Who's who in Houston energy transition: Top 5 interviews of 2024

year in review

Here were the top energy transition interviews on EnergyCapital — according to its readers. Photos courtesy

Editor's note: As the year comes to a close, EnergyCapital is looking back at the year's top stories in Houston energy transition. EnergyCapital launched specifically to cover the energy transition community — and that includes the people who power it. Throughout the year, we spoke to these individuals and some resonated more than others to readers. Be sure to click through to read the full interviews or stream the podcast episode.

David Pruner, executive director of the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange for Energy (TEX-E)

David Pruner, executive director of TEX-E, joins the Houston Innovator Podcast. Photo via LinkedIn

David Pruner is laser focused on the future workforce for the energy industry as executive director of the Texas Entrepreneurship Exchange for Energy, known as TEX-E, a nonprofit housed out of Greentown Labs that was established to support energy transition innovation at Texas universities.

TEX-E launched in 2022 in collaboration with Greentown Labs, MIT’s Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship, and five university partners — Rice University, Texas A&M University, Prairie View A&M University, University of Houston, and The University of Texas at Austin.

Pruner was officially named to his role earlier this year, but he's been working behind the scenes for months now getting to know the organization and already expanding its opportunities from students across the state at the five institutions. Read more.

Barbara Burger, mentor and adviser

Houston energy leader Barbara Burger joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss the energy transition's biggest challenges and her key takeaways from CERAWeek. Photo courtesy of CERAWeek

Last month, Barbara Burger participated in four panels at CERAWeek by S&P Global, and from her insider perspective, she had a few key takeaways from the event, which brought together energy leaders, tech startups, dignitaries, civil servants, and more.

In a recent podcast interview, Burger shared some of her key takeaways from the event — and how these trends are affecting the industry as a whole. Read through an excerpt or stream the full episode below. Read more.

Tyler Lancaster, partner at Energize Capital

Tyler Lancaster, a Chicago-based investor with Energize Capital, shares his investment thesis and why Houston-based Amperon caught his eye. Photo courtesy of Energize Capital

One of the biggest challenges to the energy transition is finding the funds to fuel it. Tyler Lancaster, partner at Energize Capital, is playing a role in that.

Energize Capital, based in Chicago, is focused on disruptive software technology key to decarbonization. One of the firm's portfolio companies is Amperon, which raised $20 million last fall.

In an interview with EnergyCapital, Lancaster shares what he's focused on and why Amperon caught Energize Capital's attention. Read more.

Teresa Thomas, vice chair and national sector leader for energy and chemicals at Deloitte

Teresa Thomas, newly named vice chair and national sector leader for energy and chemicals at Deloitte, shares her vision in an interview. Photo via LinkedIn

Deloitte is undergoing a leadership shift — and this evolution for the nearly 200-year-old company directly affects its Houston office and the energy transition line of business.

Earlier this month, Teresa Thomas was named vice chair and national sector leader for energy and chemicals at Deloitte. Based in Houston, she will also serve as an advisory partner and leader in Deloitte & Touche LLP's Risk & Financial Advisory energy and chemicals practice. She succeeds Amy Chronis, partner at Deloitte LLP, who will continue to serve within the energy and chemicals practice until her retirement in June 2024.

In an interview with EnergyCapital, Thomas shares a bit about what she plans on focusing as she takes on her new role. Read more.

Sarah Jewett, vice president of strategy at Fervo Energy

Sarah Jewett, vice president of strategy at Fervo Energy, shares how Fervo has been able to leverage proven oil and gas technologies, such as horizontal drilling, and more, to pave the way toward a low-carbon energy future. Photo via HETI

Houston-based Fervo Energy, the leader in enhanced geothermal technology, is accelerating decarbonization by bringing 24/7 carbon-free electricity to the grid.

Fervo’s mission is to leverage geoscience innovations to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. Fervo continues to demonstrate the commercial viability and scalability of enhanced geothermal energy, which uses breakthrough techniques to harness heat from the earth and generate continuous electricity.

Sarah Jewett, VP of Strategy at Fervo, shared more about how Fervo has been able to leverage proven oil and gas technologies, such as horizontal drilling, well stimulation, and fiber-optic sensing, to pave the way toward a low-carbon energy future. Read more.

