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Oxy announces partnership to explore fusion technology in direct air capture facilities

dac powered

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures says fusion technology holds the potential to supply emissions-free, continuous, on-demand energy to bolster power and heating requirements for Occidental’s large-scale DAC facilities. Photo via 1pointfive.com

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, an investment arm of Houston-based energy giant Occidental, is teaming up with TAE Technologies to explore the use of TAE’s fusion technology at Occidental’s direct air capture (DAC) facilities.

Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures says fusion technology holds the potential to supply emissions-free, continuous, on-demand energy to bolster power and heating requirements for Occidental’s large-scale DAC facilities.

“Collaborating with TAE Technologies is an opportunity to build on Occidental’s portfolio of clean power sources that can provide our [DAC] facilities with reliable, emissions-free energy,” Frank Koller, vice president for power development at Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, says in a news release.

Occidental is diving headfirst into the DAC sector. The primary example of its DAC commitment is construction in West Texas of the world’s largest DAC plant through a joint venture between Occidental subsidiary 1PointFive and investment giant BlackRock. BlackRock is investing $550 million in the facility.

The project is expected to be completed in mid-2025. The facility is eventually supposed to capture up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year.

DAC technology pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere so it can be stored permanently or converted into products. While the carbon removal process sounds simple, it requires a tremendous amount of energy. That’s where fusion technology like TAE’s comes into play.

TAE’s fusion technology works by combining (or fusing) the light nuclei of elements such as hydrogen to produce energy. The energy release is managed by producing steam, which spins a turbine that drives an electric generator producing clean energy or clean heat.

Founded in 1998, Foothill Ranch, California-based TAE develops commercial fusion power for generation of clean energy.

“Oxy Low Carbon Venture’s desire for emissions-free energy makes this the perfect moment to explore the deployment of our commercial-ready power management products, while the growing demand for large-scale power generation can be served by our future fusion offerings,” says Michl Binderbauer, CEO of TAE.

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Houston's hydrogen revolution gets up to $1.2B federal boost to power Gulf Coast’s clean energy future

HyVelocity funding

The emerging low-carbon hydrogen ecosystem in Houston and along the Texas Gulf Coast is getting as much as a $1.2 billion lift from the federal government.

The U.S. Department of Energy funding, announced November 20, is earmarked for the new HyVelocity Hub. The hub — backed by energy companies, schools, nonprofits, and other organizations — will serve the country’s biggest hydrogen-producing area. The region earns that status thanks to more than 1,000 miles of dedicated hydrogen pipelines and almost 50 hydrogen production plants.

“The HyVelocity Hub demonstrates the power of collaboration in catalyzing economic growth and creating value for communities as we build a regional hydrogen economy that delivers benefits to Gulf Coast communities,” says Paula Gant, president and CEO of Des Plaines, Illinois-based GTI Energy, which is administering the hub.

HyVelocity, which aims to become the largest hydrogen hub in the country, has already received about $22 million of the $1.2 billion in federal funding to kickstart the project.

Organizers of the hydrogen project include:

  • Arlington, Virginia-based AES Corp.
  • Air Liquide, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston
  • Chevron, which is moving its headquarters to Houston
  • Spring-based ExxonMobil
  • Lake Mary, Florida-based Mitsubishi Power Americas
  • Denmark-based Ørsted
  • Center for Houston’s Future
  • Houston Advanced Research Center
  • University of Texas at Austin

The hub’s primary contractor is HyVelocity LLC. The company says the hub could reduce carbon dioxide emissions by up to seven million metric tons per year and create as many as 45,000 over the life of the project.

HyVelocity is looking at several locations in the Houston area and along the Gulf Coast for large-scale production of hydrogen. The process will rely on water from electrolysis along with natural gas from carbon capture and storage. To improve distribution and lower storage costs, the hub envisions creating a hydrogen pipeline system.

Clean hydrogen generated by the hub will help power fuel-cell electric trucks, factories, ammonia plants, refineries, petrochemical facilities, and marine fuel operations.

Geothermal co. wins at Houston innovation event, UH secures DOE funding, and more trending energy news

top stories

Editor's note: From Sage Geosystems winning at the Houston Innovation Awards to Daikin renaming Houston's baseball stadium, these are the top headlines that resonated with EnergyCapital readers on social media and daily newsletter this week.

Local energy innovators recognized at annual Houston Innovation Awards

At an event celebrating Houston innovation, these four energy transition leaders were recognized. Photos courtesy

This week, the Houston innovation ecosystem celebrated big wins from the year, and members of the energy transition community were recognized alongside other innovators.

The Houston Innovation Awards honored over 40 finalists across categories, naming the 12 winners and honoring the two Trailblazer Legacy Awards at the event. The event, hosted at TMC Helix Park on November 14 named and celebrated the winners, which included four energy transition innovators. Continue reading.

