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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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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.

Texas Gov. Abbott seeks data center crackdown as state grapples with growing power demand

growing pains

Just seven months ago, Gov. Greg Abbott trumpeted Google’s $40 billion plan to add three data center campuses in Texas. Now, amid growing public outcry over such projects, Abbott is pushing for a regulatory crackdown on data centers in the Lone Star State.

Abbott recently sent a letter to leaders of the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUC) and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) proposing stricter oversight of the state’s data centers. Texas is home to more than 400 data centers, with many more on the way, and is poised to become the world’s largest data center market.

Among other things, Abbott wants to:

  • Ensure residential electric bills go down — not up — as data centers connect to ERCOT’s grid, which supplies power for about 90 percent of Texans.
  • Require data centers to cover the costs of upgrades to deliver electricity to the power-hungry facilities.
  • Repeal sales tax exemptions and other “outdated or unnecessary” financial incentives for data centers.
  • Institute “best practices,” such as property setbacks and noise-reduction technology, to ease the impact of data centers on nearby residents.
  • Demand that all new data centers, which use a tremendous amount of water, be built with water-efficient technology.
  • Require large data centers to generate annual reports on their use of electricity and water.

Abbott has set a July 17 deadline for the PUC and ERCOT to address his recommendations.

“As Texas continues to welcome innovation and investment, we must ensure that growth strengthens our people and their quality of life without placing undue burdens on Texans and local communities,” Abbott wrote.

Abbott’s call for tighter control of data centers has elicited both praise and skepticism.

In a social media post on X, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows, a Lubbock Republican, thanked Abbott for seeking “accountability and reform” in the state’s data center industry. Burrows has made data centers one of his priority issues for the 2027 state legislative session.

State oil and gas regulator Wayne Christian, a member of the Texas Railroad Commission, weighed in with similarly positive comments about Abbott’s directive. He says an outright ban on data centers isn’t the answer to residents’ complaints about new facilities.

“The Texas way is not to answer innovation with government overreach or fear-driven bans,” Christian, whose agency wasn’t cited in Abbott’s letter, said in a statement posted on X. “Our job is to protect prosperity, safeguard taxpayers and ensure the infrastructure that powers our economy remains strong and reliable.”

Gina Hinojosa, an Austin Democrat who’s challenging Abbott in this November’s gubernatorial race, took issue with the governor’s edict on data centers.

“Greg Abbott is changing his tune on data centers because he knows his policies are unpopular,” Hinojosa, a state representative, wrote on X. “Nobody believes the arsonist is gonna be the one to put out the fire.”

Abbott’s call for stepped-up regulation of data centers echoes many of the concerns expressed by the state chapter of the Sierra Club, an environmental nonprofit.

“The growth of data centers reflects a broader transformation taking place across Texas,” the Sierra Club says on its website. “The state is becoming a hub for the technologies that will shape the future economy, from artificial intelligence to advanced computing and cloud services. At the same time, Texans deserve transparency about how these projects affect the communities where they are built.”

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