Greentown and partners name 10 startups to carbontech accelerator

new cohort

The Carbon to Value Initiative has named its fifth cohort of global startups. Photo courtesy of Greentown Labs

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.

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Ontario-based Universal Matter has fresh funding from Houston. Photo via universalmatter.com

2 Houston companies invest in innovative carbon-converting tech from Rice University

freshly funded

A Canadian company based on tech originating out of Rice University closed an equity financing round of up to $20 million thanks to two Houston-based companies.

NewTech Investment Holdings and Westlake Innovations Inc. led Universal Matter's investment round, which the company expand its graphene-based dispersion capacity technology that can be used for servicing customers and prospective customers in its target markets.

“Our continuing interest at NewTech is to seek out and invest in advanced materials companies having high potential to deliver disruptive technologies and environmental benefits within the cleantech sector,” NewTech Investment Holdings Managing Director Guy Hoffman says in a news release. “Universal Matter stands out with its game-changing graphene manufacturing process for producing high quality products that help reduce the carbon footprint in hard- to-abate sectors, such as cement concrete and bitumen asphalt-based applications.

Universal Matter's Flash Joule Heating process technology — originating out of Rice University's James Tour lab by scientist Duy Luong — can upcycle carbon into fully formulated graphene-based products to enhance the performance and sustainability of major industrial materials, per the company's release. Universal Matter developed the complementary product technologies with its Genable graphene-based dispersions that equate to ease-of-use by fabricators in major global markets that include cement/concrete, bitumen asphalt, industrial coatings, automotive tires, and others.

“Graphene is a material with a number of potential performance and sustainability benefits that could apply across a number of Westlake’s ‘Performance & Essential Materials and Housing & Infrastructure Products’ business lines,” Westlake's Senior Vice President and Managing Director John Chao says in the release. “We look forward to working with Universal Matter and its management team as it moves forward on development and commercialization of its flexible technology.”

This year, Universal Matter participated in the Greentown Go Make program put on by Greentown Labs and Shell. During the program, Universal Matter worked with Shell to identify eight potential collaboration areas across upstream carbon feedstocks, downstream end-use applications for the startup’s graphene, and more.

The cohort was selected from over 100 applications, and experts from Shell worked to support the cohort as they navigated the program. Photo via Greentown Labs

Greentown accelerator in partnership with Shell wraps up with startup milestones met

that's a wrap

After six months of incubating with Shell through Greentown Labs, the 2023 Greentown Go Make startup cohort has completed with its recent showcase.

The six participating startups — Caravel Bio, Circularise, Corumat, Lydian, Maple Materials, and Universal Matter — were originally announced in October. The cohort was selected from over 100 applications, and experts from Shell worked to support the cohort as they navigated the program.

Universal Matter, headquartered in Burlington, Ontario, Canada, with a Houston office, is developing a proprietary flash Joule heating process that converts carbon waste into high-value and high-performance graphene materials to efficiently create sustainable, circular economies.

During the program, Universal Matter worked with Shell to identify eight potential collaboration areas across upstream carbon feedstocks, downstream end-use applications for the startup’s graphene, and more, according to a news release from Greentown.

“Go Make 2023 was run with exceptional efficiency to ensure that all startup members were able to gain maximum benefit from exchanges with the corporate partner,” says Universal Matter’s VP of Strategic Planning Peter van Ballegooie.

“The one-on-one exchanges were extremely useful to startups, as they facilitated the connections to the relevant business units within Shell that could potentially benefit from the novel technologies being developed," he continues. "Establishing the connectivity to the right discussion partners within those various business units was absolutely key to the successful outcome of the program.”

Greentown shared more about each of the company's progress throughout the program in a blog post.

Meet the six startups that will be working with Shell and Greentown Labs for the next six months. Photo via Greentown

Greentown Labs names 6 energy tech startups to Shell-backed accelerator

ready to go make

Greentown Labs has named the six participating climatetech startups for an accelerator for a global energy leader.

Shell and Greentown Labs announced the cohort for Greentown Go Make 2023 — a program designed to accelerate partnerships between startups and corporates to advance carbon utilization, storage, and traceability solutions. Shell, which invests in net-zero and carbon-removal technologies, is hoping to strategically align with startups within carbon utilization, storage, and traceability across the energy transition spectrum.

“At Greentown Labs we recognize and appreciate the role energy incumbents must play in the energy transition, and we’re eager to facilitate meaningful partnerships between these impressive startups and Shell—not only to advance these technologies but also to help Shell achieve its sustainability goals,” Kevin Knobloch, CEO and President of Greentown Labs, says in a news release. “We know carbon utilization, storage, and traceability will play a critical role in our collective efforts to reach net-zero, and we’re enthusiastic about the potential impact these companies can have in that work.”

