New report ranks Texas in the middle for sustainable development

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Texas ranked 24th on SmileHub's list of the best states for sustainable development. Photo via Getty Images.

Texas appears in the middle of the pack in a new ranking of the best states for sustainable development.

SmileHub, a nonprofit that rates charities, examined 20 key metrics to create its list of the best states for sustainable development. Among the metrics it studied were the share of urban tree cover, green buildings per capita and clean energy jobs per capita. Once SmileHub crunched all the numbers, it put Texas in 24th place — one notch above average.

The United Nations defines sustainable development as “meeting present needs without compromising the chances of future generations to meet their needs.”

Here’s how Texas fared in several of SmileHub’s ranking categories:

No. 2 for water efficiency and sustainability
No. 7 for presence of wastewater reuse initiatives
No. 18 for environmental protection charities per capita
No. 25 for green buildings per capita
No. 34 for clean energy jobs per capita
No. 34 for industrial toxins per square mile
No. 38 for share of tree cover in urban areas

California leads the SmileHub list, followed by Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon and Maryland.

When it comes to water, a 2024 report commissioned by Texas 2036, a nonpartisan think tank, recommends that Texas invest $154 billion over the next 50 years in new water supply and infrastructure to support sustainable growth, according to the Greater Houston Partnership.

“The report underscores a stark reality: a comprehensive, sustainable funding strategy for water is necessary to keep Texas economically resilient and competitive,” the partnership says.

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As emerging technology continues to grow electricity load demand, Cloverleaf has identified an opportunity to develop large-scale digital infrastructure sites powered by low-carbon electricity. Photo via Getty Images

Houston-based clean energy site developer raises $300M to decarbonize big tech projects

seeing green

Houston energy executives have started a new company dedicated to developing clean-powered infrastructure for the large electric loads.

Cloverleaf Infrastructure, dually headquartered in Houston and Seattle, Washington, announced its launch and $300 million raised from NGP and Sandbrook Capital, two private equity firms. The company's management team also invested in the company.

As emerging technology continues to grow electricity load demand, Cloverleaf has identified an opportunity to develop large-scale digital infrastructure sites powered by low-carbon electricity.

"The rapid growth in demand for electricity to power cloud computing and artificial intelligence poses a major climate risk if fueled by high-emission fossil fuels," David Berry, Cloverleaf's CEO, says in a news release. "However, it's also a major opportunity to catalyze the modernization of the US grid and the transition to a smarter and more sustainable electricity system through a novel approach to development.

"Cloverleaf is committed to making this vision a reality with the support of leading climate investors like Sandbrook and NGP."

Berry, who's based in Houston, previously co-founded and served as CFO at ConnectGen and Clean Line Energy Partners, clean energy and transmission developers. Last year, he co-founded Cloverleaf with Seattle-based Brian Janous and CTO Jonathan Abebe, who most recently held a senior role at the United States Department of Energy. Nur Bernhardt, director of Energy Strategy at Microsoft who's also based in Seattle, rounds out the executive team as vice president.

"The large tech companies have become dominant players in the electricity sector, and they are genuinely determined to power their growth with the lowest possible emissions," Janous, who serves as chief commercial officer, says in the release. "Achieving this objective doesn't depend on disruptive new technologies as much as it does on dedicated teams working hand in hand with utility partners to maximize the use of the clean generation, storage, and other technologies we already have."

Cloverleaf will work with regional U.S. utilities and data center operators to provide clean electricity at scale through strategic investments in transmission, grid interconnection, land, onsite power generation, and electricity storage, per the release.

"The sustainable development of digital infrastructure at scale is fundamentally a technical power problem," Alfredo Marti, partner at Sandbrook, adds. "We have witnessed members of the Cloverleaf team effectively address this challenge for many years through a blend of creativity, specialized engineering, a partnership mindset, and astute capital deployment."

Students from the 2023 cohort of The Energy Project showcased their innovations at the Puranik Foundation Lotus Innovation Awards. Photo courtesy of Jacob Power Photography

Sustainability-focused philanthropy recognizes student innovations, local leaders

EMPOWERING THE TRANSITION

From the moment of arrival at the Puranik Foundation Lotus Innovation Awards, attendees engaged in an experience that stimulated the senses and excited the mind – a precise reflection of the foundation’s approach to a holistic education for future innovators.

The event, held last week at the Post Oak Hotel in Uptown, honored Houston leaders supporting the next generation of aspiring entrepreneurs and celebrated the dedication of high school students dreaming sustainability solutions into reality.

“[These students] have the potential to reach innovative places that none of us can think of because we are so set in our ways,“ says Bhakti Puranik, executive director of Puranik Foundation, just steps from where the students showcased their prototypes to secure the gala’s Fan Favorite award. “They are open-minded and creative and constantly inspired by the community that surrounds us.”

