EnergyTech Startups, a podcast co-hosted by two Houston clean energy experts, exists to shine a spotlight on innovative companies and Houston as a hub for energy transition businesses. Photo via Unsplash
Houston has a bit of a perception problem, according to Jason Ethier, a long-time energy tech innovator and new podcast host.
Ethier, who serves as senior director of membership at Greentown Labs, set out to fix that when he launched the EnergyTech Startups podcast last fall with co-host Lara Cottingham, the vice president of strategy, policy, and climate impact at Greentown Labs. To date, the show has introduced listeners to over 20 energy founders and is continuing to do so on a biweekly basis.
"As an entrepreneur, sometimes you feel a gap in the market in your bones and you just have to do something about it," Ethier explains on the origin of the show.
Jason Ethier and Lara Cottingham co-host the EnergyTech Startups podcast. Photos courtesy
With his background in the Northeast, Ethier has seen first hand how Houstonians are just different — they tackle tough challenges and are heads-down focused on these innovations.
"Houston has a lot going for it as a place to build a business, and we're not going to do it the Silicon Valley. We do things the Houston way — we build new technologies, we build big projects," Ethier says. "The funny thing about Houstonians I find is that they are very understated with what they achieve and accomplish like it's no big deal. But it is a big deal."
That's where Ethier and the podcast can help shine a spotlight on the unique innovation these startup founders are in the process of commercializing.
"The premise of EnergyTech Startups is that we're building an energy ecosystem here, and energy and climate are two sides of the same coin," he says. "People working on these energy technologies made the choice to come to Houston — they made the choice not to go to Silicon Valley or Boston."
The goal is twofold — give these startups the platform to tell their story and showcase Houston as the hub for energy innovation.
"How do we tell this Houston story so that whenever folks look at the map and say, 'where do I want to build my business?' they look at Houston and see it as a place they should end up," he says.
Listen to the full episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast with Jason Ethier.
There’s a reason “carbon footprint” became a buzzword. It sounds like something we should know. Something we should measure. Something that should be printed next to the calorie count on a label.
But unlike calories, a carbon footprint isn’t universal, standardized, or easy to calculate. In fact, for most companies—especially in energy and heavy industry—it’s still a black box.
That’s the problem Planckton Data is solving.
On this episode of the Energy Tech Startups Podcast, Planckton Data co-founders Robin Goswami and Sandeep Roy sit down to explain how they’re turning complex, inconsistent, and often incomplete emissions data into usable insight. Not for PR. Not for green washing. For real operational and regulatory decisions.
And they’re doing it in a way that turns sustainability from a compliance burden into a competitive advantage.
From calories to carbon: The label analogy that actually works
If you’ve ever picked up two snack bars and compared their calorie counts, you’ve made a decision based on transparency. Robin and Sandeep want that same kind of clarity for industrial products.
Whether it’s a shampoo bottle, a plastic feedstock, or a specialty chemical—there’s now consumer and regulatory pressure to know exactly how sustainable a product is. And to report it.
But that’s where the simplicity ends.
Because unlike food labels, carbon labels can’t be standardized across a single factory. They depend on where and how a product was made, what inputs were used, how far it traveled, and what method was used to calculate the data.
Even two otherwise identical chemicals—one sourced from a refinery in Texas and the other in Europe—can carry very different carbon footprints, depending on logistics, local emission factors, and energy sources.
Planckton’s solution is built to handle exactly this level of complexity.
AI that doesn’t just analyze
For most companies, supply chain emissions data is scattered, outdated, and full of gaps.
That’s where Planckton’s use of AI becomes transformative.
It standardizes data from multiple suppliers, geographies, and formats.
It uses probabilistic models to fill in the blanks when suppliers don’t provide details.
It applies industry-specific product category rules (PCRs) and aligns them with evolving global frameworks like ISO standards and GHG Protocol.
It helps companies model decarbonization pathways, not just calculate baselines.
This isn’t generative AI for show. It’s applied machine learning with a purpose: helping large industrial players move from reporting to real action.
And it’s not a side tool. For many of Planckton’s clients, it’s becoming the foundation of their sustainability strategy.
From boardrooms to smokestacks: Where the pressure is coming from
Planckton isn’t just chasing early adopters. They’re helping midstream and upstream industrial suppliers respond to pressure coming from two directions:
Downstream consumer brands—especially in cosmetics, retail, and CPG—are demanding footprint data from every input supplier.
Upstream regulations—especially in Europe—are introducing reporting requirements, carbon taxes, and supply chain disclosure laws.
The team gave a real-world example: a shampoo brand wants to differentiate based on lower emissions. That pressure flows up the value chain to the chemical suppliers. Who, in turn, must track data back to their own suppliers.
It’s a game of carbon traceability—and Planckton helps make it possible.
Why Planckton focused on chemicals first
With backgrounds at Infosys and McKinsey, Robin and Sandeep know how to navigate large-scale digital transformations. They also know that industry specificity matters—especially in sustainability.
So they chose to focus first on the chemicals sector—a space where:
Supply chains are complex and often opaque.
Product formulations are sensitive.
And pressure from cosmetics, packaging, and consumer brands is pushing for measurable, auditable impact data.
It’s a wedge into other verticals like energy, plastics, fertilizers, and industrial manufacturing—but one that’s already showing results.
Carbon accounting needs a financial system
What makes this conversation unique isn’t just the product. It’s the co-founders’ view of the ecosystem.
They see a world where sustainability reporting becomes as robust as financial reporting. Where every company knows its Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions the way it knows revenue, gross margin, and EBITDA.
But that world doesn’t exist yet. The data infrastructure isn’t there. The standards are still in flux. And the tooling—until recently—was clunky, manual, and impossible to scale.
Planckton is building that infrastructure—starting with the industries that need it most.
Houston as a launchpad (not just a legacy hub)
Though Planckton has global ambitions, its roots in Houston matter.
The city’s legacy in energy and chemicals gives it a unique edge in understanding real-world industrial challenges. And the growing ecosystem around energy transition—investors, incubators, and founders—is helping companies like Planckton move fast.
“We thought we’d have to move to San Francisco,” Robin shares. “But the resources we needed were already here—just waiting to be activated.”
The future of sustainability is measurable—and monetizable
The takeaway from this episode is clear: measuring your carbon footprint isn’t just good PR—it’s increasingly tied to market access, regulatory approval, and bottom-line efficiency.
And the companies that embrace this shift now—using platforms like Planckton—won’t just stay compliant. They’ll gain a competitive edge.
Listen to the full conversation with Planckton Data on the Energy Tech Startups Podcast:
Hosted by Jason Ethier and Nada Ahmed, the Digital Wildcatters’ podcast, Energy Tech Startups, delves into Houston's pivotal role in the energy transition, spotlighting entrepreneurs and industry leaders shaping a low-carbon future.
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.
“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.”
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 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.
Jason Ethier and Lara Cottingham co-host the EnergyTech Startups podcast. Photos courtesy