Houston university's compost program reaches major milestone

seeing green

Rice University, which works with Houston-based Moonshot Compost, reported a milestone achievement this month. Photo via Getty Images

Rice University and its campus community have officially diverted over 1 million pounds of food waste from landfills.

The university, which works with Houston-based Moonshot Compost, reported the milestone achievement this month. The program was originally launched in November 2020.

“The genesis of the current composting program was a partnership between Housing and Dining, the Office of Sustainability and an undergraduate student named Ashley Fitzpatrick,” says Richard Johnson, senior executive director for sustainability at Rice, in a news release.

“We spent quite a bit of time developing options for food waste composting at Rice with those efforts really ramping up in 2019. After a pilot project, further reflection and an interruption due to the pandemic, we found Moonshot Compost, and they proved to be the partner we needed.”

Fitzpatrick, the student who started it all went on to graduate and now works for Moonshot Compost. She did leave a legacy of student involvement in the program, and Isabelle Chang now serves as an undergraduate student intern in the Office of Sustainability. The role includes liaising with students and other major players on campus who have feedback for the program.

Rice previously had a composting program, but it never reached the same level of scale, per the news release.

“Many years ago — from the late 1990s to about 2007 — we had an on-campus composting device called the Earth Tub that provided food waste composting at one campus kitchen,” Johnson said. “However, the device failed, and frankly, the process of operating the device, getting the food waste into the device and maintaining it all proved onerous. Interest in composting remained after we decommissioned the Earth Tub, and for years we looked for alternatives [before finding Moonshot Compost].”

Launched in July 2020 by Chris Wood and Joe Villa, Moonshot operates with a team of drivers utilizing its data platform to quantify the environmental benefits of composting. The duo went on to team up with energy industry veteran Rene Ramirez to harness their compost into clean hydrogen power.

Last fall, Moonshot Hydrogen signed a memorandum of understanding with the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization. The agreement includes facilitating the first operating commercial pilot that biologically turns food waste into hydrogen.

Moonshot Compost has announced its plans to create green hydrogen at scale. Photo via Getty Images

Houston startup launches clean energy business to turn compost into hydrogen

waste to power

You may already know Moonshot Compost, a Houston company devoted to collecting food waste all over Texas. Now, meet Moonshot Hydrogen.

Founders and brothers-in-law Chris Wood and Joe Villa have joined forces with energy industry veteran Rene Ramirez to harness their compost into clean hydrogen power.

Earlier this month, the new branch of the existing company signed a memorandum of understanding with the Purdue Innovates Office of Technology Commercialization. The agreement comes close to a year after Ramirez first began working with Purdue University Northwest professors, Robert Kramer and Libbie Pelter, and Purdue University’s professor, John Patterson. The result is the first operating commercial pilot that biologically turns food waste into hydrogen.

This revelation comes just days after the Biden-Harris administration announced that it had set aside $7 billion to H2Hubs, a collection of seven regional hydrogen power stations, including one in the Houston area.

“We love the timing. There’s just a lot of interest right now,” Wood tells EnergyCapital in a video call with Villa and Ramirez. “It's been fun to watch Rene's long relationship with Purdue come to fruition on behalf of that hydrogen at the same time that the DoD is moving forward with their announcement on the hydrogen hubs.”

Wood and Villa founded Moonshot Compost three years ago.

“The thought was, 'waste is so valuable, and there's so much of it in the trash.' So we wanted to focus on, ‘Let's get our hands on as much food waste as possible,’ and always be focused on doing the best thing with our food waste,” Wood says.

Initially, that meant making compost, which saved the waste from a landfill and produced high-quality, nutrient-rich soil. Customers include both private homes and commercial accounts. Those include heavy hitters like Rice University, Conoco Phillips and Texas Children’s Hospital, as well as beloved restaurants ranging from Bludorn to Tacodeli. And that’s just in Houston. The company now collects from businesses in Austin, Dallas and Waco, too.

That extended footprint will be important to Moonshot Hydrogen.

“Our big dream is ideally that we have one of these hydrogen facilities in almost every city that we can think of. Your city has that ability to charge up or refuel the cars with hydrogen at-location and not have to worry about going 300 miles away,” says Ramirez.

Filling up your car with zero-emission hydrogen made from compost? It could be a reality sooner than you think. According to Wood, Moonshot is already in the preliminary stages of discussions with a facility to pilot just such a program.