University of Houston secures $3.6M from DOE program to fund sustainable fuel production

Researchers Rahul Pandey, senior scientist with SRI and principal investigator (left), and Praveen Bollini, a University of Houston chemical engineering faculty, are key contributors to the microreactor project. Photo via uh.edu

A University of Houston-associated project was selected to receive $3.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy that aims to transform sustainable fuel production.

Nonprofit research institute SRI is leading the project “Printed Microreactor for Renewable Energy Enabled Fuel Production” or PRIME-Fuel, which will try to develop a modular microreactor technology that converts carbon dioxide into methanol using renewable energy sources with UH contributing research. Continue reading.

Global industrial company Daikin makes deal with Houston Astros on stadium rename

The Astros' stadium will have a new name in 2025. Courtesy of the Houston Astros

The Houston Astros' home will get a new name on Jan. 1, becoming Daikin Park under an agreement through the 2039 season the team announced Monday.

The stadium opened as Enron Field in 2000 as part of a 30-year, $100 million agreement but the name was removed in March 2002 following Enron Corp.'s bankruptcy filing and the ballpark briefly became Astros Field. Continue reading.

Reliant, GM Energy team up on free renewable energy EV charging

Reliant and GM Energy will be offering free nighttime charging for Chevrolet electric vehicle drivers that enroll in the new Reliant FreeCharge Nights. Photo via reliant.com

Reliant Energy and GM Energy are advancing a new renewable energy electricity plan that will “accelerate the clean energy journey for the two companies and their customers,” according to a news release.

Houston-based Reliant and GM Energy will be offering free nighttime charging for Chevrolet electric vehicle drivers that enroll in the new Reliant FreeCharge Nights. Continue reading.

Pipeline robotics: How this Houston startup is revolutionizing corrosion monitoring

Dianna Liu of ARIX Technologies joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to share her entrepreneurial journey — and why Houston was the right place to start her company. Photo courtesy of ARIX

After working for years in the downstream energy industry where safety and efficiency were top priorities, Dianna Liu thought there was a way technology could make a huge difference.

Despite loving her company and her job, she took a leap of faith to start a robotics company to create technology to more safely and efficiently monitor corrosion in pipelines. ARIX Technologies has developed software and hardware solutions for its customers with pipelines in downstream and beyond.

"Overall, this industry is an industry that really harps on doing things safely, doing things well, and having all the data to make really informed decisions," Liu says on the Houston Innovators Podcast. "Because these are huge companies with huge problems, it takes a lot of time to set up the right systems, adopt new things, and make changes." Continue reading.

CenterPoint’s Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative makes advancements on progress

step by step

CenterPoint Energy has released the first of its public progress updates on the actions being taken throughout the Greater Houston 12-county area, which is part of Phase Two of its Greater Houston Resiliency Initiative.

The GHRI Phase Two will lead to more than 125 million fewer outage minutes annually, according to CenterPoint.

According to CenterPoint, they have installed around 4,600 storm-resilient poles, installed more than 100 miles of power lines underground, cleared more than 800 miles of hazardous vegetation to improve reliability, and installed more self-healing automation all during the first two months of the program in preparation for the 2025 hurricane season.

"This summer, we accomplished a significant level of increased system hardening in the first phase of the Greater Houston Resilience Initiative,” Darin Carroll, senior vice president of CenterPoint Energy's Electric Business, says in a news release.

”Since then, as we have been fully engaged in delivering the additional set of actions in our second phase of GHRI, we continue to make significant progress as we work toward our ultimate goal of becoming the most resilient coastal grid in the country,” he continues.

The GHRI is a series of actions to “ strengthen resilience, enable a self-healing grid and reduce the duration and impact of power outages” according to a news release. The following progress through early November include:

The second phase of GHRI will run through May 31, 2025. During this time, CenterPoint teams will be installing 4,500 automated reliability devices to minimize sustained interruptions during major storms, reduce restoration times, and establish a network of 100 new weather monitoring stations. CenterPoint plans to complete each of these actions before the start of the next hurricane season.

“Now, and in the months to come, we will remain laser-focused on completing these critical resiliency actions and building the more reliable and more resilient energy system our customers expect and deserve," Carroll adds.

CenterPoint also announced that it has completed all 42 of the critical actions the company committed to taking in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl. Some of the actions were trimming or removing higher-risk vegetation from more than 2,000 power line miles, installing more than 1,100 more storm-resilient poles, installing over 300 automated devices to reduce sustained outages, launching a new, cloud-based outage tracker, improving CenterPoint's Power Alert Service, hosting listening sessions across the service area and using feedback.

In October, CenterPoint Energy announced an agreement with Artificial Intelligence-powered infrastructure modeling platform Neara for engineering-grade simulations and analytics, and to deploy Neara’s AI capabilities across CenterPoint’s Greater Houston service area.

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