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Houston energy transition leader to spearhead urban reforestation initiative

seeing green

SCS Technologies named Jane Stricker, executive director of HETI, as the executive chairperson of its inaugural urban reforestation event next month. Photo via GHP

One of Houston's foremost energy transition leaders has been named to a community urban reforestation project from a Texas energy company.

Big Spring, Texas-based SCS Technologies named Jane Stricker, executive director of the Greater Houston Partnership’s Houston Energy Transition Initiative, as the executive chairperson of its inaugural urban reforestation event next month.

SCS, a provider of liquid hydrocarbon, water, and CO2 measurement systems, is holding the event on March 23 at the Galena Park Resource and Training Center in Galena Park, Texas, in collaboration with One Tree Planted and Trees for Houston.

“We are honored that Jane Stricker is spearheading our Galena Park tree-planting effort. As a revered leader in the energy transformation movement, Jane's impact is profound across Houston’s diverse energy sector and internationally,” Cody Johnson, CEO of SCS Technologies, says in a news release. “Jane's stewardship of this event underscores the vital importance of fostering partnerships between the community and industry to improve local environments and make strides in reducing our collective carbon footprint.

"Our donation of trees to the Galena Park area—a community just east of Houston materially affected by emissions from surrounding petrochemical plants—is one step towards environmental restoration and tree equity," he continues.

The goal for the event is to give out 1,125 shade, flowering, and fruit trees to community members, who will be asked to plant at their homes and businesses.

“The vast undertaking of the energy transformation requires more than just technological innovation; it demands a shared commitment from all sectors to enact real change. SCS Technologies is leading by example, demonstrating how innovative solutions and community-focused actions can drive meaningful change,” Stricker adds in the release. “As the executive chairperson, I am proud to be part of the Galena Park tree distribution event, an initiative that illustrates our shared dedication to environmental sustainability and community enrichment. The impact of these trees extends beyond carbon sequestration, bringing beauty and much-needed shade from our hot summer sun to the Galena Park community.”

The initiative is a part of SCS's goal to plant 100,000 trees in "economically challenged urban neighborhoods" across Texas, Oklahoma, and Louisiana by 2030. The company, per its environmental initiatives, is also participating in SME Net Zero by 2050.

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Houston's hydrogen revolution gets up to $1.2B federal boost to power Gulf Coast’s clean energy future

HyVelocity funding

The emerging low-carbon hydrogen ecosystem in Houston and along the Texas Gulf Coast is getting as much as a $1.2 billion lift from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Energy funding, announced November 20, is earmarked for the new HyVelocity Hub. The hub — backed by energy companies, schools, nonprofits, and other organizations — will serve the country’s biggest hydrogen-producing area. The region earns that status thanks to more than 1,000 miles of dedicated hydrogen pipelines and almost 50 hydrogen production plants.

“The HyVelocity Hub demonstrates the power of collaboration in catalyzing economic growth and creating value for communities as we build a regional hydrogen economy that delivers benefits to Gulf Coast communities,” says Paula Gant, president and CEO of Des Plaines, Illinois-based GTI Energy, which is administering the hub.

HyVelocity, which aims to become the largest hydrogen hub in the country, has already received about $22 million of the $1.2 billion in federal funding to kickstart the project.

Organizers of the hydrogen project include:

  • Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corp.
  • Air Liquide, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston
  • Chevron, which is moving its headquarters to Houston
  • Spring-based ExxonMobil
  • Lake Mary, Florida-based Mitsubishi Power Americas
  • Denmark-based Ørsted
  • Center for Houston’s Future
  • Houston Advanced Research Center
  • University of Texas at Austin

The hub’s primary contractor is HyVelocity LLC. The company says the hub could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to seven million metric tons per year and create as many as 45,000 over the life of the project.

HyVelocity is looking at several locations in the Houston area and along the Gulf Coast for large-scale production of hydrogen. The process will rely on water from electrolysis along with natural gas from carbon capture and storage. To improve distribution and lower storage costs, the hub envisions creating a hydrogen pipeline system.

Clean hydrogen generated by the hub will help power fuel-cell electric trucks, factories, ammonia plants, refineries, petrochemical facilities, and marine fuel operations.

Geothermal co. wins at Houston innovation event, UH secures DOE funding, and more trending energy news

top stories

Editor's note: From Sage Geosystems winning at the Houston Innovation Awards to Daikin renaming Houston's baseball stadium, these are the top headlines that resonated with EnergyCapital readers on social media and daily newsletter this week.

Local energy innovators recognized at annual Houston Innovation Awards

At an event celebrating Houston innovation, these four energy transition leaders were recognized. Photos courtesy

This week, the Houston innovation ecosystem celebrated big wins from the year, and members of the energy transition community were recognized alongside other innovators.

The Houston Innovation Awards honored over 40 finalists across categories, naming the 12 winners and honoring the two Trailblazer Legacy Awards at the event. The event, hosted at TMC Helix Park on November 14 named and celebrated the winners, which included four energy transition innovators. Continue reading.

