policy advocate at Earthworks, an environmental group that has long opposed the export terminal.

“The communities that will be impacted by (the oil terminal) have once again been ignored and will be forced to live with the threat of more oil spills, explosions and pollution,'' Crane said. "The best way to protect the public and the climate from the harms of oil is to keep it in the ground.”

In a statement after the license was approved, the Maritime Administration said the project meets a number of congressionally mandated requirements, including extensive environmental reviews and a federal determination that the port's operation is in the national interest.

“While the Biden-Harris administration is accelerating America’s transition to a clean energy future, action is also being taken to manage the transition in the near term,'' said the agency, which is nicknamed MARAD.

The administration's multiyear review included consultation with at least 20 federal, state and local agencies, MARAD said. The agency ultimately determined that the project would have no significant effect on the production or consumption of U.S. crude oil.

“Although the (greenhouse gas) emissions associated with the upstream production and downstream end use of the crude oil to be exported from the project may represent a significant amount of GHG emissions, these emissions largely already occur as part of the U.S. crude oil supply chain,'' the agency said in an email to The Associated Press. “Therefore, the project itself is likely to have minimal effect on the current GHG emissions associated with the overall U.S. crude oil supply chain.''

Environmental groups scoffed at that claim.

“The Biden administration must stop flip-flopping on fossil fuels,'' said Cassidy DiPaola of Fossil Free Media, a nonprofit group that opposes the use of fossil fuels such as oil, coal and natural gas.

“Approving the Sea Port Oil Terminal after pausing LNG exports is not just bad news for our climate, it’s incoherent politics,'' DiPaola said. Biden “can’t claim to be a climate leader one day and then turn around and grant a massive handout to the oil industry the next. It’s time for President Biden to listen to the overwhelming majority of voters who want to see a shift away from fossil fuels, not a doubling down on dirty and deadly energy projects.''

DiPaola was referring to the administration's January announcement that it is delaying consideration of new natural gas export terminals in the United States, even as gas shipments to Europe and Asia have soared since Russia invaded Ukraine.

The decision, announced at the start of the 2024 presidential election year, aligned the Democratic president with environmentalists who fear the huge increase in exports of liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is locking in potentially catastrophic planet-warming emissions even as Biden has pledged to cut climate pollution in half by 2030.

Industry groups and Republicans have condemned the pause, saying LNG exports stabilize global energy markets, support thousands of American jobs and reduce global greenhouse emissions by transitioning countries away from coal, a far dirtier fossil fuel.

Enterprise CEO Jim Teague hailed the oil project's approval. The terminal will provide “a more environmentally friendly, safe, efficient and cost-effective way to deliver crude oil to global markets,'' he said in a statement.

The project will include two pipelines to carry crude from shore to the deepwater port, reducing the need for ship-to-ship transfers of oil. The terminal is expected to begin operations by 2027.

Since the project was first submitted for federal review in 2019, “Enterprise has worked diligently with various federal, state and local authorities, and participated in multiple public meetings that have allowed individuals and stakeholder groups to learn about the project and provide their comments,'' including some studies that have been translated into Spanish and Vietnamese, the company said in a statement. More than half of Freeport's 10,600 residents are Hispanic, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, hailed the license approval as “a major victory for Texas’s energy industry" and said the Biden administration had delayed the Sea Port terminal and other projects for years.

“After tireless work by my office and many others to secure this deepwater port license, I’m thrilled that we’re helping bring more jobs to Texas and greater energy security to America and our allies,'' Cruz said in a statement. “That this victory was delayed by years of needless bureaucratic dithering shows why we need broader permitting reform in this country.''

The oil export facility, one of several license applications under federal review, is located 30 miles offshore of Brazoria County, Texas, in the Gulf of Mexico.

The license approval followed a ruling by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals last week dismissing claims by environmental groups that federal agencies had failed to uphold federal environmental laws in their review of the project.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm made two big announcements at her CERAWeek address. Photo via Jennifer Granholm/X

DOE announces geothermal initiative, community-focused pilot at Houston energy conference

keynote address

The Department of Energy announced two major initiatives at U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm's address earlier this week at CERAWeek by S&P Global.