“We’ve been thrilled with how receptive people are. There does seem to be a general acknowledgment that this would fit well with Houston’s desire to be the energy transition capital of the world,” he says.

Their patent-protected technology assures that Moonshot is the only company with this novel solution to food waste. Most exciting is the fact that the institutions with which Moonshot already partners could be on the ground floor of being at least partially powered by their own discarded scraps.

“Everyone loves the circularity aspect of it,” says Ramirez. And with a potential launch as soon as next March, it’s one step closer to a reality for the Energy Transition Capital.

This innovative European company has already saved nearly 30,000 meals from being wasted in Houston. Photo via toogoodtogo.com

How this European company is reducing food waste in Houston and Texas

sustainable impact

Since expanding into Houston just over two months ago, an app that combats food waste has saved over 28,000 meals.

By partnering with locally owned vendors like the Village Bakery, as well as larger chains like Tiff’s Treats, Too Good To Go offers Houstonians a variety of discounted goodies. Users can browse a range of stores and sign up for a “surprise bag,” an assemblage of surplus food that typically costs $5.

The free mobile app now connects savvy shoppers to 130 Houston area stores, allowing them to enjoy food that would otherwise be thrown away. Based in Denmark, Too Good To Go previously launched in Texas in Austin in 2021, before its statewide expansion into Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio in July.

"We are excited to expand our app across Texas to partner with the dynamic food scene and culture," says Chris MacAulay, Too Good To Go US Country Director, in a press release. "In partnership with the incredible local food businesses across Texas, we want to make reducing food waste accessible to all. Together, with the great restaurant community and residents in Texas, we know we will have an immediate impact."

Sarah Soteroff, senior PR manager of Too Good To Go’s North American branch, shared the European based corporation’s scaling up of operations in Texas is part of their plan to move across the United States, going into more cities where food waste persists.

“Our goal is to reduce food waste everywhere that it occurs. So in the long term, we want to eliminate food waste globally,” Soteroff says.

The move into U.S. cities has been gradual, as Soteroff said Too Good To Go works to get an initial network of 50 businesses signed up for the app before officially launching. Beyond getting vendors to list their surplus stock on the app, Too Good To Go representatives aid in marketing and educating the stores on how to use the app.

“We want to make sure that we are setting those businesses up for success and ensuring that consumers know about it through PR, through the stories we share. That businesses do feel as though there’s a value to them for being on the app,” Soteroff explains.

Though the surprise bags are typically priced at about one-third their retail values, vendors can still bring in business through these mystery deals. Roughly 8,500 unique users in Houston have made purchases through the app since it debuted, preventing over 28,000 meals from ending up in landfills.

“For us to ensure that we are able to reduce food waste, we do have to be going into markets like Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin–in those larger cities where there’s a larger concentration of stores,” Soteroff shares.

According to the Too Good To Go website, every surprise bag purchased prevents the “CO2e emission of charging one smartphone fully 422 times,” and in 2022 the company averted nearly 200,000 tons of CO2e emissions through its community partnerships.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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Houston-based ENGIE to add new wind and solar projects to Texas grid

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Houston-based ENGIE North America Inc. has expanded its partnership with Los Angeles-based Ares Infrastructure Opportunities to add 730 megawatts of renewable energy projects to the ERCOT grid.

The new projects will include one wind and two solar projects in Texas.

“The continued growth of our relationship with Ares reflects the strength of ENGIE’s portfolio of assets and our track record of delivering, operating and financing growth in the U.S. despite challenging circumstances,” Dave Carroll, CEO and Chief Renewables Officer of ENGIE North America, said in a news release. “The addition of another 730 MW of generation to our existing relationship reflects the commitment both ENGIE and Ares have to meeting growing demand for power in the U.S. and our willingness to invest in meeting those needs.”

ENGIE has more than 11 gigawatts of renewable energy projects in operation or under construction in the U.S. and Canada, and 52.7 gigawatts worldwide. The company is targeting 95 gigawatts by 2030.

ENGIE launched three new community solar farms in Illinois since December, including the 2.5-megawatt Harmony community solar farm in Lena and the Knox 2A and Knox 2B projects in Galesburg.

The company's 600-megawatt Swenson Ranch Solar project near Abilene, Texas, is expected to go online in 2027 and will provide power for Meta, the parent company of social media platform Facebook. Late last year, ENGIE also signed a nine-year renewable energy supply agreement with AstraZeneca to support the pharmaceutical company’s manufacturing operations from its 114-megawatt Tyson Nick Solar Project in Lamar County, Texas.

