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Wind and solar supplied over a third of ERCOT power, report shows

power report

A new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration shows that wind and solar supplied more than 30 percent of ERCOT’s electricity in the first nine months of 2025. Photo via Unsplash.

Since 2023, wind and solar power have been the fastest-growing sources of electricity for the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and increasingly are meeting stepped-up demand, according to a new report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The report says utility-scale solar generated 50 percent more electricity for ERCOT in the first nine months this year compared with the same period in 2024. Meanwhile, electricity generated by wind power rose 4 percent in the first nine months of this year versus the same period in 2024.

Together, wind and solar supplied 36 percent of ERCOT’s electricity in the first nine months of 2025.

Heavier reliance on wind and solar power comes amid greater demand for ERCOT electricity. In the first nine months of 2025, ERCOT recorded the fastest growth in electricity demand (5 percent) among U.S. power grids compared with the same period last year, according to the report.

“ERCOT’s electricity demand is forecast to grow faster than that of any other grid operator in the United States through at least 2026,” the report says.

EIA forecasts demand for ERCOT electricity will climb 14 percent in the first nine months of 2026 compared with the same period this year. This anticipated jump coincides with a number of large data centers and cryptocurrency mining facilities coming online next year.

The ERCOT grid covers about 90 percent of Texas’ electrical load.

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A team from UH has published two breakthrough studies that could help cut costs and boost efficiency in carbon capture. Photo courtesy UH.

UH researchers make breakthrough in cutting carbon capture costs

Carbon breakthrough

A team of researchers at the University of Houston has made two breakthroughs in addressing climate change and potentially reducing the cost of capturing harmful emissions from power plants.

Led by Professor Mim Rahimi at UH’s Cullen College of Engineering, the team released two significant publications that made significant strides relating to carbon capture processes. The first, published in Nature Communications, introduced a membraneless electrochemical process that cuts energy requirements and costs for amine-based carbon dioxide capture during the acid gas sweetening process. Another, featured on the cover of ES&T Engineering, demonstrated a vanadium redox flow system capable of both capturing carbon and storing renewable energy.

“These publications reflect our group’s commitment to fundamental electrochemical innovation and real-world applicability,” Rahimi said in a news release. “From membraneless systems to scalable flow systems, we’re charting pathways to decarbonize hard-to-abate sectors and support the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

According to the researchers, the “A Membraneless Electrochemically Mediated Amine Regeneration for Carbon Capture” research paper marked the beginning of the team’s first focus. The research examined the replacement of costly ion-exchange membranes with gas diffusion electrodes. They found that the membranes were the most expensive part of the system, and they were also a major cause of performance issues and high maintenance costs.

The researchers achieved more than 90 percent CO2 removal (nearly 50 percent more than traditional approaches) by engineering the gas diffusion electrodes. According to PhD student and co-author of the paper Ahmad Hassan, the capture costs approximately $70 per metric ton of CO2, which is competitive with other innovative scrubbing techniques.

“By removing the membrane and the associated hardware, we’ve streamlined the EMAR workflow and dramatically cut energy use,” Hassan said in the news release. “This opens the door to retrofitting existing industrial exhaust systems with a compact, low-cost carbon capture module.”

The second breakthrough, published by PhD student Mohsen Afshari, displayed a reversible flow battery architecture that absorbs CO2 during charging and releases it upon discharge. The results suggested that the technology could potentially provide carbon removal and grid balancing when used with intermittent renewables, such as solar or wind power.

“Integrating carbon capture directly into a redox flow battery lets us tackle two challenges in one device,” Afshari said in the release. “Our front-cover feature highlights its potential to smooth out renewable generation while sequestering CO2.”

A forecast from Energy Innovation Policy & Technology shows that Texas is expected to see a decline in solar, wind and battery-powered storage by 2035 due to clean energy tax credit repeals in the 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act.' Photo via Getty Images.

New forecast shows impact of 'Big Beautiful Bill' on Texas clean energy generation

energy forecast

Texas is expected to see a 77-gigawatt decrease in power generation capacity within the next 10 years under the federal "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which President Trump recently signed into law, a new forecast shows.

Primarily due to the act’s repeal of some clean energy tax credits, a forecast, published by energy policy research organization Energy Innovation Policy & Technology, predicts that Texas is expected to experience a:

  • 54-gigawatt decline in capacity from solar power by 2035
  • 23-gigawatt decline in capacity from wind power by 2035
  • 3.1-gigawatt decline in capacity from battery-stored power by 2035
  • 2.5-gigawatt increase in capacity from natural gas by 2035

The legislation “will reduce additions of new, cost-effective electricity capacity in Texas, raising power prices for consumers and decreasing the state’s GDP and job growth in the coming years,” the forecast says.

The forecast also reports that the loss of sources of low-cost renewable energy and the resulting hike in natural gas prices could bump up electric bills in Texas. The forecast envisions a 23 percent to 54 percent hike in electric rates for residential, commercial and industrial customers in Texas.