The first announcement Granholm revealed on Monday, March 18, at her keynote address was the DOE's latest Pathways to Commercial Liftoff report, which are initiatives established to provide investors with information of how specific energy technologies commercialize and what challenges they each have to overcome as they scale.

"We develop these Liftoff Reports through a combination of modeling and hundreds and hundreds of interviews with people across the whole investment lifecycle—from early-stage capital to commercial banks and institutional investors," Granholm says in her address.

The DOE has released eight already, and the ninth — and Granholm's favorite, she says — is on geothermal energy.

"Geothermal has such enormous potential. If we can capture the 'heat beneath our feet,' it can be the clean, reliable, base-load scalable power for everybody from industries to households," she says.

Geothermal development requires similar skills and infrastructure to traditional oil and gas, meaning the transition should be smooth, she explains, adding that the market is huge for geothermal.

"At scale, this market is significant: We're talking about at least—at least—a $250 billion investment opportunity to meet the goal that we have of 90 gigawatts of capacity by 2050," she remarks.

Granholm's address shifted into acknowledging the negative impact on communities the energy industry's history is paved with. She emphasizes how each of the Biden Administration's laws passed — like the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — implemented requirements and incentives with communities in mind.

The administration's next initiative, and Granholm's second big announcement, is "to empower communities to build their energy future."

Regional Energy Democracy Initiative, or REDI, as Granholm describes, will "bring together companies, and community groups, and academic institutions, and philanthropy to weave equity and justice into DOE-funded clean energy projects."

The inaugural pilot will be in the Gulf South across Texas and Louisiana. She says the DOE plans to award over $8 billion to regional carbon reduction and clean energy infrastructure projects.

"These structures will provide capacity building, technical assistance to help communities match their most pressing needs with the biggest opportunities…to design and to implement Community Benefits Plans," Granholm says, "in short, really to have a say in how the historic clean energy investments in their backyards are going to benefit their people."

Granholm also noted on the progress of the clean energy sector, including how clean energy investment is three times what it was in 2018 and that in 2024, wind and solar energy in the U.S. is expected to outpace coal generation for the first time.

All this progress, Granholm explains, in light of global events and global energy supply disruption

"But our work together really has to extend beyond crisis management," she says. "Because the sooner that we acknowledge this transition for what it is—an undeniable, inevitable, and necessary realignment of the world’s energy system—the sooner we can capitalize on this incredible opportunity."

The data shows the biggest leaks are in the Permian basin of Texas and New Mexico. Photo via Getty Images

US energy industry methane emissions are triple what government thinks, study finds

by the numbers

American oil and natural gas wells, pipelines and compressors are spewing three times the amount of the potent heat-trapping gas methane as the government thinks, causing $9.3 billion in yearly climate damage, a new comprehensive study calculates.

But because more than half of these methane emissions are coming from a tiny number of oil and gas sites, 1% or less, this means the problem is both worse than the government thought but also fairly fixable, said the lead author of a study in Wednesday's journal Nature.

The same issue is happening globally. Large methane emissions events around the world detected by satellites grew 50% in 2023 compared to 2022 with more than 5 million metric tons spotted in major fossil fuel leaks, the International Energy Agency reported Wednesday in their Global Methane Tracker 2024. World methane emissions rose slightly in 2023 to 120 million metric tons, the report said.

“This is really an opportunity to cut emissions quite rapidly with targeted efforts at these highest emitting sites,” said lead author Evan Sherwin, an energy and policy analyst at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Lab who wrote the study while at Stanford University. “If we can get this roughly 1% of sites under control, then we're halfway there because that's about half of the emissions in most cases.”

Sherwin said the fugitive emissions come throughout the oil and gas production and delivery system, starting with gas flaring. That's when firms release natural gas to the air or burn it instead of capturing the gas that comes out of energy extraction. There's also substantial leaks throughout the rest of the system, including tanks, compressors and pipelines, he said.

“It's actually straightforward to fix,” Sherwin said.

In general about 3% of the U.S. gas produced goes wasted into the air, compared to the Environmental Protection Agency figures of 1%, the study found. Sherwin said that's a substantial amount, about 6.2 million tons per hour in leaks measured over the daytime. It could be lower at night, but they don't have those measurements.

