UH Energy names latest winners of commercialization competition

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UH's winning team, ECHO, or Electrochemical CO2 Harvester from the Ocean, was awarded a $25,000 award from Chevron. Photo courtesy of UH

UH Energy named its second Innovation Commercialization Competition winners earlier this month with the goal of identifying promising ideas within the university that could have an impact in the energy transition.

The winning team, ECHO, or Electrochemical CO2 Harvester from the Ocean, was awarded a $25,000 award from Chevron, the event's sponsor, after presenting their pitch in front of a live Houston audience earlier this month.

“You don’t see the full impact of a good idea until someone figures out a way to convert it to a usable product or service that has value, brings it to market and makes money off of it—this is what makes it a sustainable business,” S. Radhakrishnan, the competition's coordinator and a retired University of Houston business professor, says in a statement. “To have a successful energy transition, we need many innovative ideas to be commercialized.”

Eighteen teams of University of Houston graduate students competed in the months-long competition and focused on projects related to carbon capture, carbon sequestration and lithium extraction from geothermal operations. Each team received a $2,000 stipend and mentoring throughout the competition.

The ECHO team was named the UH-Chevron Energy Transition Energy Innovation Challenge Winner. Comprised of four UH environmental engineering doctoral students (Prince Aleta, Ahmad Hassan, Mohsen Afshari and Abdelrahman Refale) and advised by Mim Rahimi, assistant professor of environmental engineering at the UH Cullen College of Engineering, the team pitched a membrane-less electrochemical process to capture carbon dioxide efficiently and sustainably. According to a statement from UH, the technology "seamlessly integrates with existing seawater intake infrastructure."

“As we’re from the STEM field, we normally work in lab environments, and I hear people say that what we’re working on has less commercial value and that it would take ages for them to commercialize,” Hassan adds in the statement. “This (competition) gave us the confidence and motivation to move forward.”

UH-based startup GeOME Analytics, led by UH's Moores Professor of Biology and Biochemistry and GeOME's president Preethi Gunaratne, was named the UH Energy Innovation Challenge Winner. The team pitched a new method for reservoir drainage diagnostics that uses the company's personalized DNA biomarkers. Other team members include Marcus Phillips, GeOME's vice president; postdoctoral researchers Partha Bhagavanthula and Nuwan Acharige; and UH graduate students, Micah Castillo, Dishan Adhikari and Shiyanth Thevasagayampillai.

Additional finalists included:

Team LiQuidium – Pitched lithium extraction from geothermal brines
Aldrogen – Pitched an A.I.-powered solution to improving grid resiliency while reducing emissions
MacAlgae – Pitched an environmentally conscious method of mycelium production

“The technology that was on display was fascinating,” Liz Schwarze, vice president of global exploration for Chevron, said in a statement. “I’m optimistic we can continue to grow this program, because it’s all about creating a culture where we can pursue our scientific and engineering dreams while partnering with business and entrepreneurship along the way to spinoff value to our community faster.”

Last month, UH and Chevron also partnered up to name its first-ever cohort of UH-Chevron Energy Graduate Fellows. The PhD and doctoral students will each receive a one-year $12,000 fellowship, along with mentoring from experts at UH and Chevron.

UH assistant professor Mim Rahimi published a paper on the development of his lab's emerging negative emissions technology known as electrochemical direct ocean capture. Photo via UH.edu

UH team develops method to use electricity to remove harmful carbon from ocean waters

ripple effect

Researchers at the University of Houston are developing a new, cost-effective way to help rid oceans of harmful carbon dioxide and fight the effects of climate change.

UH assistant professor Mim Rahimi published a paper on the development of his lab's emerging negative emissions technology known as electrochemical direct ocean capture (eDOC) in the journal Energy & Environmental Science this month.

The paper details how Rahimi's team is working to create electrochemical tubes to remove dissolved inorganic carbon from synthetic seawater, according to a release from UH. The process aims to amplify the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon and can easily be integrated into existing on-shore and off-shore infrastructure, including desalination plants and oil rigs.

Unlike other methods that involve complex processes, expensive materials and specialized membranes, the eDOC method focuses on adjusting the ocean water's acidity using affordable electrodes.

“While eDOC won’t single-handedly turn the tide on climate change, it enriches our mitigation toolkit,” Rahimi said in a statement. “In this global challenge, every innovative approach becomes invaluable.”

