Hydrogen industry could have major impact on Texas water resources, study says

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A new study from the University of Texas at Austin shows that new hydrogen production facilities could account for 2 percent to nearly 7 percent of the state's water demand by 2050. Photo via Getty Images.

Just as the data center industry thrives on electricity, the hydrogen industry thrives on water.

A new study from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin found that by 2050, new hydrogen production facilities could account for 2 percent to nearly 7 percent of water demand in the state. The impact could be especially dramatic along the Gulf Coast, where most of the state’s hydrogen production facilities are already built or are being planned.

The research was published in the journal Sustainability.

The study reported that "most existing and proposed hydrogen production infrastructures are within projected water-strained cities and counties, such as Houston in Harris County and Corpus Christi in Nueces County."

Compared with municipal water supplies or irrigation systems, the hydrogen industry’s demand for water is comparatively small, the study’s lead author, Ning Lin, an energy economist at UT’s Bureau of Economic Geology, said in a news release. But hydrogen-fueled demand could strain communities that already are grappling with current and future water shortages.

“Where you put a project can make a huge difference locally,” Lin says. “With multiple hydrogen facilities planned in water-stressed Gulf Coast counties, this study highlights the urgent need for integrated water and energy planning and provides a solid foundation to help policymakers, industry, and communities make informed decisions about hydrogen and water management.”

To forecast water demand, Lin and her colleagues crunched data from a 2024 National Petroleum Council study that estimated the regional hydrogen demand from 2030 to 2050 based on two energy policy scenarios.

As part of the study, researchers reviewed water use and water quality for various hydrogen production methods that affect whether water remaining from production can be recycled.

“In order to plan for water needs, somebody has to figure out what those future demands might look like, and this paper puts some numbers to (it) that, I think, will be very helpful,” Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University, who was not part of the study, added in the release.

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A team of Texas researchers has landed a nearly $1 million NSF grant to address rural flood management challenges with community input. Photo via Getty Images.

Houston-led project earns $1 million in federal funding for flood research

team work

A team from Rice University, the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M University have been awarded a National Science Foundation grant under the CHIRRP—or Confronting Hazards, Impacts and Risks for a Resilient Planet—program to combat flooding hazards in rural Texas.

The grant totals just under $1 million, according to a CHIRRP abstract.

The team is led by Avantika Gori, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Rice. Other members include Rice’s James Doss-Gollin, Andrew Juan at Texas A&M University and Keri Stephens at UT Austin.

Researchers from Rice’s Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disasters Center and Ken Kennedy Institute, Texas A&M’s Institute for A Disaster Resilient Texas and the Technology & Information Policy Institute at UT Austin are part of the team as well.

Their proposal includes work that introduces a “stakeholder-centered framework” to help address rural flood management challenges with community input.

“Our goal is to create a flood management approach that truly serves rural communities — one that’s driven by science but centers around the people who are impacted the most,” Gori said in a news release.

The project plans to introduce a performance-based system dynamics framework that integrates hydroclimate variability, hydrology, machine learning, community knowledge, and feedback to give researchers a better understanding of flood risks in rural areas.

The research will be implemented in two rural Texas areas that struggle with constant challenges associated with flooding. The case studies aim to demonstrate how linking global and regional hydroclimate variability with local hazard dynamics can work toward solutions.

“By integrating understanding of the weather dynamics that cause extreme floods, physics-based models of flooding and AI or machine learning tools together with an understanding of each community’s needs and vulnerabilities, we can better predict how different interventions will reduce a community’s risk,” Doss-Gollin said in a news release.

At the same time, the project aims to help communities gain a better understanding of climate science in their terms. The framework will also consider “resilience indicators,” such as business continuity, transportation access and other features that the team says more adequately address the needs of rural communities.

“This work is about more than flood science — it’s also about identifying ways to help communities understand flooding using words that reflect their values and priorities,” said Stephens. “We’re creating tools that empower communities to not only recover from disasters but to thrive long term.”

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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Houston geothermal company raises $97M Series B

fresh funding

Houston-based geothermal energy startup Sage Geosystems has closed its Series B fundraising round and plans to use the money to launch its first commercial next-generation geothermal power generation facility.

Ormat Technologies and Carbon Direct Capital co-led the $97 million round, according to a press release from Sage. Existing investors Exa, Nabors, alfa8, Arch Meredith, Abilene Partners, Cubit Capital and Ignis H2 Energy also participated, as well as new investors SiteGround Capital and The UC Berkeley Foundation’s Climate Solutions Fund.

The new geothermal power generation facility will be located at one of Ormat Technologies' existing power plants. The Nevada-based company has geothermal power projects in the U.S. and numerous other countries around the world. The facility will use Sage’s proprietary pressure geothermal technology, which extracts geothermal heat energy from hot dry rock, an abundant geothermal resource.

“Pressure geothermal is designed to be commercial, scalable and deployable almost anywhere,” Cindy Taff, CEO of Sage Geosystems, said in the news release. “This Series B allows us to prove that at commercial scale, reflecting strong conviction from partners who understand both the urgency of energy demand and the criticality of firm power.”