The study gets that figure using one million anonymized measurements from airplanes that flew over 52% of American oil wells and 29% of gas production and delivery system sites over a decade. Sherwin said the 3% leak figure is the average for the six regions they looked at and they did not calculate a national average.

Methane over a two-decade period traps about 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide, but only lasts in the atmosphere for about a decade instead of hundreds of years like carbon dioxide, according to the EPA.

About 30% of the world's warming since pre-industrial times comes from methane emissions, said IEA energy supply unit head Christophe McGlade. The United States is the No. 1 oil and gas production methane emitter, with China polluting even more methane from coal, he said.

Last December, the Biden administration issued a new rule forcing the U.S. oil and natural gas industry to cut its methane emissions. At the same time at the United Nations climate negotiations in Dubai, 50 oil companies around the world pledged to reach near zero methane emissions and end routine flaring in operations by 2030. That Dubai agreement would trim about one-tenth of a degree Celsius, nearly two-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit, from future warming, a prominent climate scientist told The Associated Press.

Monitoring methane from above, instead of at the sites or relying on company estimates, is a growing trend. Earlier this month the market-based Environmental Defense Fund and others launched MethaneSAT into orbit. For energy companies, the lost methane is valuable with Sherwin's study estimate it is worth about $1 billion a year.

About 40% of the global methane emissions from oil, gas and coal could have been avoided at no extra cost, which is “a massive missed opportunity,” IEA's McGlade said. The IEA report said if countries do what they promised in Dubai they could cut half of the global methane pollution by 2030, but actions put in place so far only would trim 20% instead, “a very large gap between emissions and actions,” McGlade said.

“It is critical to reduce methane emissions if the world is to meet climate targets,” said Cornell University methane researcher Robert Horwath, who wasn't part of Sherwin's study.

“Their analysis makes sense and is the most comprehensive study by far out there on the topic,” said Howarth, who is updating figures in a forthcoming study to incorporate the new data.

The overflight data shows the biggest leaks are in the Permian basin of Texas and New Mexico.

“It's a region of rapid growth, primarily driven by oil production,” Sherwin said. “So when the drilling happens, both oil and gas comes out, but the main thing that the companies want to sell in most cases was the oil. And there wasn't enough pipeline capacity to take the gas away” so it spewed into the air instead.

Contrast that with tiny leak rates found in drilling in the Denver region and the Pennsylvania area. Denver leaks are so low because of local strictly enforced regulations and Pennsylvania is more gas-oriented, Sherwin said.

This shows a real problem with what National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association methane-monitoring scientist Gabrielle Petron calls “super-emitters."

“Reliably detecting and fixing super-emitters is a low hanging fruit to reduce real life greenhouse gas emissions,” Petron, who wasn't part of Sherwin's study, said. “This is very important because these super-emitter emissions are ignored by most ‘official’ accounting.”

Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson, who also wasn't part of the study, said, “a few facilities are poisoning the air for everyone.”

“For more than a decade, we’ve been showing that the industry emits far more methane than they or government agencies admit," Jackson said. “This study is capstone evidence. And yet nothing changes.”

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Aramco partners to demonstrate compact carbon capture technology for gas turbines

dream team

Integrated energy and chemicals company Aramco has signed a collaboration agreement with Carbon Clean and SAMSUNG E&A in an effort to showcase new carbon capture technology.

The technology demonstration will be used to deploy Carbon Clean’s novel CycloneCC technology to capture CO2 from natural gas turbine exhaust streams containing approximately 4 percent CO2, according to Aramco.

Carbon Clean, which U.S. headquarters are located in Houston at the Ion, boasts technology that has captured nearly two million tons of carbon dioxide at almost 50 sites around the world. Aramco’s U.S. headquarters is also in Houston.

“The potential for CycloneCC in the US and Houston area is huge,” Aniruddha Sharma, chair and CEO of Carbon Clean, previously shared with EnergyCapital. “It is optimised for low to medium scale industrial emitters and recent Rice University research on the US Gulf Coast, for example, found that it is well suited to 73 percent of Gulf Coast emitters.”