Tyler Lancaster, a Chicago-based investor with Energize Capital, shares his investment thesis and why Houston-based Amperon caught his eye. Photo courtesy of Energize Capital

Investor on Texas as a climatetech hub, disruption opportunities with the grid, and more

Q&A

One of the biggest challenges to the energy transition is finding the funds to fuel it. Tyler Lancaster, partner at Energize Capital, is playing a role in that.

Energize Capital, based in Chicago, is focused on disruptive software technology key to decarbonization. One of the firm's portfolio companies is Amperon, which raised $20 million last fall.

In an interview with EnergyCapital, Lancaster shares what he's focused on and why Amperon caught Energize Capital's attention.

EnergyCapital: Energize Capital has been investing in climate tech for the better part of a decade now. What types of companies are you looking for and how are these companies’ technologies affecting the greater energy transition?

Tyler Lancaster: We partner with best-in-class innovators to accelerate the sustainability transition. This means identifying climate technology companies at various stages of maturity — from early commercialization to approaching the public markets — that we can help scale and realize their full potential. We invest in software-first climate technology businesses, with a focus on asset-light digital solutions that can help scale sustainable innovation and enable the new energy economy. Our portfolio currently drives software applications across renewable energy, industrial operations, electrification & mobility, infrastructure resilience, and decarbonization. We primarily focus on proven, commercially available and economically viable energy transition solutions (solar, wind, batteries, heat pumps, etc.). These solutions suffer from challenges related to efficient deployment or operations, where enabling digital platforms can play a key role in optimizing costs.

EC: Amperon is one of Energize Capital's portfolio companies. What made the company a great investment opportunity for Energize Capital?

TL: Accelerating the energy transition will require critical forecasting tools like what Amperon provides. This is underscored by the escalating impact of extreme weather events, increasing penetration of variable energy resources, like wind and solar, on the supply side, and surging demand growth driven by flexible loads and rapid electrification. We believe the need for Amperon’s platform will only continue to grow, and their increased raise from Series A to Series B showed they are scaling smartly. We’ve also known Sean Kelly, Abe Stanway, and the entire Amperon team for a long time, and building strong relationships with founders is how we like to do business. Amperon has built a blue-chip customer base in the energy sector in a very capital efficient manner, which is more important than ever for startups operating in the current equity market environment.

EC: One of the energy transition’s biggest problems is sourcing and storing reliable and affordable energy. What have you observed are the biggest problems with Texas’ electricity grid and what types of new tech can help improve these issues?

TL: Today’s electricity grid and the demands we’re putting on it look very different than they ever have. Major changes in climate and extreme weather show how perilous and unreliable the power grids in this country are, particularly in regions like Texas that don’t have the right infrastructure to shield grids from unusual temperatures — just look at the damage done by 2021’s historic Winter Storm Uri. And consumer demand for electricity is increasing as electrification accelerates globally. The makeup of the grid itself is shifting from centralized power plants to distributed clean energy assets like solar arrays and wind turbines, which brings issues of intermittent electricity production and no traditional way to forecast that.

Tech solutions like Amperon are the only way to navigate the nuances of the energy transition. With global net-zero goals and impending Scope II accounting, Amperon’s expertise in granular data management further enables companies to build accurate, dynamic forecasting models with smart meter data and get more visibility into anticipated market shifts so they can optimize their energy use — all of which helps to create a more resilient and reliable power grid.

EC: You are also on the board of the company, which recently announced a collaboration with Microsoft’s tech. What doors does this open for Amperon?

TL: Partnering with Microsoft and offering its energy demand forecasting solution on the Azure platform enables Amperon to better serve more companies that are navigating the energy transition and a rapidly evolving grid. Many power sector companies are also undergoing cloud migrations with Microsoft Azure having high market share. This partnership will specifically accelerate Amperon’s reach with utility customers, who typically have slower sales cycles but can greatly benefit from improved accuracy in energy demand forecasting and adoption of AI technologies.

EC: As a non-Texas investor, how do you see Houston and Texas-based companies’ investability? Has it changed over the years?