Household energy bills are expected to increase by $220 per year by 2030 and by $480 per year by 2035, according to the forecast.

Energy Innovation Policy & Technology expects job growth and economic growth to also take a hit under the "Big Beautiful Bill."

The nonprofit organization foresees annual losses of $5.9 billion in Texas economic output (as measured by GDP) by 2030 and $10 billion by 2035. In tandem with the impact on GDP, Texas is projected to lose 42,000 jobs by 2030 and 94,000 jobs by 2035 due to the law’s provisions, according to the organization.

The White House believes the "Big Beautiful Bill" will promote, not harm, U.S. energy production. The law encourages the growth of traditional sources of power such as oil, natural gas, coal and hydropower.

“The One Big Beautiful Bill Act is a historic piece of legislation that will restore energy independence and make life more affordable for American families by reversing disastrous Biden-era policies that constricted domestic energy production,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a news release.

Promoters of renewable energy offer an opposing viewpoint.

“The bill makes steep cuts to solar energy and places new restrictions on energy tax credits that will slow the deployment of residential and utility-scale solar while undermining the growth of U.S. manufacturing,” says the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, complained that the legislation limits energy production, boosts prices for U.S. businesses and families, and jeopardizes the reliability of the country’s power grid.

“Our economic and national security requires that we support all forms of American energy,” Grumet said in a statement. “It is time for the brawlers to get out of the way and let the builders get back to work.”

PJ Popovic, founder and CEO of Houston-based Rhythm Energy, which has acquired Inspire Clean Energy. Photo courtesy of Rhythm

Houston's Rhythm Energy expands nationally with clean power acquisition

power deal

Houston-based Rhythm Energy Inc. has acquired Inspire Clean Energy for an undisclosed amount. The deal allows Rhythm to immediately scale outside of Texas and into the Northeast, Midwest and mid-Atlantic regions, according to a release from the company.

Inspire offers subscription-based renewable electricity plans to customers in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. By combining forces, Rhythm will now be one of the largest independent green-energy retailers in the country.

“Adding Inspire to the Rhythm family gives us the geographic reach to serve millions of new customers with the highly rated customer experience Texans already enjoy,” PJ Popovic, CEO of Rhythm, said in the release. “Together we become one of the largest independent green-energy retailers in the country and can roll out innovations like our PowerShift Time-of-Use plan and device-enabled demand-response programs that put customers fully in control of their energy costs.”

Rhythm was founded by Popovic in 2020 and offers 100 percent renewable energy plans using solar power, wind power and other renewable power sources.

In addition to scaling geographically, the acquisition will "(marry) Rhythm's data-driven technology with Inspire's successful subscription model." Rhythm also plans to upgrade its digital tools and provide more advanced services to help lower clean energy costs, according to the release.

Popovic spoke with EnergyCapital in 2023 about where he thinks renewables fit into Texas’s energy consumption. Read more here.

Engie will supply up to 300 megawatts of wind power to New York-based Cipher Mining, which develops and operates large data centers for cryptocurrency mining. Photo via Getty Images.

Engie signs deal to supply wind power for Texas data center

wind deal

Houston-based Engie North America, which specializes in generating low-carbon power, has sealed a preliminary deal to supply wind power to a Cipher Mining data center in Texas.

Under the tentative agreement, Cipher could buy as much as 300 megawatts of clean energy from one of Engie’s wind projects. The financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

Cipher Mining develops and operates large data centers for cryptocurrency mining and high-performance computing.

In November, New York City-based Cipher said it bought a 250-acre site in West Texas for a data center with up to 100 megawatts of capacity. Cipher paid $4.1 million for the property.

“By pairing the data center with renewable energy, this strategic collaboration supports the use of surplus energy during periods of excess generation, while enhancing grid stability and reliability,” Engie said in a news release about the Cipher agreement.

The Engie-Cipher deal comes amid the need for more power in Texas due to several factors. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in October that data centers and cryptocurrency mining are driving up demand for power in the Lone Star State. Population growth is also putting pressure on the state’s energy supply.

Last year, Engie added 4.2 gigawatts of renewable energy capacity worldwide, bringing the total capacity to 46 gigawatts as of December 31. Also last year, Engie signed a new contract with Meta (Facebook's owner) and expanded its partnership with Google in the U.S. and Belgium.
Competing virtually against 145 teams from 34 countries, the students, known as The Dream Team, won third place for their plan to address energy poverty in Egypt and Turkey. Photo courtesy of UH

Houston university students earn top honors at global energy-poverty competition

dream team

A student-led team from the University of Houston and Texas A&M University took home top prizes at last month's Switch Energy Alliance Case Competition.

Competing virtually against 145 teams from 34 countries, the students, known as The Dream Team, won third place for their plan to address energy poverty in Egypt and Turkey. They were awarded $5,000 in prize money.

The competition challenges student teams to solve real-world energy problems to "drive progress towards a sustainable and equitable energy future," according to the Switch competition's website.

