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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Chevron enters lithium market with Texas land acquisition

to market

Chevron U.S.A., a subsidiary of Houston-based energy company Chevron, has taken its first big step toward establishing a commercial-scale lithium business.

Chevron acquired leaseholds totaling about 125,000 acres in Northeast Texas and southwest Arkansas from TerraVolta Resources and East Texas Natural Resources. The acreage contains a high amount of lithium, which Chevron plans to extract from brines produced from the subsurface.

Lithium-ion batteries are used in an array of technologies, such as smartwatches, e-bikes, pacemakers, and batteries for electric vehicles, according to Chevron. The International Energy Agency estimates lithium demand could grow more than 400 percent by 2040.

“This acquisition represents a strategic investment to support energy manufacturing and expand U.S.-based critical mineral supplies,” Jeff Gustavson, president of Chevron New Energies, said in a news release. “Establishing domestic and resilient lithium supply chains is essential not only to maintaining U.S. energy leadership but also to meeting the growing demand from customers.”

Rania Yacoub, corporate business development manager at Chevron New Energies, said that amid heightening demand, lithium is “one of the world’s most sought-after natural resources.”

“Chevron is looking to help meet that demand and drive U.S. energy competitiveness by sourcing lithium domestically,” Yacoub said.

Engie to add 'precycling' agreements for forthcoming solar projects

reduce, reuse

Houston-based Engie North America has partnered with Arizona-based Solarcycle to recycle 1 million solar panels on forthcoming projects with a goal of achieving project circularity.

The collaboration allows Engie to incorporate "precycling" provisions into power purchase agreements made on 375 megawatts worth of projects in the Midwest, which are expected to be completed in the next few years, according to a news release from Engie.

Engie will use Solarcycle's advanced tracking capabilities to ensure that every panel on the selected projects is recycled once it reaches its end of life, and that the recovered materials are returned to the supply chain.

Additionally, all construction waste and system components for the selected projects will be recycled "to the maximum degree possible," according to Engie.

“We are delighted to bring this innovative approach to life. Our collaboration with Solarcycle demonstrates the shared commitment we have to the long-term sustainability of our industry,” Caroline Mead, SVP power marketing at ENGIE North America, said in the release.

Solarcyle, which repairs, refurbishes, reuses and recycles solar power systems, estimates that the collaboration and new provisions will help divert 48 million pounds of material from landfills and avoid 33,000 tons of carbon emissions.

“ENGIE’s precycling provision sets a new precedent for the utility-scale solar industry by proving that circular economy principles can be achieved without complex regulatory intervention and in a way that doesn’t require an up-front payment," Jesse Simons, co-founder and chief commercial officer at SOLARCYCLE, added in the release. "We’re happy to work creatively with leaders like ENGIE to support their commitment to circularity, domestic energy, and sustainability.”

Texas gets one step closer to CCUS permitting authority

The View From HETI

This month, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its proposed approval of Texas request for permitting authority under the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) for Class VI underground injection wells for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) in the state. The State of Texas already has permitting authority for Class I-V injection wells. Granting authority for Class VI wells recognizes that Texas is well positioned to protect its underground sources of drinking water while also advancing economic opportunity and energy security.

“In the Safe Drinking Water Act, Congress laid out a clear vision for delegating decision-making from EPA to states that have local expertise and understand their water resources, geology, communities, and opportunities for economic growth,” said EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin in a news release. “EPA is taking a key step to support cooperative federalism by proposing to approve Texas to permit Class VI wells in the state.”

The Greater Houston Partnership’s Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI) has supported efforts to bring CCUS to a broader commercial scale since the initiative’s inception. Earlier this year, HETI commissioned a “study of studies” by Texas A&M University’s Energy Institute and Mary K. O’Connor Process Safety Center on the operational history and academic literature of CCUS safety in the United States. The report revealed that with state and federal regulations as well as technical and engineering technologies available today, CCUS is safe and presents a very low risk of impacts to human life. This is useful research for stakeholders interested in learning more about CCUS.

“The U.S. EPA’s proposal to approve Texas’ application for Class VI well permitting authority is yet another example of Texas’ continued leadership in meeting the dual challenge of producing more energy with less emissions,” said Jane Stricker, Senior Vice President of Energy at the Greater Houston Partnership and Executive Director of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative. “We applaud the U.S. EPA and Texas Railroad Commission for their collaborative efforts to ensure the supply of safe, affordable and reliable energy, and we call on all stakeholders to voice their support for the application during the public comment period.”

The U.S. EPA has announced a public comment period that will include a virtual public hearing on July 24, 2025 from 5-8 pm and conclude on July 31, 2025.

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This article originally ran on the Greater Houston Partnership's Houston Energy Transition Initiative blog. HETI exists to support Houston's future as an energy leader. For more information about the Houston Energy Transition Initiative, EnergyCapitalHTX's presenting sponsor, visit htxenergytransition.org.

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