Q&A

Energy transition in Houston is going to 'take time and be hard'

Wogbe Ofori, founder and chief strategist of WRX Companies, joins the Houston Innovators Podcast to discuss hardtech and Houston as an energy transition city. Photo via LinkedIn

The energy transition has momentum, according to Wogbe Ofori. But there's still a ways to go.

Ofori, the founder and chief strategist of WRX Companies, is an adviser to Nauticus Robotics and strategist to Intuitive Machines and Jacobs, he's also served as a mentor across the local innovation community. He's narrowed in on hardtech and has has gotten a front-row seat to observing what's happening in Houston amid the energy transition, as he explains on this week's episode of the Houston Innovators Podcast.

Listen to the episode and read an excerpt below.

EnergyCapital: Looking back on some of the recent trends of the energy transition, what have you observed?

Wogbe Ofori: The energy transition has been something that — through the last hype cycle that started in the second half of 2020 and lasted until the first quarter of 2022 — was part of that momentum along with Web3. Now, the energy transition is continued as Web3 has fallen off a cliff and now been replaced by AI, but the energy transition is continued. Where I think moving into the next major stage where now it’s time for them to actually be proven out. And these things are hard and take time to be proven out and these technologies to mature. Then for the products and services that are derived from them, to really find the right place within the market and the right use cases. The idea that there is some sort of silver bullet — whether it be hydrogen or something else — that's going to solve the problem for all use cases is completely unrealistic. The issue is that a lot of folks especially the big energy players — the O&G majors here — they know that.

EC: So, what does this next stage look like?

WO: Now we're moving into what I think is a really interesting period where it's going to be, “well do we really have the legs for this race?” Because we sprinted, and everybody got really excited. Now you starting to hear, “well you know some investors are a little worried that cleantech 2.0 might suffer some of the same fate as cleantech 1.0.” How do we avoid that? Will investors have the patience to continue to make investments into energy transition plays for the longer term, because we’re going to need that to make these transitions. It's not going to happen overnight.

EC: Where does Houston come in on all this?

WO: Well the other big question that’s being asked around is, “Can Houston actually lead this?” It's difficult for an incumbent to disrupt itself. We’ve been positioning ourselves as moving from the energy capital of the world to the energy transition capital. I'm all for it, and I'm 100 percent behind it. Now we are just at the place where we're really going to start to see the difference between those who were caught up in the excitement of the energy transition, and those who really have the faith to see this thing through. The ones who do have the faith to see this through are going to create some fantastic companies that are going to create real value and that will materially change the way we live. But it’s going to take time and be hard.

Trending News

A View From HETI

Researchers from Rice University say their recent findings could revolutionize power grids, making energy transmission more efficient. Image via Getty Images.

A new study from researchers at Rice University, published in Nature Communications, could lead to future advances in superconductors with the potential to transform energy use.

The study revealed that electrons in strange metals, which exhibit unusual resistance to electricity and behave strangely at low temperatures, become more entangled at a specific tipping point, shedding new light on these materials.

A team led by Rice’s Qimiao Si, the Harry C. and Olga K. Wiess Professor of Physics and Astronomy, used quantum Fisher information (QFI), a concept from quantum metrology, to measure how electron interactions evolve under extreme conditions. The research team also included Rice’s Yuan Fang, Yiming Wang, Mounica Mahankali and Lei Chen along with Haoyu Hu of the Donostia International Physics Center and Silke Paschen of the Vienna University of Technology. Their work showed that the quantum phenomenon of electron entanglement peaks at a quantum critical point, which is the transition between two states of matter.

“Our findings reveal that strange metals exhibit a unique entanglement pattern, which offers a new lens to understand their exotic behavior,” Si said in a news release. “By leveraging quantum information theory, we are uncovering deep quantum correlations that were previously inaccessible.”

The researchers examined a theoretical framework known as the Kondo lattice, which explains how magnetic moments interact with surrounding electrons. At a critical transition point, these interactions intensify to the extent that the quasiparticles—key to understanding electrical behavior—disappear. Using QFI, the team traced this loss of quasiparticles to the growing entanglement of electron spins, which peaks precisely at the quantum critical point.

In terms of future use, the materials share a close connection with high-temperature superconductors, which have the potential to transmit electricity without energy loss, according to the researchers. By unblocking their properties, researchers believe this could revolutionize power grids and make energy transmission more efficient.

The team also found that quantum information tools can be applied to other “exotic materials” and quantum technologies.

“By integrating quantum information science with condensed matter physics, we are pivoting in a new direction in materials research,” Si said in the release.

Trending News