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Houston investor backs carbon capture startup's series A

promising tech

CarbonQuest, a company with a compact carbon capture technology, announced it received series A funding from Houston-based Riverbend Energy Group. Photo via CarbonQuest

Houston investors are betting on a New York-based carbon capture startup's technology.

CarbonQuest announced it received series A funding from Houston-based Riverbend Energy Group. The terms of the deal were not disclosed. Founded in 2019, the company created its Distributed Carbon Capture technology that captures CO2 from buildings and onsite power generation systems, then liquifies and transports it to local businesses that need carbon for their production processes.

“We are one of the few carbon capture companies with commercial products on the market today, and this investment will enable us to continue bringing distributed carbon capture to a wider swath of the market,” Shane Johnson, president and CEO of CarbonQuest, says in a news release. “We are also excited to attract new talent and expand our North American operations.”

The company's compact, modular carbon capture solution has already been deployed in several New York City buildings and reports that it is focused on natural gas emissions from distributed onsite power generation in 2024. The fresh funding will help CarbonQuest lower its cost for customers and address new market segments, including biogenic sources of CO2, utility infrastructure, and more, per the release.

Additionally, the company plans to advance development of its Carbon Management Software, a platform that provides real-time data and analytics for users. Riverbend's Joe Passanante and Eric Danziger will join CarbonQuest’s board of directors as a part of the deal.

“We are thrilled to partner with CarbonQuest, a company at the forefront of distributed carbon capture technology,” Passanante, managing director at Riverbend, says in the release. “This investment reflects our commitment to advancing solutions that play a critical role in decarbonization.

"CarbonQuest’s innovative approach not only addresses that need, but also offers scalable, economically viable solutions that can be deployed across a wide range of markets," he continues. "We are excited to collaborate with CarbonQuest’s experienced and talented team and believe this partnership will be a game changer in multiple markets, helping to unlock the full potential of distributed carbon capture and significantly contribute to global climate goals.”

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LiNova will use the funds to advance its polymer cathode battery technology. Photo via Getty Images

Chevron, TotalEnergies back energy storage startup's $15.8M series A

money moves

A California startup that's revolutionizing polymer cathode battery technology has announced its series A round of funding with support from Houston-based energy transition leaders.

LiNova Energy Inc. closed a $15.8 million series A round led by Catalus Capital. Saft, a subsidiary of TotalEnergies, which has its US HQ in Houston, and Houston-based Chevron Technology Ventures, also participated in the round with a coalition of other investors.

LiNova will use the funds with its polymer cathode battery to advance the energy storage landscape, according to the company. The company uses a high-energy polymer battery technology that is designed to allow material replacement of the traditional cathode that is made up of cobalt, nickel, and other materials.

The joint development agreement with Saft will have them collaborate to develop the battery technology for commercialization in Saft's key markets.

“We are proud to collaborate with LiNova in scaling up its technology, leveraging the extensive experience of Saft's research teams, our newest prototype lines, and our industrial expertise in battery cell production," Cedric Duclos, CEO of Saft, says in a news release.

CTV recently announced its $500 million Future Energy Fund III, which aims to lead on emerging mobility, energy decentralization, industrial decarbonization, and the growing circular economy. Chevron has promised to spend $10 billion on lower carbon energy investments and projects by 2028.

Houston-based Sage Geosystems announced the first close of $17 million round led by Chesapeake Energy Corp. Photo via sagegeosystems.com

Chesapeake Energy backs Houston geothermal tech co. in $17M series A

fresh funding

A Houston geothermal startup has announced the close of its series A round of funding.

Houston-based Sage Geosystems announced the first close of $17 million round led by Chesapeake Energy Corp. The proceeds aim to fund its first commercial geopressured geothermal system facility, which will be built in Texas in Q4 of 2024. According to the company, the facility will be the first of its kind.

The venture is joined by technology investor Arch Meredith, Helium-3 Ventures and will include support from existing investors Virya, LLC, Nabors Industries Ltd., and Ignis Energy Inc.