The Energy Project, launched in 2020 by the foundation, supports young minds tackling environmental challenges for sustainable development across five sectors: alternative power generation, sustainable consumption, waste management, urban design, and water sustainability.

Multiple small student teams from across the country met for design thinking lessons before creating prototypes of their own solutions at TXRX Labs. The foundation’s primary sponsor, Worldwide Oilfield Machine, provided mentors and resources to the 25 students in this year’s cohort alongside Rice University.

For the winning team, Refoam Maine, the application of mushroom mycelium in lieu of plastic for floating buoys came from the optimistic minds of Maggie Blood, Olivia Huard, Tula Bradley Prindiville, and Laura Riordan, students of Camden Hills Regional High School near Rockport, Maine.

A close-knit community, Camden Hills has collectively seen thousands of orphaned buoys pile up against their docks and beaches for years. The team plans to use their Lotus Innovation Award grant of $15,000 to get their floats in the water, and is actively working with boatyards, aquaculture farmers, and others to bring that vision to reality this summer.

Cyrus Golshan, Nathaniel Lemon, and Alexander Kristof took home the Fan Favorite Award for their solution Piezot, which harnesses energy from revolutionary piezoelectric tiles that convert pressure into energy and electricity.

The team studies at the Energy Institute High School in Houston and envisions an energy ecosystem that doesn’t rely so heavily on natural forces, but rather on human movement as a means to generate power. Placement of the tiles in high-traffic areas like airports, schools, and shopping centers could mean an exponential growth in power supply created simply by the many feet that pass through these areas every day.

Bobby Tudor, CEO and founder of Artemis Energy Partners, and recipient of the Sustainability Lotus Award from Puranik Foundation, attributes the success of the program to the convergence of expertise, a collaborative ecosystem, and global connectivity available from Houston as part of the burgeoning Energy Transition industry.

“We are the energy capital of the world because we are the intellectual capital of energy,“ says Tudor. “The knowledge, the engineering, the expertise, sits here in a more concentrated way than it sits anywhere else in the world. It is that intellectual capital that will pave the way for us to continue to be the energy capital of the world a decade from now, two decades from now, and five decades from now.”

Additionally, Paula Harris, senior vice president of the Houston Astros Community Affairs and Executive Director for the Astros Foundation, accepted the Education Lotus Award for her continued commitment to advancing STEM education across underserved communities.

For his positive impact on the mental well-being of students, Bradley H. Smith, Ph.D., Professor of Psychological, Health, and Learning Services at the University of Houston School of Psychology, Puranik Foundation honored him with Mindfulness Lotus Award.

Applications for The Energy Project are due by 1 November each fall. In addition to the team competition, next year’s cohort includes an immersive experience in India for holistic learning and leadership development.

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Greentown and partners name 10 startups to carbontech accelerator

new cohort

The Carbon to Value Initiative (C2V Initiative)—a collaboration between Greentown Labs, NYU Tandon School of Engineering's Urban Future Lab and Fraunhofer USA—has announced 10 startup participants to join the fifth cohort of its carbontech accelerator.

The six-month accelerator aims to help cleantech startups advance their commercialization efforts through access to the C2V Initiative’s Carbontech Leadership Council (CLC). The invitation-only council consists of corporate and nonprofit leaders from organizations like Shell, TotalEnergies, XPRIZE, L’Oréal and others who “foster commercialization opportunities and identify avenues for technology validation, testing, and demonstration,” according to a release from Greentown

“The No. 1 reason startups engage with Greentown is to find customers, grow their businesses, and accelerate impact—and the Carbon to Value Initiative delivers exactly that,” Georgina Campbell Flatter, CEO of Greentown, said in a news release. “It’s a powerful example of how meaningful engagement between entrepreneurs and industry turns innovation into commercial traction.”

The C2V Initiative received more than 100 applications from 33 countries, representing a variety of carbontech innovations. The 10 startups chosen for the 2025 fifth cohort include:

Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Sora Fuel, which integrates direct-air capture with direct conversion of the captured carbon into syngas for production of sustainable aviation fuel
Brooklyn-based Arbon, which develops a humidity-swing carbon-capture solution by capturing CO₂ from the air or point-source without heat or pressure
New York-based Cella Mineral Storage, which works to develop subsurface mineralization technology with integrated software, enabling new ways to sequester CO2 underground
Germany-based ICODOS, which helps transform emissions into value through a point-source carbon capture and methanol synthesis process in a single, modularized system
Vancouver-based Lite-1, which uses advanced biomanufacturing processes to produce circular colourants for use in textiles, cosmetics and food
London-based Mission Zero Technologies, which has developed and deployed an electrified, direct-air carbon capture solution that employs both liquid-adsorption and electrochemical technologies
Kenya-based Octavia Carbon, which develops a solid-adsorption-based, direct-air carbon capture solution that utilizes geothermal heat
California-based Rushnu, which combines point-source carbon capture with chemical production, turning salt and CO2 into chlorine-based chemicals and minerals
Brooklyn-based Turnover Labs, which develops modular electrolyzers that transform raw, industrial CO2 emissions into chemical building blocks, without capture or purification
Ontario-based Universal Matter, which develops a Flash Joule Heating process that converts carbon waste such as end-of-life plastics, tires or industrial waste into graphene

The C2V Initiative is based on Greentown Go, Greentown’s open-innovation program. The C2V Initiative has supported 35 startups that have raised over $600 million in follow-on funding.

