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

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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.

It was renamed Minute Maid Park in June 2002 as part of a deal with The Minute Maid Co., a Houston-based subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Co. Then-Astros owner Drayton McLane said at the time the agreement was for 28 years and for more than $100 million.

The new deal is with Daikin Comfort Technologies North America Inc., a subsidiary of Daikin Industries Ltd., which is based in Japan and is a leading air conditioning company.

Minute Maid will remain an Astros partner through 2029, the team said.

In August, Daikin, which has its 4.2 million-square-foot Daikin Texas Technology Park in Waller, Texas, partnered with the city of Houston to provide advanced air conditioning and heating solutions to help homeowners with energy efficiency and general comfort. The company pledged install up to 30 horizontal discharge inverter FIT heat pump units over the next three years.

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Looks like green really is the new black in a city that’s known for being all blue. Photo courtesy of Zach Tarrant, HoustonTexans.com

Another Houston sports team commits to fighting climate change

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The Houston Texans rocked the football world in early May with their historic back-to-back first-round all-star offense/defense NFL draft picks, but that’s not the only groundbreaking news they had planned this month. In partnership with 1PointFive, the Texans’ Preferred Carbon Removal Partner, the team announced the Touchdown for Trees program to recapture carbon emissions – and the hearts of fans.

“As part of our partnership with 1PointFive, we kicked off our Touchdown for Trees initiative last week at Hermann Park Conservancy,” Houston Texans Senior Vice President of Partnerships Jerry Angel tells EnergyCapitalHTX. “We’re looking forward to continuing to work together to make a difference across our community during the 2023 Season.”

For every touchdown scored by the Texans in the 2022, 2023, and 2024 seasons, the team pledges to plant 1.5 trees in the greater Houston area. To kick off the initiative, Houston Texans staff and cheerleaders gathered in Hermann Park Conservancy on May 11 to plant 25 inaugural trees. The group also removed invasive species from the area to eliminate competition for the newly planted trees and restore native habitat conditions.

Planting trees to fight climate change has gathered significant momentum in recent years, as each individual tree can offset approximately 22 pounds of carbon emissions per year over its first 20 years of life, according to conservative calculations from OneTreePlanted.org. The One Trillion Tree Initiative, announced at the 2020 World Economic Forum in January 2023, could effectively reduce carbon emissions by 20% year-over-year for the next two decades through reforestation efforts.

Like other carbon capture solutions, reforestation must be pursued with proper planning and care, so as not to waste time nor resources. But many tout reforestation as the simplest way to reduce carbon emissions and meet all 17 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals simultaneously.

With this commitment to reforestation, the Houston Texans join the Astros, Rockets, Dash, and Dynamo in a collective effort to fight climate change. Earlier this spring, the Houston Astros partnered with 1PointFive in an agreement to purchase carbon dioxide removal credits from the new Direct Air Capture facility near Odessa in Ector County, TX.

Like the Texans, the soccer teams of Houston are donating trees for each victory achieved this calendar year. In partnership with Shell Energy, the Dynamo and Dash have already committed to 1,750 new trees from their 5 aggregate wins this spring.

Additionally, each of the homes of these Houston teams follows in the footsteps of Houston’s original green arena, the Toyota Center. One of 10 Green NBA arenas to earn LEED certification, the home of the Houston Rockets boasts energy efficient lighting, electric submeters, and an abundance of trees and vegetation in an urban setting to reduce greenhouse gases by over 3,000 tons annually.

Shell Energy is giving the home of the Dynamo and Dash a decarbonization facelift this year, with energy efficient LED-lighting throughout, installation of EV charging stations, and the use of on-site renewable energy generation systems.

Similar efforts continue to roll out at Minute Maid Park and NRG Stadium, including food sustainability programs, dedicated recycling for aluminum, plastic, and cardboard, and complete conversion to more efficient lighting solutions on the field, in the bathrooms, and even out in the parking lots.

Whether rooting for the home team or cheering on the visitors, fans that attend Houston events at these stadiums and arenas benefit from the knowledge and experience of local talent stewarding such energy transition initiatives. Maybe it’s time to bring back the historic chant of the Oilers, with a modern twist, “go blue–and green!”

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Houston researchers develop compact carbon capture tech for data centers

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Two scientists from the University of Houston have been experimenting with new carbon capture systems that fit inside a standard shipping container, which have the potential to make eliminating carbon output from industrial sites much easier.

The capture of industrial carbon is an important complement to the fight against climate change, as well as winning tax credits for businesses that use carbon capture technology.

The problem is that such systems are often measured in acres, making them expensive to build and extremely power-hungry to actually use. UH Engineering Professor Mim Rahimi and former UH Ph.D. student Ahmad Hassan (now a postdoctoral associate at Harvard) have managed to fit their new system, the Small Modular Electrochemical Container (SMECs), inside a standard 40-foot shipping crate, making them compact and modular enough to be installed almost anywhere for operations of all sizes. Their research was recently published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

“With a conventional system, you’re building a 130-foot-tall structure designed for a specific power plant. With our technology, we can adjust the capacity by simply turning containers on or off,” Rahimi said in a news release. “That flexibility is particularly important for data centers, where electricity can come from a combination of natural gas and renewable sources.”