“The Switch competition tackles major issues that we often don’t think about on a daily basis in the United States, so it is a really interesting and tough challenge to solve,” Sarah Grace Kimberly, a senior finance major at UH and member of the team, said in a statement from the university

Kimberly was joined by Pranjal Sheth, a fellow senior finance major at UH, and Nathan Hazlett, a finance graduate student at TAMU with a bachelor’s degree in petroleum engineering.

The Dream Team developed a 10-year plan to address Egypt and Turkey's energy poverty that would create 200,000 jobs, reduce energy costs and improve energy access in rural areas. Its major components included:

  • Developing rooftop and utility-scale solar farms and solar canopies over irrigation canals
  • Expanding wind power capacity by taking advantage of high wind speeds in the Gulf of Suez and Western Desert
  • Deploying cost-efficient technologies along the Nile for rural electrification

“People in the United States should be extremely thankful for the infrastructure and systems that allow us to thrive with power, food and water,” Sheth said in the statement. “Texas went through Winter Storm Uri in 2021—people were without electricity for weeks, and lives were lost. It still comes up in conversations, but certain regions of the world, developing nations, live that experience almost every day. We need to make that a larger part of the conversation and work to help them.”

Team Quwa, a team of four students from the University of Texas at Austin, took home second place and $7,000 in prize money.

“This journey was both intellectually enriching and personally fulfilling,” Mohamed Awad, a PhD candidate at the Hildebrand Department of Petroleum and Geosystems Engineering, said in a statement from UT. “Through the case competition, we had an opportunity to contribute meaningful ideas to address a critical global issue.”

Team Energy Nexus from India earned the top prize and took home $10,000, according to a release from Switch.

Switch Energy Alliance is an Austin-based non-profit that's focused on energy education. The Switch competition began in 2020. Teams of three to four students create a presentation and 15-minute video. The top five teams present their case studies live and answer questions before a panel of judges.

More than 3,200 students from 55 countries have competed over the years. Click here to watch the 2024 final round.

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UH launches new series on AI’s impact on the energy sector

where to be

The University of Houston's Energy Transition Institute has launched a new Energy in Action Seminar Series that will feature talks focused on the intersection of the energy industry and digitization trends, such as AI.

The first event in the series took place earlier this month, featuring Raiford Smith, global market lead for power & energy for Google Cloud, who presented "AI, Energy, and Data Centers." The talk discussed the benefits of widespread AI adoption for growth in traditional and low-carbon energy resources.

Future events include:

“Through this timely and informative seminar series, ETI will bring together energy professionals, researchers, students, and anyone working in or around digital innovation in energy," Debalina Sengupta, chief operating officer of ETI, said in a news release. "We encourage industry members and students to register now and reap the benefits of participating in both the seminar and the reception, which presents a fantastic opportunity to stay ahead of industry developments and build a strong network in the Greater Houston energy ecosystem.”

The series is slated to continue throughout 2026. Each presentation is followed by a one-hour networking reception. Register for the next event here.

ExxonMobil pauses plans for $7B hydrogen plant in Baytown

project on pause

As anticipated, Spring-based oil and gas giant ExxonMobil has paused plans to build a low-hydrogen plant in Baytown, Chairman and CEO Darren Woods told Reuters.

“The suspension of the project, which had already experienced delays, reflects a wider slowdown in efforts by traditional oil and gas firms to transition to cleaner energy sources as many of the initiatives struggle to turn a profit,” Reuters reported.

Woods signaled during ExxonMobil’s second-quarter earnings call that the company was weighing whether it would move forward with the proposed $7 billion plant.

The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act established a 10-year incentive, the 45V tax credit, for production of clean hydrogen. But under President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the period for beginning construction of low-carbon hydrogen projects that qualify for the tax credit has been compressed. The Inflation Reduction Act called for construction to begin by 2033. The Big Beautiful Bill changed the construction start time to early 2028.

“While our project can meet this timeline, we’re concerned about the development of a broader market, which is critical to transition from government incentives,” Woods said during the earnings call.

Woods had said ExxonMobil was figuring out whether a combination of the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture projects and the revised 45V tax credit would enable a broader market for low-carbon hydrogen.

“If we can’t see an eventual path to a market-driven business, we won’t move forward with the [Baytown] project,” Woods told Wall Street analysts.

“We knew that helping to establish a brand-new product and a brand-new market initially driven by government policy would not be easy or advance in a straight line,” he added.

ExxonMobil announced in 2022 that it would build the low-carbon hydrogen plant at its refining and petrochemical complex in Baytown. The company had indicated the plant would start initial production in 2027.

ExxonMobil had said the Baytown plant would produce up to 1 billion cubic feet of hydrogen per day made from natural gas, and capture and store more than 98 percent of the associated carbon dioxide. The plant would have been capable of storing as much as 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year.

Greentown and partners name 10 startups to carbontech accelerator

new cohort

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 COâ‚‚ 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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