Baker Hughes to provide equipment for massive low-carbon ammonia plant

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Baker Hughes will supply equipment for Blue Point Number One, a $4 billion low-carbon ammonia plant being developed in Louisiana. Photo courtesy Technip Energies.

Houston-based energy technology company Baker Hughes has been tapped to supply equipment for what will be the world’s largest low-carbon ammonia plant.

French technology and engineering company Technip Energies will buy a steam turbine generator and compression equipment from Baker Hughes for Blue Point Number One, a $4 billion low-carbon ammonia plant being developed in Louisiana by a joint venture comprising CF Industries, JERA and Mitsui & Co. Technip was awarded a contract worth at least $1.1 billion to provide services for the Blue Point project.

CF, a producer of ammonia and nitrogen, owns a 40 percent stake in the joint venture, with JERA, Japan’s largest power generator, at 35 percent and Mitsui, a Japanese industrial conglomerate, at 25 percent.

The Blue Point Number One project, to be located at CF’s Blue Point ammonia production facility, will be capable of producing about 1.4 million metric tons of low-carbon ammonia per year and permanently storing up to 2.3 million metric tons of carbon dioxide.

Construction of the ammonia-making facility is expected to start in 2026, with production of low-carbon ammonia set to get underway in 2029.

“Ammonia, as a lower-carbon energy source, is poised to play a pivotal role in enabling and accelerating global sustainable energy development,” Alessandro Bresciani, senior vice president of energy equipment at Baker Hughes, said in a news release.

Earlier this year, British engineering and industrial gas company Linde signed a long-term contract to supply industrial gases for Blue Point Number One. Linde Engineering Americas is based in Houston.

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The new Carbon Measures coalition will create a framework that eliminates double-counting of carbon pollution and attributes emissions to their sources. Photo via Getty Images.

Major Houston energy companies join new Carbon Measures coalition

green team

Six companies with a large presence in the Houston area have joined a new coalition of companies pursuing a better way to track the carbon emissions of products they manufacture, purchase and finance.

Houston-area members of the Carbon Measures coalition are:

Spring-based ExxonMobil
Air Liquide, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston
Honeywell, whose Performance Materials and Technologies business is based in Houston.
BASF, whose global oilfield solutions business is based in Houston
Linde, whose Linde Engineering Americas business is based in Houston

Carbon Measures will create an accounting framework that eliminates double-counting of carbon pollution and attributes emissions to their sources, said Amy Brachio, the group’s CEO. The model is expected to take two years to develop, and between five and seven years to scale up, Bloomberg reported.

The coalition wants to create a system that will “unleash markets and competition,” unlock investments and speed up the pace of emissions reduction, said Brachio, former vice chair of sustainability at professional services firm EY.

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it,” said Darren Woods, chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil. “The first step to reducing global emissions is to know where they’re coming from — and today, we don’t have an accurate system to do this.”

Other members of the coalition include BlackRock-owned Global Infrastructure Partners, Banco Satanader, EY and NextEra Energy.

“Transparent and consistent emissions accounting is not just a technical necessity — it’s a strategic imperative. It enables smarter decisions and accelerates real progress across industries and borders,” said Ken West, president and CEO of Honeywell Energy and Sustainability Solutions.

OCI broke ground on the project in 2022. Photo via oci-global.com

Woodside to acquire clean ammonia project outside of Houston in $2.4B deal

seeing green

Woodside Energy has announced its acquiring a Beaumont, Texas, clean ammonia project that's slated to deliver its first ammonia by 2025 and lower carbon ammonia by 2026.

The agreement is for Woodside to acquire 100 percent of OCI Clean Ammonia Holding and its lower carbon ammonia project in Beaumont in an all-cash deal of approximately $2.35 billion. According to Woodside CEO Meg O’Neill, the acquisition positions Woodside as an early mover in clean ammonia within the energy transition.

“This transaction positions Woodside in the growing lower carbon ammonia market," O’Neill says in a news release. "The potential applications for lower carbon ammonia are in power generation, marine fuels and as an industrial feedstock, as it displaces higher-emitting fuels.

“Global ammonia demand is forecast to double by 2050, with lower carbon ammonia making up nearly two-thirds of total demand," she continues. “This Project exceeds our capital allocation framework targets for new energy projects. Both phases are expected to achieve an internal rate of return above 10 percent and payback of less than 10 years."