Rahimi's research is funded by a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy and preliminary research was sponsored by UH Energy’s Center for Carbon Management in Energy.

“The promise of eDOC is undeniable, but scaling it, optimizing costs and achieving peak efficiency remain challenges we’re actively addressing,” he added in a statement.

Late last month, UH shared details on another carbon removal project it is involved with–this time focused on direct air capture (DAC). Known as the Pelican Gulf Coast Carbon Removal study–led by Louisiana State University and including UH and Shell—the project looks at the feasibility of a DAC hub that would pull carbon dioxide from the air and either store it in deep geological formations or use it to manufacture various products, such as concrete.

In August, UH announced that the project received nearly $4.9 million in grants, including almost $3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy. Click here to read more.

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Houston renewables developer lands $85M for nationwide solar projects

fresh funding

Houston-based Catalyze, a developer of independent power systems, announced it has secured an $85 million tax equity investment from RBC Community Investments.

“RBC’s investment in this portfolio demonstrates our commitment to advancing clean energy solutions within local communities,” Jonathan Cheng, managing director at RBC, said in a news release. “We are excited to partner with Catalyze on the strategic deployment of these and future projects.”

The financing will go toward the construction and completion of 75 megawatts of commercial and industrial solar projects nationwide in 2025. Catalyze’s current generation portfolio now totals 300 megawatts of projects in operations and construction.

The transaction will help Catalyze’s existing relationship with RBC, which demonstrates a commitment to advancing renewable energy solutions at scale.

“RBC is a valued financing partner, and we are pleased to further expand our relationship with this latest investment,” Jared Haines, CEO of Catalyze, said in a news release. “This financing enables us to further our mission to bring scalable distributed generation projects to businesses and communities nationwide.”

Catalyze also has other private equity sponsors in EnCap Investments and Actis.

Last May, Catalyze announced that it secured $100 million in financing from NY Green Bank to support a 79-megawatt portfolio of community distributed generation solar projects across New York state.

UH's $44 million mass timber building slashed energy use in first year

building up

The University of Houston recently completed assessments on year one of the first mass timber project on campus, and the results show it has had a major impact.

Known as the Retail, Auxiliary, and Dining Center, or RAD Center, the $44 million building showed an 84 percent reduction in predicted energy use intensity, a measure of how much energy a building uses relative to its size, compared to similar buildings. Its Global Warming Potential rating, a ratio determined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shows a 39 percent reduction compared to the benchmark for other buildings of its type.

In comparison to similar structures, the RAD Center saved the equivalent of taking 472 gasoline-powered cars driven for one year off the road, according to architecture firm Perkins & Will.

The RAD Center was created in alignment with the AIA 2030 Commitment to carbon-neutral buildings, designed by Perkins & Will and constructed by Houston-based general contractor Turner Construction.

Perkins & Will’s work reduced the building's carbon footprint by incorporating lighter mass timber structural systems, which allowed the RAD Center to reuse the foundation, columns and beams of the building it replaced. Reused elements account for 45 percent of the RAD Center’s total mass, according to Perkins & Will.

Mass timber is considered a sustainable alternative to steel and concrete construction. The RAD Center, a 41,000-square-foot development, replaced the once popular Satellite, which was a food, retail and hangout center for students on UH’s campus near the Science & Research Building 2 and the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication.

The RAD Center uses more than a million pounds of timber, which can store over 650 metric tons of CO2. Aesthetically, the building complements the surrounding campus woodlands and offers students a view both inside and out.

“Spaces are designed to create a sense of serenity and calm in an ecologically-minded environment,” Diego Rozo, a senior project manager and associate principal at Perkins & Will, said in a news release. “They were conceptually inspired by the notion of ‘unleashing the senses’ – the design celebrating different sights, sounds, smells and tastes alongside the tactile nature of the timber.”

In addition to its mass timber design, the building was also part of an Energy Use Intensity (EUI) reduction effort. It features high-performance insulation and barriers, natural light to illuminate a building's interior, efficient indoor lighting fixtures, and optimized equipment, including HVAC systems.

The RAD Center officially opened Phase I in Spring 2024. The third and final phase of construction is scheduled for this summer, with a planned opening set for the fall.

Experts on U.S. energy infrastructure, sustainability, and the future of data

Guest column

Digital infrastructure is the dominant theme in energy and infrastructure, real estate and technology markets.