The cohort, selected from 110 applications, is co-located at Greentown's Houston and Somerville, Massachusetts, locations and includes:

Portland-based Caravel Bio is developing a novel synthetic biology platform that uses microbial spores and enzymes to create catalysts that are long-lasting and can withstand extreme conditions and environments.
Circularise, which is based in the Netherlands, is developing a blockchain platform that provides digital product passports for end-to-end traceability and secure data exchange for industrial supply chains.
Corumat, based in Washington, converts organic waste into high-performance, insulating, greaseproof, and biodegradable packaging materials.
Cambridge, Massachusetts-headquartered Lydian develops a fully electrified reactor that can convert a variety of gaseous, non-fossil feedstocks into pure syngas with high efficiency.
Maple Materials from Richmond, California is developing a low-cost electrolysis process to split carbon dioxide into graphite and oxygen.
Ontario, Canada-founded Universal Matter develops a proprietary Flash Joule Heating process that converts carbon waste into high-value and high-performance graphene materials to efficiently create sustainable circular economies.

The program, which includes $15,000 in non-dilutive stipend funding for each company, will work closely with Shell and Greentown over six months via mentorship, networking opportunities, educational workshops, and partnership-focused programming to support collaboration. Go Make 2023 concludes with a showcase event on March 27 at Greentown Labs’ Houston location.

This week, Shell announced another accelerator cohort it's participating in. The Shell GameChanger Accelerator, a partnership with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), named four West Coast climatetech companies: DTE Materials, Hexas Biomass, Invizyne Technologies, and ZILA BioWorks. The program provides early-stage cleantech startups with access to experts and facilities to reduce technology development risk and accelerate commercialization of new cleaner technologies.

“Tackling the climate challenge requires multifaceted solutions. At Shell, we believe technology that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be essential for lowering emissions from energy and chemical products,” Yesim Jonsson, Shell’s GCxN program manager, says in a statement. “The companies in GCxN's sixth cohort embody these objectives and have the potential to usher in a more sustainable future.”

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4 Houston researchers awarded projects in DOE's Genesis Mission

federal funding

The U.S. Department of Energy has named the nearly 300 projects selected under the Trump Administration's Genesis Mission, which aims to address some of the largest science and technology challenges in the country. The group features four projects from Houston universities and companies.

The initiative aims to unite government, industry, academia and philanthropy to lead to breakthroughs in energy, scientific discovery and national security, according to a release.

The selected projects feature 87 led by DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) National Laboratories, 168 led by universities, 19 led by companies and 4 led by nonprofit organizations—totalling 342 participating institutions.

“America has no shortage of bold ideas or talented scientists, and the response to the Genesis Mission proves that,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said in a news release. “The 278 projects selected today represent the very best of our nation’s scientific enterprise. The remarkable number of high-quality proposals we received demonstrates that America’s innovation pipeline is strong, and it points to even greater opportunities for future investment and continued expansion of the Genesis Mission portfolio.”

Twelve Texas-based projects were selected among the 278. The Houston projects and their researchers include:

Caroline Ajo-Franklin

Ajo-Franklin recieved a Phase I grant for her project "Predictive AI to Map Point Mutation Effects on Protein Function: Measurement and Biosynthesis of Isoprenoids." Ajo-Franklin is a professor of biosciences at Rice University, a CPRIT Scholar in Cancer Research and member of the Rice Synthetic Biology Institute. The project aims to accelerate the engineering of microbes that can produce isoprenoids, which are natural compounds that could replace petroleum-derived fuels, solvents and materials.

“This project creates a continuous feedback loop in which AI guides experiments and each experiment generates more detailed data to better hone the AI model,” Ajo-Franklin said in a news release. “In addition, it demonstrates the extraordinary star power Rice has recruited in protein engineering and synthetic biology.”

Anastasios Kyrillidis

Kyrillidis recived a Phase I grant for his project "Cracking the VQA Optimization Bottleneck: AI Methods for Quantum Chemistry and Materials." Kyrillidis is the Noah Harding Associate Professor of Computer Science at Rice and a member of the Ken Kennedy Institute. The project aims to develop AI tools to resolve bottlenecks in quantum computing for chemistry and materials research.

“Our goal is to replace fragile, hand-tuned optimization methods with intelligent systems that can learn from quantum computations while still operating within frameworks that provide strong mathematical guarantees,” Kyrillidis added in the release.

Myoungkyu Lee

Lee received a nearly $750,000 Phase I grant for his project "Physics-Informed AI Surrogates for Turbulent Forced Convection in Energy System." Lee is an assistant professor of mechanical aerospace engineering at the University of Houston. Lee will collaborate with researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and University of Pennsylvania on the project and develop artificial intelligence to accelerate the design of materials for advanced nuclear fission and fusion reactors.

“The goal is to develop a tool that runs much faster than today’s most detailed simulations while keeping errors small,” Lee said in a news release. “If successful, the approach could support better heat-transfer predictions for molten-salt reactor design and provide a starting point for studying heat removal in fusion blankets. This is one contribution among many toward reliable, carbon-free energy.”