OCI broke ground on the project in 2022. It's reportedly the world’s first ammonia plant paired with auto thermal reforming with over 95 percent carbon dioxide capture.

Phase 1 of the project will have a capacity of 1.1 million tonnes per annum and is currently under construction. The first ammonia production will be derived from natural gas and is slated for 2025, with lower carbon ammonia production — derived from natural gas paired with carbon sequestration — is expected in in 2026 following commencement of CCS operations

According to the release, Phase 2 will have the capacity to abate 3.2 million tonnes per annum CO2-e, "or over 60 percent of our Scope 3 abatement target,” O’Neill explains.

Linde will source the nitrogen and lower carbon hydrogen feedstock from its feedstock facility, which is currently under construction with a targeted completion in early 2026. In the meantime, early supply of feedstock for the project will come from various suppliers including Linde. Per the release, CCS services will be provided to Linde by ExxonMobil and are expected to be available in 2026.

The rig stands 225 feet tall and extends 8,000 feet below the subsurface. Photo via exxonmobil.com

ExxonMobil breaks ground on Texas carbon dioxide storage project

digging in

ExxonMobil announced this month that it has officially broken ground on a groundbreaking carbon dioxide storage site.

According to a release from the company, a new rig is currently being used to gather information about an underground site in Southeast Texas. The rig stands 225 feet tall, but more importantly extends 8,000 feet below the subsurface to investigate if the site is a safe place to store carbon underground.

“Everyone’s excited about this appraisal well because we’re literally breaking ground on a new chapter of our work to help reduce industrial emissions,” Joe Colletti, who oversees carbon capture and storage development along the Gulf Coast for Exxon, says in a statement.

Exxon plans to move the rig to other sites in the Gulf Coast in the future for clients Nucor Corp., CF Industries and Linde.

In the last year, Exxon has made agreements with these regional companies to store carbon captured from their operations.

Exxon agreed to transport and permanently store up to 2.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide each year from Linde’s hydrogen production facility in Beaumont, Texas when it launches in 2025.
Exxon agreed to store up to 2 million metric tons per year of CO2 captured from CF Industries’ ammonia plant in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, starting in 2025.
Exxon agreed to capture, transport and store up to 800,000 metric tons per year of CO2 from Nucor’s direct reduced iron manufacturing site in Convent, Louisiana starting in 2026.

Together, the three agreements represent a total of 5 million metric tons per year that Exxon plans to transport and store for third-party customers.

“Our agreement with Nucor is the latest example of how we’re delivering on our mission to help accelerate the world's path to net zero and build a compelling new business,” Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, says in a statement over the summer. “Momentum is building as customers recognize our ability to solve emission challenges at scale.”

In addition to the carbon storage agreements, the energy giant also completed the acquisition of Denbury Inc. this month in an all-stock transaction valued at $4.9 billion. The deal adds more than 1,300 miles, including nearly 925 miles of CO2 pipelines in Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi to Exxon's CO2 pipeline network.

The deal was first announced this summer.

The Houston energy transition ecosystem is primed for collaborative partnerships – but here's what to keep in mind. Photo courtesy of Digital Wildcatters

Addressing the need for collaboration in Houston's energy transition

Editor's note

When it comes to advancing the energy transition in Houston and beyond, experts seem to agree that collaborations between all major stakeholders is extremely important.

In fact, it was so important that it was the first panel of the second day of FUZE, an energy-focused conference put on by Digital Wildcatters. EnergyCapital HTX and InnovationMap were the event's media partners, and I, as editor of these news outlets, moderated the panel about collaborations.

I wanted to take a second to reflect on the conversation I had with the panelists earlier this week, as I believe their input and expertise — from corporate and nonprofit to startup and investing — was extremely valuable to the greater energy transition community.

Here were my three takeaways from the panel, titled "Collaborative Partnerships: Leveraging synergy in the energy sector."

Early-stage tech startups need bridges to cross their valleys.

The energy transition is a long game — and an expensive one, as Jane Stricker, executive director of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative, explains on the panel. And, just like most startups, the path to commercialization and profitability is long — and definitely not promised.

"When you look at innovation and startups, the multiple valleys of death a startup will go through on their journey, we have to find more ways to bridge those valleys and get more technology to get up that mountain and to a place where it can be scaled," she says.

She explains that corporations aren't always good at innovating, but they are impactful about rolling out de-risked technology at a global scale. But the technology has to get to that point first, so it takes a much earlier intervention for corporates — or another entity, like incubators and accelerators — to help in that developmental process.