Houston geothermal company raises $97M Series B

fresh funding

Houston-based geothermal energy startup Sage Geosystems has closed its Series B fundraising round and plans to use the money to launch its first commercial next-generation geothermal power generation facility.

Ormat Technologies and Carbon Direct Capital co-led the $97 million round, according to a press release from Sage. Existing investors Exa, Nabors, alfa8, Arch Meredith, Abilene Partners, Cubit Capital and Ignis H2 Energy also participated, as well as new investors SiteGround Capital and The UC Berkeley Foundation’s Climate Solutions Fund.

The new geothermal power generation facility will be located at one of Ormat Technologies' existing power plants. The Nevada-based company has geothermal power projects in the U.S. and numerous other countries around the world. The facility will use Sage’s proprietary pressure geothermal technology, which extracts geothermal heat energy from hot dry rock, an abundant geothermal resource.

“Pressure geothermal is designed to be commercial, scalable and deployable almost anywhere,” Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems, said in the news release. “This Series B allows us to prove that at commercial scale, reflecting strong conviction from partners who understand both the urgency of energy demand and the criticality of firm power.”

Sage reports that partnering with the Ormat facility will allow it to market and scale up its pressure geothermal technology at a faster rate.

“This investment builds on the strong foundation we’ve established through our commercial agreement and reinforces Ormat’s commitment to accelerating geothermal development,” Doron Blachar, CEO of Ormat Technologies, added in the release. “Sage’s technical expertise and innovative approach are well aligned with Ormat’s strategy to move faster from concept to commercialization. We’re pleased to take this natural next step in a partnership we believe strongly in.”

In 2024, Sage agreed to deliver up to 150 megawatts of new geothermal baseload power to Meta, the parent company of Facebook. At the time, the companies reported that the project's first phase would aim to be operating in 2027.

The company also raised a $17 million Series A, led by Chesapeake Energy Corp., in 2024.

Houston expert discusses the clean energy founder's paradox

Guest Column

Everyone tells you to move fast and break things. In clean energy, moving fast without structural integrity means breaking the only planet we’ve got. This is the founder's paradox: you are building a company in an industry where the stakes are existential, the timelines are glacial, and the capital requires patience.

The myth of the lone genius in a garage doesn’t really apply here. Clean energy startups aren’t just fighting competitors. They are fighting physics, policy, and decades of existing infrastructure. This isn’t an app. You’re building something physical that has to work in the real world. It has to be cheaper, more reliable, and clearly better than fossil fuels. Being “green” alone isn’t enough. Scale is what matters.

Your biggest risks aren’t competitors. They’re interconnection delays, permitting timelines, supply chain fragility, and whether your first customer is willing to underwrite something that hasn’t been done before.

That reality creates a brutal filter. Successful founders in this space need deep technical knowledge and the ability to execute. You need to understand engineering, navigate regulation, and think in terms of markets and risk. You’re not just selling a product. You’re selling a future where your solution becomes the obvious choice. That means connecting short-term financial returns with long-term system change.

The capital is there, but it’s smarter and more demanding. Investors today have PhDs in electrochemistry and grid dynamics. They’ve been burned by promises of miracle materials that never left the lab. They don't fund visions; they fund pathways to impact that can scale and make financial sense. Your roadmap must show not just a brilliant invention, but a clear, believable plan to drive costs down over time.

Capital in this sector isn’t impressed by ambition alone. It wants evidence that risk is being retired in the right order — even if that means slower growth early.

Here’s the upside. The difficulty of clean energy is also its strength. If you succeed, your advantage isn’t just in software or branding. It’s in hardware, supply chains, approvals, and years of hard work that others can’t easily copy. Your real competitors aren’t other startups. They’re inertia and the existing system. Winning here isn’t zero-sum. When one solution scales, it helps the entire market grow.

So, to the founder in the lab, or running field tests at a remote site: your pace will feel slow. The validation cycles are long. But you are building in the physical world. When you succeed, you don’t have an exit. You have a foundation. You don't just have customers; you have converts. And the product you ship doesn't just generate revenue; it creates a legacy.

If your timelines feel uncomfortable compared to software, that’s because you’re operating inside a system designed to resist change. And let’s not forget you are building actual physical products that interact with a complex world. Times are tough. Don’t give up. We need you.

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Nada Ahmed is the founding partner at Houston-based Energy Tech Nexus.

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