“The first close of our Series A funding and our commercial facility are significant milestones in our mission to make geopressured geothermal system technologies a reality,” Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems, says in a news release. “The success of our GGS technologies is not only critical to Sage Geosystems becoming post-revenue, but it is an essential step in accelerating the development of this proprietary geothermal baseload approach. This progress would not be possible without the ongoing support from our existing investors, and we look forward to continuing this work with our new investors.”

The 3-megawatt commercial facility will be called EarthStore and will use Sage’s technology that harvests energy from pressurized water from underground. The facility will be able to store energy — for short and long periods of time — and can be paired with intermittent renewable energy sources like wind and solar. It will also be able to provide baseload, dispatchable power, and inertia to the electric grid.

In 2023, Sage Geosystems debuted the EarthStore system in a full-scale commercial pilot project in Texas. The pilot produced 200 kilowatt for more than 18 hours, 1 megawatt for 30 minutes, and generated electricity with Pelton turbines. The system had a water loss of less than 2 percent and a round-trip efficiency (RTE) of 70-75.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.

Houston startup Sage Geosystems released the results of its pilot at a Shell-drilled oil well in the Rio Grande Valley’s Starr County. Photo via sagegeosystems.com

Houston-based geothermal energy startup releases promising results of Texas pilot

hot off the press

As it seeks an additional $30 million in series A funding, Houston startup Sage Geosystems has released promising results from a test of its technology for underground storage of geothermal energy.

Sage says the pilot project, conducted at a Shell-drilled oil well in the Rio Grande Valley’s Starr County, showed the company’s long-term energy storage can compete on a cost basis with lithium-ion battery storage, hydropower storage, and natural gas-powered peaker plants. Peaker plants supply power during periods of peak energy demand.

Furthermore, Sage’s geothermal technology will provide more power capacity at half the cost of other advanced geothermal systems, the company says.

Sage’s storage system retrofits oil and gas wells with the company’s geothermal technology. But the company says its technology “can be deployed virtually anywhere.”

The system relies on mechanical storage instead of battery storage. In mechanical storage, heat, water, or air works in tandem with compressors, turbines, and other machinery. By contrast, battery storage depends on chemistry to get the job done.

“We have cracked the code to provide the perfect complement to renewable energy. … The opportunities for our energy storage to provide power are significant — from remote mining operations to data centers to solving energy poverty in remote locations,” former Shell executive Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage, says in a September 12 news release.

Sage says its storage capacity can be connected to existing power grids, or it can develop microgrids that harness stored energy.

An August 2023 article in The New York Times explained that Sage “is pursuing fracked wells that act as batteries. When there’s surplus electricity on the grid, water gets pumped into the well. In times of need, pressure and heat in the fractures pushes water back up, delivering energy.”

The pilot project, a joint venture between Sage and the Bureau of Economic Ecology at the University of Texas at Austin, was performed as part of a feasibility study financed by the Air Force. Now that the test results are in, Sage plans to build a prototype geothermal project at the Air Force’s Ellington Field Joint Reserve Base in Houston.

Sage says another feasibility study is underway in the Middle East in partnership with an unnamed oil and gas company.

Founded in 2020, Sage plans to raise another $30 million to accompany its previous series A funding.

The Virya climate fund and Houston-based drilling contractor Nabors Industries helped finance the pilot project in Starr County.

Last year, Sage announced it received an undisclosed amount of equity from Houston-based Ignis H2 Energy, a geothermal exploration and development company, and Dutch energy company Geolog International. Also last year, Sage said Nabors and Virya had teamed up for a $12 million investment in the startup.

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40+ teams to pitch at annual CERAWeek clean energy competition

energy venture day

The Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship, the Houston Energy Transition Initiative (HETI), the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange for Energy (TEX-E) and the Ion have named the 30-plus energy ventures and teams that will pitch at the 2026 Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek this month.

The selected ventures are "driving efficiency and advancements toward the energy transition," according to the Rice Alliance. Each will each present a 3.5-minute pitch before a network of investors and industry partners during CERAWeek's Agora program on Wednesday, March 25, from noon-5:30 p.m.