"In Houston we have the potential to build out that ecosystem — we already have a lot of pieces in place, so it's about connecting the dots," Stricker says. "It's only by all of the different parts of the ecosystem understanding what each other does and what unique role they play in the process that we can really leverage the strengths of each of them to help create those partnerships and opportunities."

As Amy Henry, CEO of EUNIKE Ventures explains, corporates have their own challenges.

"Energy companies themselves have their own valley of death, and from where they are sitting, that's why they need to collaborate," she says on the panel. "And now we're talking about an unprecedented rate of getting technology commercialized."

EUNIKE works as a go between for corporates — almost as an expansion for them, Henry explains, and they are facing a challenging time too.

"Energy companies are just not early adopters of technology," she says. "But they are also going through their own transformation. At the same time, you've had this huge knowledge leakage in terms of all the workforce reduction."

Startups and corporates speak a different language.

Moji Karimi has had several partnerships with corporations with his biotech startup Cemvita Factory, including a recent offtake agreement with United. For Karimi, it's about learning about your corporate partner.

"In partnerships, especially for startups, you need to understand what is the language of love for the company at time," he says on the panel. "Is it growth, is it perception and PR, is it deployment of capital, or is there a specific bottleneck that we can help remove."

For HETI, Striker says they hope to act as a translator between the two parties.

"How do we enable more connectivity between the companies that have a technology that may be of interest to the larger companies looking for a solution?" Striker explains of HETI's mission. "And how do we make sure industry is communicating opening and broadly?"

Now is the time for action.

For Karimi, the solution is simple: More action is needed.

"Generally, we just need to talk less and do more," he says of what he wants to see from corporates, adding that more checks need to be written.

Based on his own experience, Karimi says some corporates are better to work with than others. He says he prefers working with the companies that don't try to mix in their startup pilots with the "bread and butter" of the business.

"Everyone has so much on their plate," he says, giving the example of Oxy Low Carbon Ventures being an offshoot of Oxy's main business.

Karimi says corporates should think of their startup pilots as an opportunity to try something new and different — something they'd never be able to test internally.

David Maher, business development director of Americas at Linde, says now that there's been regulatory framework, Linde knows what to invest in. The company has a particular interest in hydrogen.

"Another big piece of it is scale," Maher says of what Linde thinks about when considering innovative partnerships. "What's great about Houston is we have density and scale already."

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These 5 trailblazing Houston startups are leading the energy transition

meet the finalists

Houston is home to a growing number of startups reshaping what it means to be called the "Energy Capital of the World."

As part of the 2026 Houston Innovation Awards, our Energy Transition Business category honors those innovative startups that are providing solutions within renewables, climatetech, clean energy, alternative materials, circular economy and more.

Five clean energy startups have been named finalists for the 2026 award. The finalists, selected by our esteemed panel of judges, range from a lower-emission steel producer to a diagnostics platform developer working to support batteries used in data centers.

Read more about these innovative businesses, their initiatives, and their inspirational founders below. The 2026 winners will be announced on InnovationMap.com in mid-November.

Capwell Services

Methane capture company Capwell Services works to eliminate vented oil and gas emissions economically for operators. According to the company, methane emissions are vented from most oil and gas facilities due to safety protocols, and operators are not able to capture the gas cost-effectively, leading operators to emit more than 14 million metric tons of methane per year in the U.S. and Canada. Founded in 2022, Capwell specializes in low and intermittent flow vents for methane capture.

The company began as a University of Pennsylvania senior design project led by CEO Andrew Lane. It has since participated in programs with Greentown Labs, the Rice Clean Energy Accelerator and the Creative Destruction Lab Energy Cohort at Texas A&M University. The company moved to Houston in 2023 and raised a pre-seed round. It deployed two commercial units this year, according to its application.

FlowCellutions

Energytech startup FlowCellutions is developing a chemistry-agnostic diagnostics platform for flow and metal-air batteries supporting data centers and critical infrastructure. The platform is designed to help reduce operating costs, prevent failures and costly downtime, and extend battery lifetime from approximately seven years to more than 30 years. It has deployed four paid pilots and plans to take insights from the programs to develop its next-gen sensor platform technology.

CEO Becca Segel founded the company in 2022. It is a member of Greentown Labs, and Segel was a 2025 Activate Fellow. The company has raised over $2 million in non-dilutive funding and received a $1.5 million NSF SBIR Fast-Track award earlier this year.