Read about the 2024 cohort here.

CenterPoint gets go-ahead for $2.9B upgrade of Houston grid

grid resiliency

Texas utility regulators have given the green light for Houston-based CenterPoint Energy to spend $2.9 billion on strengthening its Houston-area electric grid to better withstand extreme weather.

The cost of the plan is nearly $3 billion below what CenterPoint initially proposed to the Public Utility Commission of Texas.

In early 2025, CenterPoint unveiled a $5.75 billion plan to upgrade its Houston-area power system from 2026 through 2028. But the price tag dropped to $2.9 billion as part of a legal settlement between CenterPoint and cities in the utility’s service area.

Sometime after the first quarter of next year, CenterPoint customers in the Houston area will pay an extra $1 a month for the next three years to cover costs of the resiliency plan. CenterPoint serves 2.9 million customers in a 12-county territory anchored by Houston.

CenterPoint says the plan is part of its “commitment to building the most resilient coastal grid in the country.”

A key to improving CenterPoint’s local grid will be stepping up management of high-risk vegetation (namely trees), which ranks as the leading cause of power outages in the Houston area. CenterPoint says it will “go above and beyond standard vegetation management by implementing an industry-leading three-year trim cycle,” clearing vegetation from thousands of miles of power lines.

The utility company says its plan aims to prevent Houston-area power outages in case of hurricanes, floods, extreme temperatures, tornadoes, wildfires, winter storms, and other extreme weather events.

CenterPoint says the plan will:

Improve systemwide resilience by 30 percent
Expand the grid’s power-generating capacity. The company expects power demand in the Houston area to grow 2 percent per year for the foreseeable future.
Save about $50 million per year on storm cleanup costs
Avoid outages for more than 500,000 customers in the event of a disaster like last year’s Hurricane Beryl
Provide 130,000 stronger, more storm-resilient utility poles
Put more than 50 percent of the power system underground
Rebuild or upgrade more than 2,200 transmission towers
Modernize 34,500 spans of underground cables

In the Energy Capital of the World, residents “expect and deserve an electric system that is safe, reliable, cost-effective, and resilient when they need it most. We’re determined to deliver just that,” Jason Wells, president and CEO of CenterPoint, said in January.

Solidec partners with Australian company for clean hydrogen peroxide pilot

rare earth pilot

Solidec has partnered with Australia-based Lynas Rare Earth, an environmentally responsible producer of rare earth oxides and materials, to reduce emissions from hydrogen peroxide production.

The partnership marks a milestone for the Houston-based clean chemical manufacturing startup, as it would allow the company to accelerate the commercialization of its hydrogen peroxide generation technology, according to a news release.

"This collaboration is a major milestone for Solidec and a catalyst for sustainability in rare earths," Yang Xia, co-founder and CTO of Solidec, said in the release. "Solidec's technology can reduce the carbon footprint of hydrogen peroxide production by up to 90%. By combining our generators with the scale of a global leader in rare earths, we can contribute to a more secure, sustainable supply of critical minerals."

Through the partnership, Solidec will launch a pilot program of its autonomous, on-site generators at Lynas's facility in Australia. Solidec's generators extract molecules from water and air and convert them into carbon emission-free chemicals and fuels, like hydrogen peroxide. The generators also eliminate the need for transport, storage and permitting, making for a simpler, more efficient process for producing hydrogen peroxide than the traditional anthraquinone process.

"Hydrogen peroxide is essential to rare earth production, yet centralized manufacturing adds cost and complexity," Ryan DuChanois, co-founder and CEO of Solidec, added in the release. "By generating peroxide directly on-site, we're reinventing the chemical supply chain for efficiency, resilience, and sustainability."

The companies report that the pilot is expected to generate 10 tons of hydrogen peroxide per year.

If successful, the pilot would serve as a model for large-scale deployments of Solidec's generators across Lynas' operations—and would have major implications for the high-performance magnet, electric vehicles, wind turbine, and advanced electronics industries, which rely on rare earth elements.

"This partnership with Solidec is another milestone on the path to achieving our Towards 2030 vision," Luke Darbyshire, general manager of R&I at Lynas, added. "Working with Solidec allows us to establish transformative chemical supply pathways that align with our innovation efforts, while contributing to our broader vision for secure, sustainable rare earth supply chains."

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