The competition is divided up into the TEX-E university track, in which Texas student-led energy startups compete for $50,000 in cash prizes, and the industry ventures track.

Teams competing in the TEX-E Prize track include:

  • GOES
  • Quantum Power System
  • Quas
  • Resonant Thermal Systems
  • Srijan

The industry track is subdivided into three additional tracks, spanning materials to clean energy and will feature 37 companies. A group of expert judges will name the top three companies from each industry track. The winner of the CERAWeek competition will also have the chance to advance and compete for the $1 million investment prize at the Startup World Cup in November 2026.

Teams come from around the world, including several Houston-based ventures, such as Agellus Tank Robotics, Capwell Services and Corrolytics.

The full list of companies pitching at CERAWeek includes:

  • Agellus Tank Robotics
  • Airovation Technologies
  • Anax Power
  • Armeta
  • ATS Energy
  • Capwell Services
  • CarbonLume
  • Cogniprise
  • Corrolytics
  • Daphne Technology
  • Gemini Energy
  • Grid8
  • H Quest Vanguard
  • intcom
  • Ionada Canada
  • Junipix
  • Kunin Technologies
  • LAVA Power
  • Licube
  • LNK Energies
  • Maverick X
  • Membravo
  • Mirico
  • Mocean Energy
  • Monitorai
  • OCOchem
  • Oleo
  • Pix Force
  • PolyJoule
  • Power to Hydrogen
  • Sotaog
  • Spotlight
  • Tierra Climate
  • Verdagy
  • Via Separations
  • Vycarb
  • ZettaJoule

Those not attending CERAWeek can catch these companies and more than a dozen others at a pitch preview at the Ion. The free Pitch Preview will be held Tuesday, March 24, from 9 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Click here to register.

Additional companies pitching during the free preview include:

  • Ammobia
  • Arolytics
  • Ayrton Energy
  • ChainWeave
  • Cybereum
  • Energytech
  • ENP Technologies
  • KP Labs
  • Mcatalysis
  • Mitico
  • Mote
  • Nanos
  • New Horizon Oil and Gas
  • Predyct
  • Salem Robotics
  • Toluai

Two Rice University student teams took home top prizes during last year's TEX-E competition, while ventures from New Jersey, Wyoming and Virgina won in their respective industry tracks. See the full list of last year's winners here.

ExxonMobil to move legal home to Texas, citing business-friendliness

ExxonMobil is poised to move its legal headquarters from New Jersey to Texas in search of a more friendly business environment, the company announced March 10.

The board of directors for the largest U.S.-based oil producing company, which already runs its operations from the Houston suburb of Spring, unanimously recommended to its shareholders that they vote to redomicile the company in Texas.

Shareholders will vote on the change at the company’s annual meeting on May 27. If successful, it will move Exxon’s legal home for the first time since it registered in New Jersey in 1882 as Standard Oil Company — the company later changed its name to Exxon, then merged with Mobil Oil Corp.

“Over the past several years, Texas has made a noticeable effort to embrace the business community,” ExxonMobil Chair and CEO Darren Woods wrote in a statement Tuesday. “In doing so, it has created a policy and regulatory environment that can allow the company to maximize shareholder value. Aligning our legal home with our operating home, in a state that understands our business and has a stake in the company’s success, is important.”

The proposed move will not affect the company’s business operations or employee locations, the company said.

ExxonMobil has been headquartered in Texas since 1989, and about 30% of its employees currently work in the state.

The location of a company’s incorporation dictates the legal, tax and regulatory landscape for the business.

Exxon would join Tesla, Space X and Coinbase as major U.S. companies to redomicile in Texas in recent years as the state moves to become more business friendly.

In 2023, the Legislature passed and Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law that created the Texas Business Court and the 15th Court of Appeals, specialized legal venues designed to handle business and commercial disputes. Those courts began operating in 2024.

