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Houston company's sustainable spinoff launches with $8M in seed funding

vaulted with capital

Vaulted Deep, which diverts sludgy organic waste from landfills or waterways and captures and stores carbon emissions generated, is getting off the ground with $8 million from investors. Photo via Getty Images

Houston-based Advantek Waste Management Services, which specializes in deep-injection wells that minimize the impact of land, air, and water waste, has launched a carbon removal and storage company.

The spinoff, Vaulted Deep, is getting off the ground with $8 million in seed funding.

Vaulted diverts sludgy organic waste, such as agricultural and livestock waste, before it’s dumped in a landfill or waterway or simply left on land to decompose. It then captures and stores carbon emissions generated by the organic waste.

A study published earlier this year by Louisiana State University ecologist Brian Snyder estimated that organic waste generates five gigatons of carbon dioxide per year. A gigaton equals one billion metric tons.

Vaulted is already off to an impressive start. For one thing, the startup has raised an $8 million seed round led by New York City-based carbon removal fund Lowercarbon Capital. Other investors include Advantek and San Francisco-based climatech VC fund Earthshot Ventures.

In addition, Vaulted has already nailed down purchase commitments from Frontier, a marketplace for buyers and sellers of carbon removal credits. Ryan Orbuch, a partner at Lowercarbon, is one of Frontier’s strategic advisers.

“Vaulted is literally cleaning up the planet, scaling field-proven injection terminology to safely dispose of harmful wastes like biosolids while permanently storing away millions of tons of CO2,” Orbuch says in a Vaulted news release.

While injection sequestration sites often take years to gain permits and start operating, Vaulted already boasts two permitted sites that are up and running. Vaulted offers carbon removal for $300 per ton, compared with more than $500 per ton charged by some competitors.

Advantek founder Omar Abou-Sayed is switching from CEO to chairman of Advantek, which launched in 1999, and will serve as executive chairman of Vaulted. Julia Reichelstein, a former investor at San Francisco-based climatech VC fund Piva Capital, has been tapped as CEO of Vaulted.

“Unlike many carbon removal technologies still in R&D, Vaulted’s technology and sites can safely and permanently store carbon underground, at scale, today,” says Abou-Sayed. “The early removals we will deliver are pivotal to keeping the window open to hold our planet’s warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.”

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ExxonMobil expands Gulf Coast CCS business with Louisiana deal

carbon contract

Spring-based energy powerhouse ExxonMobil has picked up another project in the carbon capture and storage (CCS) market.

Natural gas pipeline operator Williams Cos. has tapped ExxonMobil to transport and store up to one metric ton per year of CO2 from Williams’ natural gas collection and processing plant in southwest Louisiana’s Haynesville Shale.

Williams will transport natural gas via its Louisiana Energy Gateway pipeline, then process the natural gas and deliver it to the Gulf Coast for export as liquefied natural gas (LNG). The LNG will be used in power generation, residential and commercial heating, and industrial processes.

Williams recently agreed to acquire Momentum Midstream for up to $5.5 billion to expand Williams’ LNG presence in the Haynesville Shale. Haynesville is the country’s third-largest producer of natural gas.

Once the deal closes, Williams will own a $1.5 billion project in southwest Louisiana that will expand capacity of the Transco natural gas distribution system. The system serves power and LNG-export customers. Williams will also gain over 4,000 miles of pipeline and more than one million acres.

While Williams is based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, it has a significant presence in Houston. Last month, Green Street’s Real Estate Alert reported Williams bought the 64-story, 1.4 million-square-foot Williams Tower south of The Galleria from Invesco Real Estate for more than $300 million. The company will occupy about 360,000 square feet in the skyscraper for its Houston hub.

Williams employs about 800 people in Bayou City, including roughly 700 who work at Williams Tower, and plans to hire another 100 by the end of this year.

The Williams deal is ExxonMobil’s seventh CCS contract. ExxonMobil’s CCS portfolio supports LNG, lower-carbon-intensity steel, ammonia, natural gas processing, industrial gases and methanol.

ExxonMobil has established a “carbon superhighway” along the Gulf Coast to fuel its CCS business. The company owns and operates a more than 1,300-mile CO2 pipeline system, the largest in the U.S.