The modular CycloneCC unit has a 50 percent smaller footprint compared to conventional carbon capture processes. The CycloneCC technology is estimated to reduce the total installed cost of carbon capture systems by up to 50 percent compared to conventional systems if successful. The goal is to also maintain process efficiency even at low CO2 concentrations. CycloneCC’s performance is achieved through two process intensification technologies, rotating packed beds (RPBs) and Carbon Clean’s proprietary APBS-CDRMax solvent.

“Its compact, modular design should be easily integrated with gas turbines, delivering high performance carbon capture in an industrial setting where space is typically limited,” Sharma says in a news release.

The engineering, procurement and construction of the plant will be done by SAMSUNG E&A .The unit will be installed on the sales gas compressor turbine exhaust gas stack,which can provide performance data under real-world conditions.

“Aramco and Samsung Ventures are investors in Carbon Clean, so we’re proud to deepen our relationship through this partnership,” Sharma adds. “This first-of-a-kind deployment capturing very low concentrations of CO2 is a key milestone in scaling up and commercializing CycloneCC.”

In September, Carbon Clean also announced a deal with PETRONAS CCS Solution to collaborate and evaluate Carbon Clean’s carbon capture and storage technology with Carbon Clean's CycloneCC tech. Last year, Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. (ADNOC) selected Carbon Clean for a carbon capture project in Abu Dhabi.

Houston energy tech company scores spot on Deloitte's list of fast-growing businesses

by the numbers

Deloitte’s annual North America Technology Fast 500 list includes a Houston energy tech company boasting 407 percent growth.

NatGas Hub LLC landed at No. 286 on the list, which is an annual ranking of the fastest-growing North American companies in technology, energy tech sectors, telecommunications, life sciences, media, and fintech. It marks an improvement for the company, which provides an automation software for natural gas nominations and scheduling services. In 2023, the company ranked No. 356 with 364 percent growth.

Direct Digital Holdings Inc. took the highest-ranking spot for Houston companys, coming in at No. 101 (up from 108 previous year) with 1,184 percent growth. Additional Houston companies on the list include Liongard (No. 437, 246 percent growth) and Stratus Medical LLC (No. 483, 212 percent growth).

"Houston continues to demonstrate its prowess in fostering growth and technological advancement and I’m incredibly proud to see some of our local companies making significant strides and earning their well-deserved spots on the 2024 Deloitte Technology Fast 500 list,” Houston managing partner at Deloitte Melinda Yee says in a news release.

Award winners were selected based on fiscal year revenue growth from 2019 to 2022.

The companies achieved revenue growth ranging from 201 percent to 153,625 percent over the three-year time frame with an average growth rate of 1,981 percent and a median growth rate of 460 percent, according to a news release. Texas accounts for 6 percent of the winning companies with 73 percent of the companies from Texas are in the software sector.

“These companies exemplify the entrepreneurial spirit and innovative mindset that define Houston's dynamic business ecosystem,” Yee adds.

In 2023, the Houston representation looked similar. Direct Digital Holdings again topped the Houston rankings at No. 108, with Liongard, NatGasHub.com, and P97 Networks also showing substantial growth. As a state, Texas had 30 companies that made the list of the 541 ranked. In 2022, just one Houston company was recognized, as at No. 372 Onit reported revenue increase of 369 percent.

Biopharmaceutical company TG Therapeutics, Inc. was the No.1 spot in 2024 with a growth rate of 153,625 percent from 2020 to 2023. See the full list here.

———

This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

Houston founder on driving the future of geothermal energy, storage

now streaming

Cindy Taff, co-founder and CEO of Sage GeoSystems, has emerged as a visionary leader in the energy transition, recently named to Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential Climate Leaders in Business for 2024. Under her leadership, Sage is not only advancing geothermal energy innovation but also redefining how energy storage can support a renewable-powered grid.

In a recent Energy Tech Startups Podcast episode, Taff discussed the evolution of Sage GeoSystems, the challenges of scaling hard tech solutions, and the opportunities presented by geothermal and pumped hydro energy storage. Her insights reflect the unique perspective of a founder bridging oil and gas expertise with renewable energy innovation.