University of Houston secures $3.6M from DOE program to fund sustainable fuel production

Researchers Rahul Pandey, senior scientist with SRI and principal investigator (left), and Praveen Bollini, a University of Houston chemical engineering faculty, are key contributors to the microreactor project. Photo via uh.edu

A University of Houston-associated project was selected to receive $3.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy that aims to transform sustainable fuel production.

Nonprofit research institute SRI is leading the project “Printed Microreactor for Renewable Energy Enabled Fuel Production” or PRIME-Fuel, which will try to develop a modular microreactor technology that converts carbon dioxide into methanol using renewable energy sources with UH contributing research. Continue reading.

Global industrial company Daikin makes deal with Houston Astros on stadium rename

The Astros' stadium will have a new name in 2025. Courtesy of the Houston Astros

The Houston Astros' home will get a new name on Jan. 1, becoming Daikin Park under an agreement through the 2039 season the team announced Monday.

The stadium opened as Enron Field in 2000 as part of a 30-year, $100 million agreement but the name was removed in March 2002 following Enron Corp.'s bankruptcy filing and the ballpark briefly became Astros Field. Continue reading.

Reliant, GM Energy team up on free renewable energy EV charging

Reliant and GM Energy will be offering free nighttime charging for Chevrolet electric vehicle drivers that enroll in the new Reliant FreeCharge Nights. Photo via reliant.com

Reliant Energy and GM Energy are advancing a new renewable energy electricity plan that will “accelerate the clean energy journey for the two companies and their customers,” according to a news release.

Houston-based Reliant and GM Energy will be offering free nighttime charging for Chevrolet electric vehicle drivers that enroll in the new Reliant FreeCharge Nights. Continue reading.

Pipeline robotics: How this Houston startup is revolutionizing corrosion monitoring

Dianna Liu of ARIX Technologies joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share her entrepreneurial journey — and why Houston was the right place to start her company. Photo courtesy of ARIX

After working for years in the downstream energy industry where safety and efficiency were top priorities, Dianna Liu thought there was a way technology could make a huge difference.

Despite loving her company and her job, she took a leap of faith to start a robotics company to create technology to more safely and efficiently monitor corrosion in pipelines. ARIX Technologies has developed software and hardware solutions for its customers with pipelines in downstream and beyond.

"Overall, this industry is an industry that really harps on doing things safely, doing things well, and having all the data to make really informed decisions," Liu says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Because these are huge companies with huge problems, it takes a lot of time to set up the right systems, adopt new things, and make changes." Continue reading.

CenterPoint’s Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative makes advancements on progress

step by step

CenterPoint Energy has released the first of its public progress updates on the actions being taken throughout the Greater Houston 12-county area, which is part of Phase Two of its Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative.

The GHRI Phase Two will lead to more than 125 million fewer outage minutes annually, according to CenterPoint.

According to CenterPoint, they have installed around 4,600 storm-resilient poles, installed more than 100 miles of power lines underground, cleared more than 800 miles of hazardous vegetation to improve reliability, and installed more self-healing automation all during the first two months of the program in preparation for the 2025 hurricane season.

"This summer, we accomplished a significant level of increased system hardening in the first phase of the Greater Houston Resilience Initiative,” Darin Carroll, senior vice president of CenterPoint Energy's Electric Business, says in a news release.

”Since then, as we have been fully engaged in delivering the additional set of actions in our second phase of GHRI, we continue to make significant progress as we work toward our ultimate goal of becoming the most resilient coastal grid in the country,” he continues.

The GHRI is a series of actions to “ strengthen resilience, enable a self-healing grid and reduce the duration and impact of power outages” according to a news release. The following progress through early November include:

The second phase of GHRI will run through May 31, 2025. During this time, CenterPoint teams will be installing 4,500 automated reliability devices to minimize sustained interruptions during major storms, reduce restoration times, and establish a network of 100 new weather monitoring stations. CenterPoint plans to complete each of these actions before the start of the next hurricane season.

“Now, and in the months to come, we will remain laser-focused on completing these critical resiliency actions and building the more reliable and more resilient energy system our customers expect and deserve," Carroll adds.

CenterPoint also announced that it has completed all 42 of the critical actions the company committed to taking in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl. Some of the actions were trimming or removing higher-risk vegetation from more than 2,000 power line miles, installing more than 1,100 more storm-resilient poles, installing over 300 automated devices to reduce sustained outages, launching a new, cloud-based outage tracker, improving CenterPoint's Power Alert Service, hosting listening sessions across the service area and using feedback.

In October, CenterPoint Energy announced an agreement with Artificial Intelligence-powered infrastructure modeling platform Neara for engineering-grade simulations and analytics, and to deploy Neara’s AI capabilities across CenterPoint’s Greater Houston service area.

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