Criterion Energy Partners is aiming to be a next-gen energy company. Photo via Getty Images

Sean Marshall and Danny Rehg founded Criterion Energy Partners in 2020 with the hope that geothermal energy could be the cleaner, safer wave of the future. Less than three years later, the team is close to making their plan a reality thanks to a geothermal well that they hope to drill this year.

Entrepreneurship wasn’t always part of the plan for either partner. When Marshall enrolled in the MBA program at Rice University’s Jones School of Business in 2016, he had a successful career at Credit Suisse and had his eye set on a future political career. But then he met classmate Rehg, whose background was in petroleum engineering. Their wives were both attorneys in the Houston district attorney’s office and the couples became fast friends. They also realized that, as Marshall now puts it, Rehg knew how to drill wells and he knew how to make deals.

In the ensuing years, both Rehg and Marshall's careers evolved and, eventually, the pair started looking for other opportunities. That’s when they read an article in Rolling Stone about geothermal energy.

“It was really a place where it really felt like this was something we were put here to do,” says Marshall.

Marshall and Rehg spent the ensuing months “like rats in a dumpster” learning about the players and opportunities in the geothermal industry and built from there. They learned about Pleasant Bayou Power Plant, a 1989 geothermal energy project based in Brazoria County that was backed by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Last summer, Criterion Energy Partners, a member of Greentown Houston, closed on a 10,000-acre lease around the site of Pleasant Bayou.

"We hope by the end of this year we will be generating electrons,” says Marshall.

Though the company has a patented technology that connects wells to the grid, called Criterion Geothermal System, Marshall says that some of the best advice he’s gotten was, “Don’t fall in love with your technology; fall in love with the problem.” The 2021 Texas freeze reminded the founders what that was.

“People were looking for cleaner, lower-emission power sources and [there was] a need for energy resiliency,” says Marshall, explaining that the freeze created an ideal situation for the company, as people began to think more outside the grid.

The year 2022 was a big one for Criterion Energy Partners. Oil and gas powerhouse Patterson-UTI invested in the company, followed by funding from the Department of Energy. The money not only allowed Criterion Energy Partners to lease their land, they are also now paying 12 salaries, including those of the founders. The team offices in The Cannon’s Esperson coworking space.

“Our mission is to make geothermal commercially viable everywhere,” says Marshall. “I still believe in that.”

However, Criterion Energy Partners may be even bigger than proving an alternative energy source. Marshall says that geothermal is the foundation on which they are building “a next-generation energy company.” Criterion Energy Partners could be the more stable basis for a whole new energy system.

Sean Marshall and Danny Rehg founded Criterion Energy Partners in 2020. Photos courtesy

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

Here's what startups took home wins at CERAWeek. Photo by Natalie Harms/InnovationMap

8 energy tech startups recognized at Houston's CERAWeek pitch competition

taking home the W

Over 200 startups participated in CERAWeek this year, and 18 of those companies pitched at a Greater Houston Partnership event.

The Houston Energy Transition Initiative, an initiative to promote Houston's work within the energy transition, hosted its second annual HETI Energy Ventures Competition at CERAWeek Innovation Agora. The competition was divided into four categories. The first batch of startups consisted of five companies from the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange for Energy, or TEX-E, a collaboration with Greentown Labs, MIT’s Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, and universities across Texas.

The winning startups shared $50,000 of prizes, sponsored by TEX-E. Houston-based Helix Earth Technologies — which has developed high-speed, high-efficiency filter systems derived from technology originating at NASA — won both the first place prize and fan favorite for the category. Helix's co-founders, Rawand Rasheed and Brad Husick from Rice University, walked away with $25,000 in prizes

Founded by Bryon Praslicka, Daniel Zamarron, and Craig Newman from Texas A&M University, Flux Works LLC, and its magnetic gear technology, took second place and $15,000 home. Tierra Climate, a two-sided marketplace for carbon offsets and other sustainability efforts founded by Emma Konet and Jacob Mansfield from Rice University, won third place and $10,000.

Helix Earth Technologies walked away with the top prize of the TEX-E category. Photo via greentownlabs.com

The next sets of startup pitches we broken down by funding stages — pre-seed and seed, series A, and series B and beyond.

Red Shift Energy, uses plasma energy to produce hydrogen from hydrogen sulfide, won fan favorite in the pre-seed and seed category sponsored by HX Venture Fund. A member of Halliburton Labs, the company also was recognized as Chevron favorite.

Per the judging panel, CanaGas won the title of most promising in the pre-seed and seed category sponsored by Alchemy Industrial. The Canadian company liquifies natural gas without costly cryogenics or stripping of the gas.