TL: While most tech startups are concentrated on the coasts and in Europe, we see Texas emerging as a hub for energy and climate focused startups due to its vicinity to energy giants, which represent potential customers. Texas leads the country in renewable energy production and sits at the forefront of the transition. Energy companies based in this region are relying on technology innovation and software tools to modernize operations and meet the evolving demands of their customers.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Energy tech platform Amperon raised $20 million. Photo via Amperon.co

Houston-based, AI-powered electricity analytics company raises $20M series B

funds secured

A Houston startup has raised $20 million in its latest round of funding in order to accelerate its energy analytics and grid decarbonization technology.

Amperon Holdings Inc. announced today that it closed its series B round at $20 million. Energize Capital led the round and the D. E. Shaw group, Veriten, and HSBC Asset Management, an existing investor, joined in on the round. Additionally, two of Amperon's early customers, Ørsted and another strategic utility partner, participated in the series B, which brought Amperon’s total funding to $30 million.

The fresh funding will support the company in evolving its platform that conducts electricity demand forecasting to a comprehensive data analytics solution. Amperon's solution has an opportunity to really impact the industry's "increasingly turbulent power grids worldwide" among climate change and rapid adoption of variable energy resources, like wind and solar, the company explains in a news release about its raise.

“The energy transition is creating unprecedented market volatility, and Amperon is uniquely positioned to help market participants better navigate the transitioning grid – both in the U.S. and as we expand globally,” Sean Kelly, CEO and co-founder of Amperon, says in the release. “We've already established ourselves as the premier provider of electricity demand forecasting software. With this funding, we are poised to leverage our cutting-edge AI models to enable customers to unlock more value from data and asset optimization, spanning from on-site solar to commercial load management with backup generation and microgrid deployment.”

With the round, Energize Capital Partner Tyler Lancaster joins the Amperon board of directors.

“Today’s electricity grid is facing uniquely modern challenges as we work to rapidly transform our energy assets and decarbonize our economy,” he says in the release. “To facilitate the energy transition – a multitrillion-dollar market opportunity — we need more software tools custom-built to handle the complexities of our evolving energy markets.

"Amperon’s AI-powered analytics platform is exactly that, providing the accuracy and sophistication necessary for energy players across the value chain to manage their energy use and streamline our collective pathway to net-zero," he continues. "After getting to know Sean and the Amperon team since inception, Energize is thrilled to officially partner with them as a lead investor in this funding.”

In the past two years, Amperon reports that it grew revenue by five times, as well as quadrupled its team. The company was founded in 2017 and raised its $7 million series A last year.

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Energy Tech Nexus announces international startups to pitch at Pilotathon

Ready, Set, Pitch

Energy Tech Nexus will host its Pilotathon and Showcase as part of Houston Energy & Climate Startup Week next Tuesday, Sept. 16, featuring insightful talks from industry leaders and pitches from an international group of companies in the clean energy space.

This year's event will center around the theme "Energy Access and Resilience." Attendees will hear pitches from nine Pilotathon pitch companies, as well as the 14 companies that were named to Energy Tech Nexus' COPILOT accelerator earlier this year.

COPILOT partners with Browning the Green Space, a nonprofit that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the clean energy and climatetech sectors. The Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN²) at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory backs the COPILOT accelerator, where companies are tasked with developing pilot projects for their innovations.

The nine Pilotathon pitch companies include:

Ontario-based AlumaPower, which has developed a breakthrough technology that converts the aluminum-air battery into a "galvanic generator," a long-duration energy source that runs on aluminum as a fuel
Calgary-based BioOilSolv, a chemical manufacturing company that has developed cutting-edge biomass-derived solvents
Atlanta-based Cultiv8 Fuels, which creates high-quality renewable fuel products derived from hemp
Newfoundland-based eDNAtec Inc., a leader in environmental genomics that analyzes biodiversity and ecological health
Oregon-based Espiku Inc., which designs and develops water treatment and mineral extraction technologies that rely on low-pressure evaporative cycles
New York-based Fast Metals Inc., which has developed a chemical process to extract valuable metals from complex toxic mine tailings that is capable of producing iron, aluminum, scandium, titanium and other rare earth elements using industrial waste and waste CO2 as inputs
New Jersey-based Metal Light Inc., which is building a circular, solid metal fuel that will serve as a replacement for diesel fuel
Glasgow-based Novosound, which designs and manufactures innovative ultrasound sensors using a thin-film technique to address the limitations of traditional ultrasound with applications in industrial, medical and wearable markets
Calgary-based Serenity Power, which has developed a cutting-edge solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology

The COPILOT accelerator companies include:

Accelerate Wind
Aquora Biosystems Inc.
EarthEn
Electromaim
EnKoat
GeoFuels
Harber Coatings Inc.
Janta Power
NanoSieve
PolyQor Inc.
Popper Power
Siva Powers America
ThermoShade
V-Glass Inc.

Houston energy company to invest $1B in U.S. electric grid manufacturing

grid boost

Hitachi Energy, whose U.S. headquarters is in Houston, has earmarked more than $1 billion to manufacture infrastructure for the U.S. electric grid, which is coping with greater power demand from data centers and AI platforms.

Of that sum, $457 million is dedicated to building a power transformer factory in Virginia. Hitachi Energy said it’ll be the largest facility of its kind in the U.S.

“Power transformers are a linchpin technology for a robust and reliable electric grid and winning the AI race. Bringing production of large power transformers to the U.S. is critical to building a strong domestic supply chain for the U.S. economy and reducing production bottlenecks, which is essential as demand for these transformers across the economy is surging,” said Andreas Schierenbeck, CEO of Switzerland-based Hitachi Energy, which generates revenue of about $16 billion.

The Hitachi announcement aligns with various priorities of the Trump administration. The White House is promoting more U.S.-based manufacturing, more power to accommodate data centers and AI, and greater use of U.S. energy resources.

“If we are going to win the AI race, reindustrialize, and keep the lights on, America is going to need a lot more reliable energy,” U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright said.

Texas still has its best solar days ahead of it, even as federal tax credit sunsets

Guest Column

If you follow energy policy, you already know that Congress repealed the 30% residential solar tax credit. This poses a significant challenge for continued growth in the market. It also provides an opportunity for the industry to grow in a smart, consumer-friendly way. That’s why in Texas, the story is what happens next: The state and the market are continuing to make going solar much simpler, better, and cheaper.

Policies are moving in the right direction. For example, starting this month, a bipartisan permitting reform takes effect that will cut red tape for home solar and batteries. It lets licensed third-party professionals review plans and perform inspections, requires agencies to post standardized rules and fees online, and allows homeowners to start work once those third-party approvals are submitted. It also shifts negligence liability to the third-party reviewer, thereby reducing municipal risk while accelerating safe, code-compliant installs. In plain English: fewer bottlenecks, faster installs, and lower “soft costs.”

As a result, Houston is already piloting the National Renewable Energy Lab’s free SolarAPP+ to auto-approve standard solar designs, which cuts roughly 12 days from typical timelines. Independent analyses estimate that these automated permitting rules could trim rooftop solar costs by thousands. In other words, even small, costless policy changes like this can save you almost as much money as the huge solar tax credit did, and these great reforms are happening all the time, and they make the process much more convenient and reliable.

While Texas is making solar simpler, it’s also helping consumers have a good experience when going solar. As of this month, Texas law now also requires solar salespeople to register with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation. The same bill standardizes contracts and provides for mandatory disclosures of upfront cost and financing terms. The whole solar industry benefits when customers have a good solar experience. Word of mouth is vital to keeping solar shining.

There's yet another pro-solar Texas law that's also going into effect this month: in addition to SB 1202 (streamlining solar permits) and SB 1036 (regulating solar sales tactics), the legislature is also supporting the dissemination of information about your options when going solar via SB 1697. You can read more about these three brand-new pro-solar state laws here.

The end of the solar tax credit is not the end of the solar industry. Far from it.

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Dori Wolf is Senior Texas Program Associate for Solar United Neighbors, a vendor and neutral nonprofit with more than 15 years helping people go solar. Their free Solar Help Desk walks you through the details. Also check out their Go Solar Guide and Solar Owner’s Manual.

Solar United Neighbors also helps you find the best retail electricity plan through its partnership with Texas Power Guide.

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