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Investors name most-promising energy tech startups at annual Houston event

big winners

Over 500 people attended the 21st annual Energy Tech Venture Forum hosted by the Rice Alliance. Photo courtesy of Rice

Investors from around the world again identified the most-promising energy tech startups at the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship's annual event.

"The recognition that Houston is the epicenter of energy transition is growing. It's something we are championing as much as possible so that the world can know exactly what we're doing," Paul Cherukuri, chief innovation officer at Rice University says at the 21st annual Energy Tech Venture Forum.

The event took place during the inaugural Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week, and nearly 100 startups from 23 states and seven countries pitched investors Wednesday, September 11, and Thursday, September 12. At the conclusion of the event, the investors decided on 10 companies deemed "most promising" from the presentations.

This year's selected companies are:

  • Revterra, a Houston-based company innovating within kinetic battery technology to enable faster and cleaner electric vehicle charging.
  • From Austin, 360 Mining is a modular data center provider for the oil and gas producers.
  • New York company Andium is a centralized and optimized operations platform for large energy companies.
  • Elementium Materials, a local Katy-based company, created its battery technology that originated out of MIT.
  • Splight is a San Mateo, California-based technology platform that provides real-time operational data based on inverter-based resources assets.
  • Los Angeles-based Mitico, one of the Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator's class 4 participants, provides services and equipment for carbon capture through its granulated metal carbonate sorption technology.
  • From Cambridge, Massachusetts, Osmoses is changing the way molecular gas separations are performed within the chemical, petrochemical, and energy industries.
  • Rice Alliance Clean Energy Accelerator class 4 participant CORROLYTICS, based in Houston, has a corrosion detection and monitoring technology. The company also won over the crowd and secured the People's Choice win too.
  • Ardent, based in New Castle, Delaware, has developed a membrane technology for point-source carbon capture.
  • New Haven, Connecticut-based Oxylus Energy produces an alternative fuel from converting CO2 into green methanol.

Last year, investors named its selection of most-promising companies at Rice.

"We have a responsibility as a city to lead energy transition," Cherukuri continues. "A lot of the investments we're making at Rice are going to change the world."

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

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Four of the 13 teams that walked away with investment funding at RBPC this year are providing energy and sustainability advancements. Photo courtesy of Rice University

4 student-led sustainability-focused startups scored funding at annual Houston competition

big winners

Four student-founded energy and sustainability startups from around the world have something to celebrate — cleaning up at the 24th annual Rice Business Plan Competition.

This year, 42 startups competed this year, participating in the three-day event that culminated in a reception on Saturday, April 6. Over a dozen companies won prizes, and the full recap of those is reported on InnovationMap.

“We award the competitors $1 million in prizes, prizes that serve as foundational capital to launch their startup,” RBPC Director Catherine Santamaria says at the awards gala. “That’s a large number of prizes, but the biggest thing our startups leave with is a feeling of generosity and community from this room. This community is always ready and willing to help our founders and support our vision for the competition by investing time, money and resources in these student innovators.”

The companies were divided into five categories — one of which was Energy, Cleantech and Sustainability. Four companies from that track scored prizes at the reception.

Icorium Engineering Company from the University of Kansas walked away with $171,000. The company — a chemical engineering startup developing technologies to make sustainable, circular economies a reality for refrigerants and other complex chemical mixtures — won fifth place and a $5,000 prize sponsored by Norton Rose Fulbright, EY, Chevron Technology Ventures and Shell Ventures, as well as:

  • $100,000 OWL Investment Prizes
  • $40,000 nCourage Courageous Women Entrepreneur Investment Prize
  • $25,000 from Finger Interests, the Anderson Family Fund at the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Greg Novak and Tracy Druce
  • $1,000 Anbarci Family Company Showcase Prize
  • Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition Prize (Best in Energy, Sustainability)
  • An invitation to Entrepreneur Magazine's elevator pitch show

From RWTH Aachen University in Germany, Power2Polymers secured $50,000. Tackling the challenge of forever chemicals, the company is creating safe alternatives free of forever chemicals. The German company took third place and the $50,000 investment sponsored by Finger Interests, the Anderson Family Fund at the Greater Houston Community Foundation, Greg Novak and Tracy Druce. The company also won the Mercury Elevator Pitch Competition Prize (Best Overall).

Two climatetech companies that didn't make it to the finals still walked away with funding. From Yale University, Oxylus Energy, which has a technology that uses renewable electricity to turn CO2 and water into energy-dense liquid fuels, won the $25,000 New Climate Ventures Sustainable Investment Prize.

LiQuidium, with its sustainable membrane technology for direct lithium extraction process, from the University of Houston also scored $25,000 — this one from NOV Energy Technology Innovation Cash Prize.

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A version of this article ran on InnovationMap.

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Rice, DOE launch new Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center

Energy Diplomacy

Representatives from three countries visited the Rice University Baker Institute for Public Policy this month to establish the Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center, a new partnership promoting energy advancement in the region.

On June 11, Baker played host to delegations from Cyprus, Greece and Israel that included Michael Damianos, Minister of Energy, Commerce and Industry of the Republic of Cyprus; Stavros Papastavrou, Minister of Environment and Energy for Greece; and Yechiel Leiter, Israeli Ambassador to the United States. U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright and Rice University President Reginald DesRoches were also present to sign a declaration of intent (DOI) that officially formed the partnership first envisioned in the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act of 2019.