Houston-based Criterion Energy Partners won both the most-promising series A company category sponsored by SLB, but also the fan favorite series A category sponsored by Guerrella LLC. A geothermal energy tech company, Criterion was also a member of Rice's inaugural Clean Energy Accelerator cohort.

OptiSeis Solutions also won in both categories for the series B track. The company, a geophysical acquisition design and software company, won the title of most promising in the series B category sponsored by Pana LCE Investments and the series B fan favorite category sponsored by Halliburton Labs.

Lastly, the competition named the Most Impactful DEI, a category sponsored by Pana LCE Investments. Austin-based Gazelle Ecosystems, a social innovation startup with eco-solutions for corporations, won that category.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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Energy Tech Nexus announces international startups to pitch at Pilotathon

Ready, Set, Pitch

Energy Tech Nexus will host its Pilotathon and Showcase as part of Houston Energy & Climate Startup Week next Tuesday, Sept. 16, featuring insightful talks from industry leaders and pitches from an international group of companies in the clean energy space.

This year's event will center around the theme "Energy Access and Resilience." Attendees will hear pitches from nine Pilotathon pitch companies, as well as the 14 companies that were named to Energy Tech Nexus' COPILOT accelerator earlier this year.

COPILOT partners with Browning the Green Space, a nonprofit that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the clean energy and climatetech sectors. The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory backs the COPILOT accelerator, where companies are tasked with developing pilot projects for their innovations.

The nine Pilotathon pitch companies include:

  • Ontario-based AlumaPower, which has developed a breakthrough technology that converts the aluminum-air battery into a "galvanic generator," a long-duration energy source that runs on aluminum as a fuel
  • Calgary-based BioOilSolv, a chemical manufacturing company that has developed cutting-edge biomass-derived solvents
  • Atlanta-based Cultiv8 Fuels, which creates high-quality renewable fuel products derived from hemp
  • Newfoundland-based eDNAtec Inc., a leader in environmental genomics that analyzes biodiversity and ecological health
  • Oregon-based Espiku Inc., which designs and develops water treatment and mineral extraction technologies that rely on low-pressure evaporative cycles
  • 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
  • New Jersey-based Metal Light Inc., which is building a circular, solid metal fuel that will serve as a replacement for diesel fuel
  • Glasgow-based Novosound, which designs and manufactures innovative ultrasound sensors using a thin-film technique to address the limitations of traditional ultrasound with applications in industrial, medical and wearable markets
  • Calgary-based Serenity Power, which has developed a cutting-edge solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology

The COPILOT accelerator companies include:

  • Accelerate Wind
  • Aquora Biosystems Inc.
  • EarthEn
  • Electromaim
  • EnKoat
  • GeoFuels
  • Harber Coatings Inc.
  • Janta Power
  • NanoSieve
  • PolyQor Inc.
  • Popper Power
  • Siva Powers America
  • ThermoShade
  • V-Glass Inc.

Read more about them here.

The Pilotathon will also include a keynote from Taylor Chapman, investment manager at New Climate Ventures; Deanna Zhang, CEO at V1 Climate Solutions; and Jolene Gurevich, director of fellowship experience at Breakthrough Energy. The Texas Climate Tech Collective will present its latest study on the Houston climate tech and innovation ecosystem.

CEOs Moji Karimi of Cemvita, Laureen Meroueh of Hertha Metals and others will also participate in a panel on successful pilots. Investors from NetZero Ventures, Halliburton Labs, Chevron, Saudi Aramco, Prithvi VC and other organizations will also be on-site. Find registration information here.

Houston energy company to invest $1B in U.S. electric grid manufacturing

grid boost

Hitachi Energy, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston, has earmarked more than $1 billion to manufacture infrastructure for the U.S. electric grid, which is coping with greater power demand from data centers and AI platforms.

Of that sum, $457 million is dedicated to building a power transformer factory in Virginia. Hitachi Energy said it’ll be the largest facility of its kind in the U.S.

“Power transformers are a linchpin technology for a robust and reliable electric grid and winning the AI race. Bringing production of large power transformers to the U.S. is critical to building a strong domestic supply chain for the U.S. economy and reducing production bottlenecks, which is essential as demand for these transformers across the economy is surging,” said Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO of Switzerland-based Hitachi Energy, which generates revenue of about $16 billion.

The Hitachi announcement aligns with various priorities of the Trump administration. The White House is promoting more U.S.-based manufacturing, more power to accommodate data centers and AI, and greater use of U.S. energy resources.

“If we are going to win the AI race, reindustrialize, and keep the lights on, America is going to need a lot more reliable energy,” U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.