Last year, the Legislature also approved a law that made it more difficult to sue board members of companies incorporated in Texas.

“Freed from the stranglehold of over-regulation, Texas is where global brand leaders thrive and jobs for hardworking Texans grow,” Abbott wrote in a Tuesday statement. “I thank ExxonMobil for their decision to redomicile in Texas and for their long-standing partnership with our state. With this decision, Texas will further dominate the corporate landscape and ensure our economic growth reaches new heights.”

Exxon noted the creation of the business courts and other recent legal reforms made by Texas in its statement announcing the decision.

“In making its recommendation, the Board considered Texas’ legal and regulatory environment, including its modernized business statutes and the Texas Business Court, which is designed to resolve complex disputes efficiently,” the statement said.

Texas has benefited from growing frustration among company executives with traditional corporate havens of New Jersey and Delaware. New Jersey sued Exxon in 2022, alleging the company contributed to climate change, which forced the state to pay for cleanup after natural disasters. The lawsuit was dismissed last year.

Delaware remains the nation’s top state for U.S. companies’ legal home.

Coinbase’s CEO wrote last year that the company was reincorporating from Delaware to Texas because the Lone Star State’s legal framework is more predictable and efficient. Tesla reincorporated from Delaware to Texas after a 2024 court ruling ordered CEO Elon Musk to give up a compensation package, finding that the package’s shareholder approval process was “deeply flawed.”

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This story was originally published by The Texas Tribune and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.

Texas data center boom could strain water supply, new report warns

thirst for data

As data centers continue to boom throughout Texas, a new report from the Houston Advanced Research Center (HARC) warns that the trend could strain the state’s water supply.

HARC estimates Texas data centers used 25 billion gallons of water in 2025—and that the demand for water will continue to rise to meet the needs of the 464 data centers currently in Texas, as well as 70 additional sites currently under development.

In the report, titled “Thirsty Data and the Lone Star State: The Impact of Data Center Growth on Texas’ Water Supply,” The Woodlands-based nonprofit says that water use for cooling data centers is expected to double or triple by 2028 on the national level. If projections hold, the total annual water use for data centers in Texas will increase by 0.5 percent to 2.7 percent by 2030, or to between 29 billion and 161 billion gallons of water consumed.

Data centers often use water for cooling, though water demand is dependent on the type of cooling used, the size and type of the data center. Although used water can be reused, some new water withdrawals are always needed to replace evaporated water and other systems’ water losses. Water is also used to cool the power plants that generate electricity used by the data centers.

The HARC report offers guidance to address the overall concerns of water demands by data centers, including:

  • Dry cooling methods
  • Increased reliance on wind and solar energy sources
  • Alternative water supplies, like treated wastewater or brackish water for cooling
  • Adjusted operating schedules to accommodate water usage
  • Partnering with local companies to develop projects that reduce water leaks
  • Companies creating their own water infrastructure investments

The report goes on to explain that the Texas State Water Plan, produced by the Texas Water Development Board, projects shortages of 1.6 trillion gallons by 2030 and 2.3 trillion gallons by 2070. HARC posits that the recent surge in water demand from AI data centers is not fully reflected in those projections.

"Texas water plans always look backward, not forward," the report reads. "That means the 2027 water plan, which is in development now, will be based on 2026 regional water plans that do not include forecasted data center water use. Data centers that began operation in 2025 will not be added to the State Water Plan until 2032."

Currently, there are no state regulations that require data centers to report how much water they use. However, the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) plans to survey operators of data centers and cryptocurrency mining facilities on their water consumption, cooling methods and electricity sources this spring. It is expected to release the results by the end of the year. The companies will have six weeks to respond. The Texas Water Development Board will assist the PUCT on the questions.

“I think we all recognize the importance of data centers and the technology they support and what they give to our modern-day life,” PUC Commissioner Courtney Hjaltman said during the last commission meeting. “Texans, regulators and the legislature really need that understanding of data centers, really need to understand the water they’re using so that we can plan and create the Texas we want.”

See the full HARC report here.
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