seeing green
Houston energy tech company launches B2B carbon footprint calculator
Houston-area energy tech startup Syzygy Plasmonics is helping businesses and other organizations get a handle on greenhouse gas emissions.
Syzygy just released a free online tool at CarbonModel.com that enables users to calculate the greenhouse gas emissions and emission-reduction costs in as little as 60 seconds. It’s a more straightforward way of making those calculations than is offered by Argonne National Laboratory’s Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Technologies (GREET) model, the startup says.
Syzygy says it created the tool in light of heightened interest surrounding clean hydrogen. The recently passed federal Inflation Reduction Act includes tax credits for clean hydrogen projects.
“New and existing hydrogen producers, consumers, and project developers are actively seeking to identify and quantify the impacts that the tax credits will have on project economics and feasibility,” Syzygy says in a news release.
Syzygy co-founder and CEO Trevor Best calls the Inflation Reduction Act “a major tailwind” for energy transition and hydrogen adoption.
“Existing hydrogen producers now have the fiscal support needed to sanction new projects. And companies that had been mulling hydrogen as a new business are incentivized to move more quickly,” Best says. “Both existing and new entrants in the hydrogen market want to know if their hydrogen is clean enough to qualify for [Inflation Reduction Act] tax credits.”
Murtuza Marfani, vice president of finance and corporate development at Syzygy, says tools like GREET are “demanding and complex” when it comes to figuring out tax credits for clean hydrogen projects.
“CarbonModel.com simplifies early-stage analysis,” Marfani says. “We see it contributing to the momentum from the [Inflation Reduction Act] by enabling organizations to quickly assess project viability. It will also help them address any gaps in knowledge before committing to full-project modeling.”
CarbonModel.com currently focuses on hydrogen production, but Syzygy says future versions will provide cost and carbon footprint assessments for ammonia, e-fuels, and other chemicals.
Syzygy has developed reactor technology that uses light from ultra-high-efficiency LEDs to power chemical reactions, eliminating the traditional method of producing hydrogen with heat from burning fuel.
In May, Syzygy said it was relocating its headquarters from 9000 Kirby Dr. in Houston to Pearland. It’s leasing a 44,800-square-foot building in Pearland for its headquarters, R&D operations, and manufacturing facilities. The new facility is at 3250 S. Sam Houston Pkwy.
Founded in 2017, Syzygy has created technology that generates clean hydrogen from various feedstocks. Syzygy’s technology is based on an area of science known as photocatalysis, which uses light from LEDs driven by renewable electricity to conduct chemical reactions. The technology can electrify the production of chemicals such as hydrogen, liquid fuels, and fertilizer.
In 2021, the company — whose technology is based on Rice University research — raised $23 million in series B funding. Syzygy has collected a total of $30 million, according to Crunchbase.