“Carbon capture is becoming an increasingly important part of industrial operations, but capture alone doesn’t solve the problem of high emissions,” says ExxonMobil. “What matters next is how CO2 is transported, used, and stored.”

ExxonMobil’s CCS initiatives are aimed at capturing a chunk of the rapidly growing CCS market in the U.S. Straits Research forecasts the market will grow from $5.66 billion this year to $13.56 billion by 2034.

“It’s not every day you get to witness the birth of a new American industry, but that’s exactly what’s happening right now at the U.S. Gulf Coast,” Dominic Genetti, senior vice president of CCS at ExxonMobil, wrote in an article published last year on the company’s website.

Fervo Energy, Mercury Fund leaders named first experts in residence for TEX-E

energy mentors

Two leading companies in Houston's clean energy scene have been named the Texas Exchange for Energy & Climate Entrepreneurship's first experts in residence.

TEX-E announced this month that Houston-based geothermal unicorn Fervo Energy and venture capital firm Mercury Fund have joined the nonprofit's new Expert-in-Residence partnership. The program aims to connect TEX-E Fellows with "the people and organizations shaping the future of energy and entrepreneurship."

The 2026 TEX-E Fellows were named in June and include 67 students from six Texas universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nineteen are from Houston universities. See the full list here.

Through the Expert-in-Residence program, fellows will be able to network and work with:

"More than anything, students need the determination and creativity to step outside of their comfort zones and tackle problems that lack clear answers. At Fervo, we've consistently bet on young people who lack traditional 'hard skills' but are willing to embrace uncertainty and learn on the job. That open-mindedness will take students far," Jewett said in a prepared statement. Fervo named Jewett as COO in June.

TEX-E was founded in 2022 through partnerships with MIT Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship and Greentown Labs. It works with university students from six schools: Rice University, University of Houston, Prairie View A&M University, The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University and MIT.

The organization named Houston venture capital and innovation leader Sandy Guitar as its new executive director last year. Guitar previously served as general partner and managing director at Houston-based VC firm HX Venture Fund and is co-founder of Weathergage Capital.

TEX-E is known for its student track within the Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition at CERAWeek. It awarded $50,000 to student teams from the University of Texas and Rice University. Read more here.

BP to sell Houston’s Archaea Energy after $4.1 billion bet on biogas

RNG exit

Oil and gas conglomerate BP is unloading its Houston-based U.S. renewable natural gas business just four years after buying it.

The British company announced the planned sale of Archaea during its most recent earnings call but offered few details.

On the call, BP’s new CEO, Meg O’Neill, said her company had put Archaea on the market and already had attracted interest from potential buyers. BP acquired Houston-based Archaea Energy, the country’s largest producer of renewable natural gas (RNG), in 2022 for about $4.1 billion.

BP, whose North American headquarters is in Houston, is streamlining its portfolio. As such, O’Neill said Archaea represents a “capital intense” approach to biogas instead of the “capital light” approach BP now favors.

“If there’s somebody who sees an opportunity to create additional value, who will invest in that business, who will build on the foundation, because our team has made really good progress in improving the profitability of that business, then that will be a good outcome,” O’Neill told Wall Street analysts.

The proposed sale of Archaea is part of BP’s effort to sell about $20 billion in assets by the end of next year.

Archaea captures biogas, a natural byproduct of waste decomposition at landfills and dairy farms, and converts it into electricity or RNG. This process leads to cleaner air, less odor, and more sustainable energy than traditional fossil fuels.

Archaea was slated to be a cornerstone of BP’s plan to boost its biogas supply by roughly 600 percent to the equivalent of about 70,000 barrels of oil per day.

Bioenergy had been identified as one of bp’s five pillars of its multibillion-dollar energy transition initiative.

Another pillar: EV charging. Last month, BP agreed to sell its EV charging business in Austria to Switzerland’s Volenergy, along with 250 BP-branded stores and a fleet of business vehicles.

“By concentrating our capital on the assets and markets where BP can be most competitive and best serve customers, we are strengthening our balance sheet and creating a stronger downstream portfolio,” Richard Harding, interim executive vice president of downstream at BP, said of the Volenergy deal.

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