“This is a dynamic field,” David Satterfield, director of the Baker Institute and former U.S. ambassador to Turkey and Lebanon, said in a news release from Rice. “The East Med has enormous further potential, not just for development, for coordination of development. It is a positive thing for energy, it's a positive thing for industry, for all of the three states represented here today. It's good for the region in a geopolitical sense as well. It provides a stabilization based upon the pragmatic and integrated development and distribution of energy resources, and that is a very good thing indeed.”

The new pact will focus on improving grid stability in the region, as well as on developing U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) infrastructure and new technologies.

Another goal of the Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center is suppressing conflict in the region. When the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act was signed by President Joe Biden in 2019, it lifted the prohibition on arms sales to the Republic of Cyprus, authorized foreign military financing for Greece and increased intelligence gathering on Russian interests in the Mediterranean.

“We need to use commerce to suppress and surpass conflict – that is the way to bring nations together in geopolitical tensions between countries,” Wright said in the release. “You think of it as zero-sum, there's a winner and a loser, and both sides want to be the winner. Ultimately, one side will be the winner, one side will be the loser. Maybe more objectively, both sides lose, but one loses more than the other. In commerce, it's entirely different, and commerce is voluntary exchange. It only happens when there's winners on both sides. So, when you build, you develop energy and you build energy distribution infrastructure, you bring countries, you bring people together. The three founding nations here and their leadership are all friends of mine and passionate in this mission. They not only want to develop energy to bring better opportunities to their people, but they wanted to bring those three nations together, and all of their neighbors as well, and use commerce to suppress and surpass conflict. These are generational investments.”

6 Houston companies earn recognition on Time’s global greentech list 2026

green giants

Six Houston-area businesses appear on Time magazine’s 2026 list of the world’s top greentech companies, with a high-flying name leading the pack.

The highest-ranked local company is Houston-based geothermal power producer Fervo Energy, which claims the No. 4 spot—up from No. 14 last year.

In May, Fervo raised nearly $1.9 billion in its IPO, making it the biggest-ever IPO in the clean energy sector. The company’s valuation now exceeds $10 billion.

Founded in 2017, Fervo borrows methods from the oil and gas sector to drill wells that go down vertically into hot rock before turning horizontal, letting water circulate through them and produce electricity from the heat it absorbs. Cape Station in Utah, the company's first utility-scale project, is set to start delivering power to the grid later this year, with capacity expected to grow to 100 megawatts by 2027.

Co-founder and CEO Tim Latimer tells Fast Company, which named him a 2026 Visionary of the Year, that he launched his career as a drilling engineer for fossil fuels, “but quickly became obsessed with this idea that the drilling techniques we were using would actually be transformative for the world of geothermal as well.”

Fast Company notes the geothermal power generated by Cape Station will be available 24/7, unlike wind and solar power.

“When you start adding something to the grid mix that’s affordable and works around the clock,” Latimer says, “that’s going to be a huge asset to meeting our country’s energy needs.”

Time teamed up with data provider Statista to compile the second annual ranking of the 250 top greentech companies in the world. Companies on the list either develop or provide green technology, products, or services that help ease or reverse the environmental impacts of human activity.

Statista gathered and analyzed data from more than 8,300 companies to create the list, and they were scored in three categories: positive environmental impact, innovation, and financial strength. Fervo earned a score of 94.63 out of 100.

Joining Fervo on this year’s list are:

  • Houston-based Quaise Energy (No. 78), which specializes in terawatt-scale geothermal power
  • The Woodlands-based Plus Power (No. 112), which develops, owns and operates battery storage projects
  • Houston-based Utility Global (No. 167), which develops decarbonization technology
  • Houston-based 1PointFive (No. 217), an Occidental Petroleum subsidiary that offers large-scale carbon removal and storage.
  • Houston-based Sage Geosystems (No. 250), which produces commercial-scale geothermal power

Earlier this year, six Houston-area companies landed on Time's list of top greentech companies in America: Fervo (No. 1), Quaise Energy (No. 49), Plus Power (No. 71), Utility Global (No. 98), Solugen (No. 199) and Noodoe (No. 215).

Houston-based Syzygy lands global customer for first commercial SAF plant

clean fuel deal

Houston-based Syzygy Plasmonics has secured a major future customer for its sustainable aviation fuel.

Syzygy announced this week that it has entered into a capacity reservation agreement with World Fuel Services, a global fuel distribution and logistics company.

Through the deal, World Fuel has reserved a portion of Syzygy's SAF production for future plants slated for Central and South America. The clean fuel will be produced at Syzygy’s NovaSAF-1 facility in Uruguay, which is moving toward construction.

The NovaSAF-1 will be the world's first electrified facility to convert biogas into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The facility is expected to produce over 350,000 gallons of SAF annually, which would be considered “a breakthrough in cost-effective, scalable clean fuel,” according to Syzygy.

The facility is expected to produce SAF with at least an 80 percent reduction in carbon intensity compared to Jet A fuel and make its first deliveries in 2028.

"Following NovaSAF-1, this agreement reflects continued interest in scalable pathways for producing SAF from biogas," Trevor Best, CEO of Syzygy Plasmonics, said in a news release. "Our NovaSAF platform is designed to deliver cost-competitive fuel while supporting the aviation sector's evolving regulatory and sustainability requirements."

Syzygy will make a portion of future production capacity available to World Fuel from its planned facilities, subject to the development and completion of those projects, according to the deal.

"We continue to evaluate supply opportunities that support increased access to lower carbon fuels in aviation, in line with emerging regulatory requirements and customer demand," Michael Ranger, senior vice president of supply EMEAA at World Fuel, added in the release. "Arrangements such as this are part of our ongoing efforts across the supply chain.”

Syzygy also secured an offtake agreement with Singapore-based commodity company Trafigura from NovaSAF-1 earlier this year.

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