Data, the byproduct and primary value generated by digital infrastructure, is referred to as “the fifth utility,” along with water, gas, electricity and telecommunications. Data is created, aggregated, stored, transmitted, shared, traded and sold. Data requires data centers. Data centers require energy. The United States is home to approximately 40% of the world's data centers. The U.S. is set to lead the world in digital infrastructure advancement and has an opportunity to lead on energy for a very long time.

Data centers consume vast amounts of electricity due to their computational and cooling requirements. According to the United States Department of Energy, data centers consume “10 to 50 times the energy per floor space of a typical commercial office building.” Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory issued a report in December 2024 stating that U.S. data center energy use reached 176 TWh by 2023, “representing 4.4% of total U.S. electricity consumption.” This percentage will increase significantly with near-term investment into high performance computing (HPC) and artificial intelligence (AI). The markets recognize the need for digital infrastructure build-out and, developers, engineers, investors and asset owners are responding at an incredible clip.

However, the energy demands required to meet this digital load growth pose significant challenges to the U.S. power grid. Reliability and cost-efficiency have been, and will continue to be, two non-negotiable priorities of the legal, regulatory and quasi-regulatory regime overlaying the U.S. power grid.

Maintaining and improving reliability requires physical solutions. The grid must be perfectly balanced, with neither too little nor too much electricity at any given time. Specifically, new-build, physical power generation and transmission (a topic worthy of another article) projects must be built. To be sure, innovative financial products such as virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs), hedges, environmental attributes, and other offtake strategies have been, and will continue to be, critical to growing the U.S. renewable energy markets and facilitating the energy transition, but the U.S. electrical grid needs to generate and move significantly more electrons to support the digital infrastructure transformation.

But there is now a third permanent priority: sustainability. New power generation over the next decade will include a mix of solar (large and small scale, offsite and onsite), wind and natural gas resources, with existing nuclear power, hydro, biomass, and geothermal remaining important in their respective regions.

Solar, in particular, will grow as a percentage of U.S grid generation. The Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) reported that solar added 50 gigawatts of new capacity to the U.S. grid in 2024, “the largest single year of new capacity added to the grid by an energy technology in over two decades.” Solar is leading, as it can be flexibly sized and sited.

Under-utilized technology such as carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) will become more prominent. Hydrogen may be a potential game-changer in the medium-to-long-term. Further, a nuclear power renaissance (conventional and small modular reactor (SMR) technologies) appears to be real, with recent commitments from some of the largest companies in the world, led by technology companies. Nuclear is poised to be a part of a “net-zero” future in the United States, also in the medium-to-long term.

The transition from fossil fuels to zero carbon renewable energy is well on its way – this is undeniable – and will continue, regardless of U.S. political and market cycles. Along with reliability and cost efficiency, sustainability has become a permanent third leg of the U.S. power grid stool.

Sustainability is now non-negotiable. Corporate renewable and low carbon energy procurement is strong. State renewable portfolio standards (RPS) and clean energy standards (CES) have established aggressive goals. Domestic manufacturing of the equipment deployed in the U.S. is growing meaningfully and in politically diverse regions of the country. Solar, wind and batteries are increasing less expensive. But, perhaps more importantly, the grid needs as much renewable and low carbon power generation as possible - not in lieu of gas generation, but as an increasingly growing pairing with gas and other technologies. This is not an “R” or “D” issue (as we say in Washington), and it's not an “either, or” issue, it's good business and a physical necessity.

As a result, solar, wind and battery storage deployment, in particular, will continue to accelerate in the U.S. These clean technologies will inevitably become more efficient as the buildout in the U.S. increases, investments continue and technology advances.

At some point in the future (it won’t be in the 2020s, it could be in the 2030s, but, more realistically, in the 2040s), the U.S. will have achieved the remarkable – a truly modern (if not entirely overhauled) grid dependent largely on a mix of zero and low carbon power generation and storage technology. And when this happens, it will have been due in large part to the clean technology deployment and advances over the next 10 to 15 years resulting from the current digital infrastructure boom.

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Hans Dyke and Gabbie Hindera are lawyers at Bracewell. Dyke's experience includes transactions in the electric power and oil and gas midstream space, as well as transactions involving energy intensive industries such as data storage. Hindera focuses on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, and public and private capital market offerings.

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