Amit Padhi

Padhi recieved a grant for his project "Probabilistic Inference of Subsurface Fracture Connectivity for Stimulation Control with Physics-Informed AI." Padhi is a scientific advisor for Halliburton.

The DOE first called for applications for the Genesis Mission in March. At the time, the DOE shared that it would grant approximately $293 million to the selected teams via Phase I awards, ranging from $500,000 to $750,000 for nine-month project periods, and Phase II awards, for $6 million to $15 million over a three-year project period.

Since then, however, the initiative has grown with 15 federal agencies now granting research awards and funding opportunities under the Genesis umbrella. The White House announced this week that it had secured more than $5 billion in federal commitments to expand the initiative.

SLB teams with Liberty Energy on modular power for AI data centers

ai alliance

Houston-headquartered SLB and Denver-based Liberty Energy Inc. announced a strategic agreement this month to support the rapid growth of new data center capacity.

Under the agreement, SLB will supply modular data center infrastructure and oversee large-scale execution, while Liberty will provide modular power generation systems and behind-the-meter power management technology for developers looking to add capacity. According to Reuters, the power will come from natural gas generation.

“The bottleneck in AI infrastructure is no longer just compute. It is the ability to deliver infrastructure and power on the timelines the market now demands,” Gavin Rennick, president of SLB’s New Energy and Industrial business, said in a news release. “By bringing together complementary infrastructure and power capabilities, we will help developers accelerate deployment of new data center capacity.”

The companies seek to specifically offer the modular technologies in areas without traditional grid connections or where grid capacity is limited.

They also aim to improve the "efficiency, flexibility and environmental performance of future data center energy systems," potentially through solutions like hybrid power systems and digital energy management, according to the news release.

Goldman Sachs estimates that U.S. data center capacity will more than double from 31 gigawatts in 2025 to 66 gigawatts in 2027. Other reports predict that Houston and Texas will be home to a significant portion of the data center boom, with capacity in the city and the state also expected to double in the next few years.

“The scale and complexity of AI energy infrastructure is fundamentally changing how power systems are built and deployed,” Ron Gusek, CEO of Liberty Energy, added in the release. “Liberty’s comprehensive power service platform is engineered to meet this transition, as customers increasingly prioritize tailored, integrated solutions. Building on our long-standing relationship with SLB, we are excited to bring power solutions that address immediate capacity constraints while supporting the next generation of energy systems.”

SLB sold its onshore hydraulic fracturing business in the United States and Canada to Liberty Energy in December 2020 in exchange for a 37 percent equity interest in the company.

New Rice study details how carbon capture could reduce AI data center emissions

by the numbers

A new study out of Rice University points to carbon capture and storage methods as pivotal solutions to addressing emissions from AI-driven data centers.

The study was authored by Hon Chung Lau, an adjunct professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Rice University and founder of Low Carbon Energies LLC, and Steve C. Tsai, an energy transition consultant at Low Carbon Energies LLC, and published in the journal Energy & Fuels.

According to the study, U.S. data center power capacity could more than quadruple in five years, growing from 40 gigawatts in 2025 to 169 gigawatts by 2030. Without proper regulation of emissions, the report estimates that carbon dioxide produced by fossil-fuel power plants supplying electricity to data centers could grow at the same scale, increasing from 90 million metric tons to more than 404 million metric tons over the same time period.

The researchers analyzed publicly available data on announced U.S. data centers, which included energy sources, locations, and projected power capacity before estimating data center-related carbon emissions based on each state’s electricity mix. From there, they examined whether those emissions could be captured and stored underground in saline aquifers.

The team estimates that 34 states have enough saline aquifer storage capacity to store more than 100 years of projected data center-related carbon dioxide emissions beyond 2030. Aquifers could store an estimated 59 million metric tons of data center-related carbon dioxide, or about 66 percent of the sector’s emissions in 2025. However, that calculation could grow to 299 million metric tons, or about 74 percent of projected data center-related emissions by 2030.

The researchers found that more than 90 percent of data center-related carbon dioxide emissions could potentially be mitigated through carbon capture and storage when out-of-state storage options are included, even though they note that carbon capture isn’t the only solution.

“It does show that the geology exists to make a meaningful impact, especially in states where data center growth is strongest,” Lau said in a news release.

Rapid growth in states including Texas, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona, Colorado, Utah and Illinois was considered in the study. According to the findings, Texas would need to add 25 gigawatts of power capacity by 2030 to meet projected data center demand, as data centers require reliable electricity 24/7.

“Data centers are becoming one of the defining energy challenges of the AI era,” Lau added in the news release. “The question is not only whether we can build enough computing infrastructure, but whether we can power it in a way that is reliable, affordable and compatible with decarbonization goals.”

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