Hertha Metals

Hertha Metals produces lower-cost, lower-emission steel and high-purity iron. The company has developed a single-step process that uses natural gas as a direct reductant instead of metallurgical coal, which cuts production costs by more than 25 percent and emissions by up to 50 percent, according to the company. The same process produces high-purity iron needed for high-purity steels and rare earth magnets. The company says it aims to "re-industrialize America’s production of critical materials."

Hertha Metals was founded by CEO Laureen Meroueh in 2022 and emerged from stealth last year with more than $17 million in venture capital funding. The company closed a $133.65 million Series A this month and also broke ground on its $100M high-purity iron factory known as Chalyx in Conroe.

Mars Materials

Clean chemical manufacturing business Mars Materials is working to convert captured carbon into resources, such as carbon fiber and wastewater treatment chemicals. The company develops and produces its drop-in chemical products in Houston and uses an in-licensed process for the National Renewable Energy Lab to produce acrylonitrile, which is used to produce plastics, synthetic fibers, and rubbers.

Founded in 2019 by CEO Aaron Fitzgerald, CTO Kristian Gubsch, and vice president of operations Trey Sheridan, the company has secured over $7.2M in financing and is backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy, Shell, Black & Veatch, and other organizations. It won in the Minority-founded Business Category in last year's Houston Innovation Awards.

Solidec

Chemical manufacturing company Solidec has developed autonomous generators that extract molecules from water and air and convert them into pure chemicals and fuels that are free of carbon emissions on-site, eliminating the need for transport, storage, and permitting. The company was founded around innovations developed by Rice University associate professor Haotian Wang.

The company was selected for the Chevron Technology Ventures’ Catalyst Program, Greentown Labs, NSF I-Corps and was part of the first cohort of the Activate Houston program. It won first place at the 2024 startup pitch competition at CERAWeek. Solidec was founded in 2023 by Wang, who serves as an advisor, CEO Ryan DuChanois, and CTO Yang Xia. It closed a $2.5 million seed round in 2025.

Texas ranks below average on most energy-efficient states report

room to improve

Despite being home to a booming energy sector, Texas ranks below average on a new list of the country’s most and least energy-efficient states.

The list, compiled by personal finance website WalletHub, puts Texas at No. 34 for energy efficiency. It ranked 27th for energy efficiency of homes and 41st for energy efficiency of cars. Texas improved by one spot on the 2026 report, after coming in at No. 35 last year and No. 36 in 2024.

California took the top spot on the list this year, beating out Vermont, which claimed the No. 1 rank in 2025. South Carolina ranked No. 48. Due to data limitations, Alaska and Hawaii were excluded from WalletHub’s analysis.

In the WalletHub study, California had the lowest residential energy consumption per capita and the third-highest efficiency for home energy. At the bottom of the list, South Carolina ranked 48th for energy efficiency of homes and 35th for energy efficiency of cars.

Here’s who joined California in the top 5:

No. 2 Vermont
No. 3 New York
No. 4 Washington
No. 5 Massachusetts

WalletHub notes the average U.S. family spends at least $2,000 per year on utilities, and the average consumer spent $2,411 on gasoline in 2024.

The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that adopting energy-efficient measures in the home could reduce a family’s utility costs by as much as 25 percent. As for gas, the agency found a more fuel-efficient vehicle could save the average driver more than $1,000 per year.

“Energy efficiency doesn’t just help save the planet — it also helps save you money by lowering the amount of electricity, gas, oil, or other types of energy you need to consume,” WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo says.

“While there are some steps you can take to become more energy-efficient on your own, living in the right area can give you a big boost,” he adds. “For example, certain states have much better public transportation systems that minimize your need to drive, at least in big cities. Some places also have better-constructed buildings that retain heat better during the winter or stay cooler during the summer.”

WalletHub compiled the listing using data from the U.S. Census Bureau, National Climatic Data Center, U.S. Energy Information Administration, and Federal Highway Administration.

Utility Global's H2Gen named one of the best inventions of 2026

Best of 2026

One of the year's most buzzworthy innovations comes from a Houston-based leader in the energy transition. Utility Global's H2Gen recently made Time magazine’s list of the 300 best inventions of 2026.

The H2Gen is an innovative system that produces low-cost clean hydrogen from water and industrial off-gases. The company says the process doesn’t require electricity, a notable claim since hydrogen production typically consumes a lot of power.