Rahimi and Hassan used simulated gas models to show that under optimal conditions, the SMEC used electrochemically mediated amine regeneration (EMAR) cells developed in Rahimi’s lab to capture 90 percent of carbon under optimal conditions through 300 cycles over 50 hours.

Encouraged, the team then modeled a 360-megawatt natural gas power plant associated with OpenAI’s Stargate AI data center project in Abilene, Texas. In addition to the savings on infrastructure costs, 20 of the researchers’ shipping container systems were able to capture 98 percent of carbon from Stargate’s 875-acre campus based on the model.

The looming energy costs and subsequent carbon emissions from data centers are a real concern. Estimates from the U.S. Department of Energy hypothesize that 12 percent of America’s energy needs could be gobbled up by the centers as soon as 2028. That is a massive new source of carbon. The flexibility of the SMEC means they can be deployed wherever the centers spring up.

“We’re taking a technology that traditionally requires enormous infrastructure and finding a way to fit it inside a shipping container,” Rahimi added in the release. “That opens up entirely new possibilities for how and where carbon capture systems can be used.”

In the future, the researchers say they plan to look at ways to adapt the technology to capture carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.

Hertha Metals breaks ground on $100M high-purity iron factory in Conroe

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Shortly after announcing a $133.65 Series A funding round, Conroe-based Hertha Metals broke ground Oct. 8 on a $100 million factory that will produce steel-grade and magnet-grade high-purity iron.

Hertha’s Chalyx plant, located in Conroe, will manufacture a total of about 10,000 metric tons per year of magnet-grade and steel-grade high-purity iron. The factory will use Hertha’s single-step process to generate high-purity iron for rare-earth-magnet and steel manufacturers in the U.S.

Hertha says Chalyx will be the first U.S. commercial plant for production of magnet-grade high-purity iron.

Chalyx is being built next to Hertha’s headquarters and its Pi100 pilot plant, which will remain in operation. Chalyx and Pi100 will form the first modern-day iron and steel “innovation complex” in the U.S., the company says.

“I founded Hertha Metals because I believed we could significantly improve how the world makes iron and steel from ore, and that an industry so fundamental to our future still had enormous room for invention,” Laureen Meroueh, founder and CEO of Hertha, said in a press release.

The 4-year-old startup says the Chalyx complex will lay the foundation for its first 500,000-ton-per-year steel mill.

Chalyx’s first priority is making high-purity iron for U.S. manufacturers of rare-earth magnets, Hertha says. These magnets are critical components for electric vehicles, data centers, wind turbines and defense systems.

China produces an estimated 94 percent of high-purity iron for rare-earth magnets, according to Hertha.

Aside from iron for rare-earth magnets, Chalyx will make iron and steel for pilot projects in the steel industry.

The plant is expected to come online in late 2027, with production of magnet-grade high-purity iron starting in early 2028.

Today, Hertha employs 32 people, the company says. Once it’s fully operating, the Chalyx plant will employ about 50 people.

Just ahead of the groundbreaking, Hertha announced the $133.65 million Series A round, co-led by Khosla Ventures and Doerr Capital. The round included a $65 million equity investment from the Pentagon.

“Iron and steel have shaped human progress for thousands of years. And I believe there is still an enormous amount left to invent,” Meroueh said at the groundbreaking ceremony.

Canada-founded energy tech company moves global HQ to Energy Corridor

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Pulsed-power technology company BlueSpark Energy will open its new global headquarters in Houston’s Energy Corridor to house its engineering, research and development, manufacturing, commercial and digital teams.

“Houston isn’t simply our new headquarters; it’s where a new BlueSpark begins,” Kahina Abdeli-Galinier, president and CEO of BlueSpark, said in a news release. ”We’re building the well health technology the industry needs to get more from existing wells, reduce intervention costs and keep wells producing for longer. Our new home brings us closer to our customers and places us at the heart of one of the most exciting markets in the industry, with the talent pool to match.”

The company, which began in Calgary, plans to grow its Houston workforce to 100 employees by the end of 2028, while the manufacturing element is expected to be operational in February 2027.

According to BlueSpark, the new facility will feature double the manufacturing floorspace of its current site, and the extra space will allow it to scale its tool manufacturing.

The headquarters is on West Sam Houston Parkway. BlueSpark's Chief Technology Officer Matt Mohajer and Chief Commercial Officer Zach Wilbur are already leading teams at the new space, according to the release.

BlueSpark develops pulsed-power technology that uses electrical energy to clean oil and gas well components, remove scale buildup and restore production without damaging equipment. Its technology helps operators reduce downtime, improve well performance and extend the productive life of existing wells.

Late last year, the company named Kahina Abdeli-Galinier as its CEO. It has since rebranded and focused on expanding its technology into new applications, including plugging and abandonment, cement removal and water services.

“We’re investing heavily in our technology, both the physics and the intelligence and delivery layer around it,” Abdeli-Galinier added in the release. “Having our engineering, manufacturing, digital, R&D and commercial teams in one place allows us to move much faster, giving our customers the tools they need to keep wells healthy and producing more for longer.”

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