Sage reports that partnering with the Ormat facility will allow it to market and scale up its pressure geothermal technology at a faster rate.

“This investment builds on the strong foundation we’ve established through our commercial agreement and reinforces Ormat’s commitment to accelerating geothermal development,” Doron Blachar, CEO of Ormat Technologies, added in the release. “Sage’s technical expertise and innovative approach are well aligned with Ormat’s strategy to move faster from concept to commercialization. We’re pleased to take this natural next step in a partnership we believe strongly in.”

In 2024, Sage agreed to deliver up to 150 megawatts of new geothermal baseload power to Meta, the parent company of Facebook. At the time, the companies reported that the project's first phase would aim to be operating in 2027.

The company also raised a $17 million Series A, led by Chesapeake Energy Corp., in 2024.

Houston expert discusses the clean energy founder's paradox

Guest Column

Everyone tells you to move fast and break things. In clean energy, moving fast without structural integrity means breaking the only planet we’ve got. This is the founder's paradox: you are building a company in an industry where the stakes are existential, the timelines are glacial, and the capital requires patience.

The myth of the lone genius in a garage doesn’t really apply here. Clean energy startups aren’t just fighting competitors. They are fighting physics, policy, and decades of existing infrastructure. This isn’t an app. You’re building something physical that has to work in the real world. It has to be cheaper, more reliable, and clearly better than fossil fuels. Being “green” alone isn’t enough. Scale is what matters.

Your biggest risks aren’t competitors. They’re interconnection delays, permitting timelines, supply chain fragility, and whether your first customer is willing to underwrite something that hasn’t been done before.

That reality creates a brutal filter. Successful founders in this space need deep technical knowledge and the ability to execute. You need to understand engineering, navigate regulation, and think in terms of markets and risk. You’re not just selling a product. You’re selling a future where your solution becomes the obvious choice. That means connecting short-term financial returns with long-term system change.

The capital is there, but it’s smarter and more demanding. Investors today have PhDs in electrochemistry and grid dynamics. They’ve been burned by promises of miracle materials that never left the lab. They don't fund visions; they fund pathways to impact that can scale and make financial sense. Your roadmap must show not just a brilliant invention, but a clear, believable plan to drive costs down over time.

Capital in this sector isn’t impressed by ambition alone. It wants evidence that risk is being retired in the right order — even if that means slower growth early.

Here’s the upside. The difficulty of clean energy is also its strength. If you succeed, your advantage isn’t just in software or branding. It’s in hardware, supply chains, approvals, and years of hard work that others can’t easily copy. Your real competitors aren’t other startups. They’re inertia and the existing system. Winning here isn’t zero-sum. When one solution scales, it helps the entire market grow.

So, to the founder in the lab, or running field tests at a remote site: your pace will feel slow. The validation cycles are long. But you are building in the physical world. When you succeed, you don’t have an exit. You have a foundation. You don't just have customers; you have converts. And the product you ship doesn't just generate revenue; it creates a legacy.

If your timelines feel uncomfortable compared to software, that’s because you’re operating inside a system designed to resist change. And let’s not forget you are building actual physical products that interact with a complex world. Times are tough. Don’t give up. We need you.

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Nada Ahmed is the founding partner at Houston-based Energy Tech Nexus.

Houston maritime startup raises $43M to electrify cargo vessels

A Houston-based maritime technology company that is working to reduce emissions in the cargo and shipping industry has raised VC funding and opened a new Houston headquarters.

Fleetzero announced that it closed a $43 million Series A financing round this month led by Obvious Ventures with participation from Maersk Growth, Breakthrough Energy Ventures, 8090 Industries, Y Combinator, Shorewind, Benson Capital and others. The funding will go toward expanding manufacturing of its Leviathan hybrid and electric marine propulsion system, according to a news release.

The technology is optimized for high-energy and zero-emission operation of large vessels. It uses EV technology but is built for maritime environments and can be used on new or existing ships with hybrid or all-electric functions, according to Fleetzero's website. The propulsion system was retrofitted and tested on Fleetzero’s test ship, the Pacific Joule, and has been deployed globally on commercial vessels.

Fleetzero is also developing unmanned cargo vessel technology.

"Fleetzero is making robotic ships a reality today. The team is moving us from dirty, dangerous, and expensive to clean, safe, and cost-effective. It's like watching the future today," Andrew Beebe, managing director at Obvious Ventures, said in the news release. "We backed the team because they are mariners and engineers, know the industry deeply, and are scaling with real ships and customers, not just renderings."

Fleetzero also announced that it has opened a new manufacturing and research and development facility, which will serve as the company's new headquarters. The facility features a marine robotics and autonomy lab, a marine propulsion R&D center and a production line with a capacity of 300 megawatt-hours per year. The company reports that it plans to increase production to three gigawatt-hours per year over the next five years.

"Houston has the people who know how to build and operate big hardware–ships, rigs, refineries and power systems," Mike Carter, co-founder and COO of Fleetzero, added in the release. "We're pairing that industrial DNA with modern batteries, autonomy, and software to bring back shipbuilding to the U.S."

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