- YouTubeCindy shares how Sage Geosystems is leveraging its oil and gas expertise to develop groundbreaking subsurface pumped hydro ...

Breaking Boundaries with Geopressured Geothermal Systems

Sage GeoSystems is at the forefront of next-generation geothermal energy, advancing Geopressured Geothermal Systems (GGS) that can be deployed in a wide range of geographies. Unlike traditional geothermal systems, which rely on natural water reservoirs near volcanic activity, Sage’s engineered reservoirs allow geothermal energy to be tapped almost anywhere.

“Geothermal energy is no longer restricted to specific conditions,” Taff explained. “Our systems are flexible, scalable, and capable of meeting the needs of energy-intensive applications like data centers—including a recent deal with Meta to deliver 150 megawatts of geothermal power for their facilities.”

This adaptability sets Sage apart, offering a path to reliable, clean energy that can complement intermittent sources like wind and solar. Sage also secured a win in the Energy Transition Business category alongside notable finalists like Amperon and Tierra Climate, underscoring its leadership in innovative energy solutions.

Pivoting Toward Subsurface Energy Storage

While initially focused solely on geothermal, Sage uncovered a transformative opportunity in subsurface pumped hydro energy storage during field trials. Dubbed “upside-down pumped hydro,” the solution provides long-duration energy storage capable of balancing the grid for 17+ hours—far surpassing the capabilities of lithium-ion batteries for extended periods.

“Pumped storage hydropower is a critical piece of the energy puzzle,” Taff emphasized. By storing energy during off-peak times and releasing it when solar and wind aren’t producing, Sage is helping bridge the intermittency gap in renewables. This approach positions pumped storage as a game-changer for a reliable, clean energy grid.

Lessons from the Founder’s Journey

Taff’s transition from a 35-year career at Shell to geothermal entrepreneurship offers valuable lessons for founders in capital-intensive industries:

  1. Leverage Expertise, but Stay Open to New Solutions:
    Taff’s oil and gas background enabled her to approach geothermal with deep technical knowledge, but Sage’s pivot to energy storage illustrates the importance of staying adaptable during development.
  2. Educate Financial Stakeholders:
    Securing funding for hard tech remains a challenge. “Investors often lack the subsurface knowledge needed to understand our technology,” Taff explained. She emphasized the need to bring on team members who can translate technical innovation into financial terms.
  3. Be Ready for Capital-Intensive Scaling:
    With geothermal plants costing millions to build, startups must carefully manage capital and timelines. Taff encourages founders to seek strategic investors, like Chesapeake Energy, who understand the challenges and potential of scaling infrastructure.

Beyond Geothermal: A Call for Pumped Storage Hydropower

In addition to geothermal, Taff champions pumped storage hydropower as an underutilized climate solution. “While lithium-ion batteries get a lot of attention, pumped storage hydropower offers long-duration storage that can stabilize the grid for days, not just hours,” she said.

By storing excess energy during off-peak times and releasing it when solar and wind aren’t producing, pumped storage hydropower can play a critical role in balancing renewables. Sage GeoSystems is uniquely positioned to integrate this technology into a broader energy strategy, offering sustainable and scalable solutions for energy-intensive industries.

A Vision for Geothermal and the Energy Transition

Looking ahead, Taff sees geothermal energy and storage as critical components of a sustainable energy mix. “We’re still in the early stages, but geothermal is following a trajectory similar to wind and solar 15 years ago,” she said. Sage’s innovative approaches are paving the way for geothermal to become a scalable, competitive solution, capable of powering industries and data centers while providing energy storage that stabilizes the grid.

With her recognition by Time magazine and a recent deal with Meta, Sage GeoSystems is proving that geothermal energy can be a powerful ally in achieving global decarbonization goals. The company’s innovative Geopressured Geothermal Systems and subsurface storage solutions are laying the groundwork for a reliable and sustainable energy future.

Listen to the full episode with Cindy Taff on the Energy Tech Startups Podcast here.

Energy Tech Startups Podcast is hosted by Jason Ethier and Nada Ahmed. It delves into Houston's pivotal role in the energy transition, spotlighting entrepreneurs and industry leaders shaping a low-carbon future.


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