The Carbon to Value Initiative kicks off this week at Greentown Houston. Photo via GreentownLabs.com

A carbon innovation initiative in collaboration with Greentown Houston has named its new cohort.

The Carbon to Value Initiative (C2V Initiative) — a collaboration between NYU Tandon School of Engineering's Urban Future Lab (UFL), Greentown Labs, and Fraunhofer USA — has named nine startup participants for the fourth year of its carbontech accelerator program.

"Once again, the C2V Initiative has been able to select some of the most promising carbontech startups through a very competitive process with a 7 percent acceptance rate," Frederic Clerc, director of the C2V Initiative and interim managing director of UFL, says in a news release. "The diversity of this cohort, in its technologies, products, geographies, and stages, makes it an amazing snapshot of the rapidly evolving carbontech innovation landscape."

The cohort was selected from over a hundred applications from nearly 30 countries. In the six-month program, the nine companies gain access to the C2V Initiative's Carbontech Leadership Council, an invitation-only group of corporate, nonprofit, and government leaders who provide commercialization opportunities and identify avenues for technology validation, testing, and demonstration.

The year four cohort, according to the release, includes:

  • Ardent, from New Castle, Delaware, is a process technology company that is developing membrane-based solutions for point-source carbon capture and other chemical separations.
  • CarbonBlue, from Haifa, Israel, develops a chemical process that mineralizes and extracts CO2 from water, which then reabsorbs more atmospheric CO2.
  • MacroCycle, from Somerville, Massachusetts, develops a chemical recycling process to turn polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polyester-fiber waste into "virgin-grade" plastics.
  • Maple Materials, from Richmond, California,develops an electrolysis process to convert CO2 into graphite and oxygen.
  • Oxylus Energy, from New Haven, Connecticut, develops a direct electrochemical process to convert CO2 into fuels and chemical feedstocks, such as methanol.
  • Phlair, from Munich, Germany, develops a renewable-energy-powered Direct Air Capture (DAC) system using an electrochemical process for acid and base generation.
  • Secant Fuel, from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, develops a one-step electrocatalytic process that converts flue gas into syngas.
  • RenewCO2, from Somerset, New Jersey, is developing an electrochemical process to convert CO2 into fuels and chemicals, such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) or propylene glycol.
  • Seabound, from London, England, builds carbon-capture equipment for new and existing ships.

"The depth and breadth of carbontech innovations represented in this applicant pool speaks volumes to this growing and dynamic industry around the world," adds Kevin Dutt, Interim CEO of Greentown Labs. "We're eager to support these nine impressive companies as they progress through this program and look forward to seeing how they engage with the CLC now and into the future."

The C2V Initiative will host a public Year 4 kickoff event on Sept. 19 at Greentown Houston and via livestream.

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Gold H2 harvests clean hydrogen from depleted California reservoirs in first field trial

breakthrough trial

Houston climatech company Gold H2 completed its first field trial that demonstrates subsurface bio-stimulated hydrogen production, which leverages microbiology and existing infrastructure to produce clean hydrogen.

Gold H2 is a spinoff of another Houston biotech company, Cemvita.

“When we compare our tech to the rest of the stack, I think we blow the competition out of the water," Prabhdeep Singh Sekhon, CEO of Gold H2 Sekhon previously told Energy Capital.

The project represented the first-of-its-kind application of Gold H2’s proprietary biotechnology, which generates hydrogen from depleted oil reservoirs, eliminating the need for new drilling, electrolysis or energy-intensive surface facilities. The Woodlands-based ChampionX LLC served as the oilfield services provider, and the trial was conducted in an oilfield in California’s San Joaquin Basin.

According to the company, Gold H2’s technology could yield up to 250 billion kilograms of low-carbon hydrogen, which is estimated to provide enough clean power to Los Angeles for over 50 years and avoid roughly 1 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent.

“This field trial is tangible proof. We’ve taken a climate liability and turned it into a scalable, low-cost hydrogen solution,” Sekhon said in a news release. “It’s a new blueprint for decarbonization, built for speed, affordability, and global impact.”

Highlights of the trial include:

  • First-ever demonstration of biologically stimulated hydrogen generation at commercial field scale with unprecedented results of 40 percent H2 in the gas stream.
  • Demonstrated how end-of-life oilfield liabilities can be repurposed into hydrogen-producing assets.
  • The trial achieved 400,000 ppm of hydrogen in produced gases, which, according to the company,y is an “unprecedented concentration for a huff-and-puff style operation and a strong indicator of just how robust the process can perform under real-world conditions.”
  • The field trial marked readiness for commercial deployment with targeted hydrogen production costs below $0.50/kg.

“This breakthrough isn’t just a step forward, it’s a leap toward climate impact at scale,” Jillian Evanko, CEO and president at Chart Industries Inc., Gold H2 investor and advisor, added in the release. “By turning depleted oil fields into clean hydrogen generators, Gold H2 has provided a roadmap to produce low-cost, low-carbon energy using the very infrastructure that powered the last century. This changes the game for how the world can decarbonize heavy industry, power grids, and economies, faster and more affordably than we ever thought possible.”

Rice University spinout lands $500K NSF grant to boost chip sustainability

cooler computing

HEXAspec, a spinout from Rice University's Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, was recently awarded a $500,000 National Science Foundation Partnership for Innovation grant.

The team says it will use the funding to continue enhancing semiconductor chips’ thermal conductivity to boost computing power. According to a release from Rice, HEXAspec has developed breakthrough inorganic fillers that allow graphic processing units (GPUs) to use less water and electricity and generate less heat.

The technology has major implications for the future of computing with AI sustainably.

“With the huge scale of investment in new computing infrastructure, the problem of managing the heat produced by these GPUs and semiconductors has grown exponentially. We’re excited to use this award to further our material to meet the needs of existing and emerging industry partners and unlock a new era of computing,” HEXAspec co-founder Tianshu Zhai said in the release.

HEXAspec was founded by Zhai and Chen-Yang Lin, who both participated in the Rice Innovation Fellows program. A third co-founder, Jing Zhang, also worked as a postdoctoral researcher and a research scientist at Rice, according to HEXAspec's website.

The HEXASpec team won the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge in 2024. More recently, it also won this year's Energy Venture Day and Pitch Competition during CERAWeek in the TEX-E student track, taking home $25,000.

"The grant from the NSF is a game-changer, accelerating the path to market for this transformative technology," Kyle Judah, executive director of Lilie, added in the release.

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This article originally ran on InnovationMap.