"Using a tubular electrochemical cell containing a proprietary electrolyte and water, the company can turn industrial off-gases into hydrogen at scale—no extra electricity required," writes Time. "Bonus: the process also pulls out carbon dioxide as a separate stream, where it can be captured and kept out of the atmosphere.

CEO Parker Meeks tells Time, it's “a practical pathway to decarbonize existing industrial assets."

The startup is on a roll. It has raised $100 million so far in an ongoing Series D round to offer its decarbonization technology at industrial scale around the world.

H2Gen is joined by 10 other inventions with Texas connections onTime's list, as well as one "special mention."

In North Texas, they are:

Samsung
Plano-based Samsung Electronics America pulled off a hat trick this year, with three products making Time’s list. First up is the Galaxy S26 Ultra smartphone. It packs a more powerful camera, Galaxy AI features, and pro-level content creation tools. But Time singled out its new built-in privacy display as the phone’s “biggest selling point.”

Samsung’s Bespoke AI Family Hub refrigerator also got smarter. When AI first came to the Family Hub in 2024, it could recognize some fresh foods, but you still had to log packaged items by hand, Time noted. Now, with Google Gemini built in, the fridge can identify more than 2,000 packaged foods, read handwritten labels, and warn you when food is about to expire. It then uses what’s inside to build grocery lists and suggest recipes.

And for gamers, there’s the Odyssey G8 monitor. Its 6K resolution leapfrogs the 4K standard, delivering what Samsung calls “exceptional visual clarity and detail” on a screen big enough for gaming and multitasking.

OxeFit
Plano-based OxeFit’s XS1 Peak is about the size of a treadmill but works like an entire gym. It can be set up for strength training, simulated skiing or kayaking, Pilates, or rowing. What makes it stand out is a built-in virtual spotter. According to Time, the machine “uses AI, computer vision and sensors to correct the user’s form, change resistance in the middle of a rep and reduce the weight when the user is struggling, much like a human spotter.”

EssilorLuxottica
EssilorLuxottica, the French eyewear giant whose U.S. headquarters is in Farmers Branch, makes Essilor Stellest lenses. The lenses correct nearsightedness while also slowing the eye growth that makes it worse over time. Stellest is the first and only eyeglass lens authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to control myopia, Time said. The lenses look like regular glasses but contain 1,021 tiny lenslets. In a U.S. trial of kids ages 6-12, myopia progression slowed by an average of 71 percent over two years compared with standard lenses.

Helpany
Helpany, a startup based in Phoenix that manufactures its devices in DFW, makes Paul, a ceiling-mounted gadget that uses radar and AI to spot subtle changes in how residents move and flag those at higher risk of falling. Helpany says the technology can cut falls by as much as 72 percent.

Aurora Innovation
Aurora, based in Pittsburgh with a corporate and operations hub in Coppell, rolled out its second-generation Driver 2 system in July. By September, Driver 2 trucks had logged more than 500,000 driverless miles without a single at-fault crash, Time reported, and the company expects 200 of them on the road by the end of 2026.

Colossal Biosciences
Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences built an artificial egg by placing an ultra-thin, transparent silicone membrane inside a rigid 3D-printed cup, letting scientists watch the embryo develop. Twenty-six chickens have already been hatched.

In Austin, they are:
Cedar Park-based Hyliion landed on Time’s list with its Karno Power Module, a modular generator designed to produce power wherever it’s needed. The Karno represents a big pivot for the company. Hyliion got its start building electrified powertrains for 18-wheelers before shifting into power generation after acquiring the Karno generator technology from GE Aerospace. Founded in Pittsburgh in 2015, the company relocated to Cedar Park in 2018.

The other Austin-associated honoree is Moment Energy. As more electric vehicles hit the road, a growing number of their batteries are nearing retirement, while demand for power keeps climbing. Moment Energy found a way to tackle both problems at once. The company’s Megafactory 1, which opened in Vancouver, Canada, in June, turns old EV batteries into modular energy storage systems for hospitals, factories, data centers, and other big power users. “Our goal is to make sure these batteries don’t end up in landfills,” founder Edward Chiang told Time.

In the “Special Mentions” category, Austin-based Renzoe Box gained notice for its refillable custom makeup palette for on-the-go people. Licensed architect René Graham designed the box. She graduated from Houston's Rice University, and was born and raised in Dallas.

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A version of this article first appeared on CultureMap.com.

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