Houston company focused on renewables sees high growth potential amid 'energy revolution'

seeing green

According to Houston-based ENGlobal, the company "has more promising opportunities for significant new business than at any time in [the] company's history." Photo via Getty Images

For Houston-based ENGlobal Corp., a provider of engineering and automation services geared toward the energy industry, renewable fuel facilities are a business pipeline gushing with opportunity.

ENGlobal's potential contracts for renewable fuels projects currently exceed $320 million, says Bill Coskey, the company's founder, president, and CEO. That's about six times the amount of ENGlobal's revenue through the first nine months of this year — $52.9 million.

During the company's third-quarter earnings call November 5, Coskey said publicly traded ENGlobal "has more promising opportunities for significant new business than at any time in our company's history."

Many of those opportunities stem from ENGlobal's shift a couple of years ago to a sharp focus on the renewable energy sector. This includes building utility-scale systems to store wind and solar power, and supplying modular engineered process plants for forms of energy like hydrogen and renewable diesel. Modular process plants consist of separately engineered and automated modules that are made off-site and assembled on-site.

"Manufacturing plants based on modular equipment are emerging as a viable and beneficial alternative to conventional stick-built processing plants. Modular equipment offers several benefits, including flexibility in plant siting, fewer safety concerns during construction, and ease of equipment modification," according to the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

ENGlobal is engineering and fabricating a modular hydrogen plant for a renewal diesel facility scheduled for completion in May. Incorporating proprietary technology from Denmark-based Haldor Topsoe (which has two offices and one plant in the Houston area), this hydrogen plant will consume about 20 percent less feed and fuel than conventional hydrogen plants, leading to lower operating costs and a smaller carbon footprint. It's the first facility of its kind in the U.S. This $25 million project falls into a bucket of modular process plants — valued at $10 million to $200 million each — that ENGlobal typically pursues.

ENGlobal's emphasis on renewable energy is paying off, especially now. That's because this sector is less susceptible to economic harm caused by the coronavirus pandemic and to the downturn in the oil and gas industry, according to Coskey.

"To the contrary, the green and renewable energy sector is driven by a different set of project economics — the majority of which play directly to our core strengths and capabilities," Coskey said during the November 5 earnings call.

ENGlobal comprises two business units that are capitalizing on those core strengths and capabilities:

  • Engineering, procurement, and construction management
  • Automation

Through September 26, the automation segment of the business accounted for 63 percent of the company's revenue this year, with engineering, procurement, and construction at 37 percent. In the third quarter, the balance was roughly 50-50.

For the nine-month period ended September 26, ENGlobal posted a 33 percent increase in revenue compared with the same period a year earlier. Revenue for the period rose 37 percent in the automation segment of the business and 27 percent in the engineering, procurement, and construction management segment.

Looking ahead, Coskey says plants like the one employing the Haldor Topsoe technology are "a big area of growth for us."

"We've built a business which is really vertically integrated. We can engineer and design, we can mechanically fabricate the processing modules, we can automate them, we can go onto the site and start them up. So we have full-service capabilities," Coskey says in an interview.

Those capabilities are helping ENGlobal, which Coskey started in 1985, capitalize on what he dubs the "energy revolution" in the U.S.

"Oil and gas has a long runway and is sometimes not given enough credit," he says. "But I can tell you that the capital spending for traditional oil and gas projects pretty much dried up during the course of this year. And we had to look for other sources of work for our people, so we were fortunate to have these renewable energy projects to work on."

Evercore ESI predicts capital spending on energy exploration and production in the U.S. will fall 43 percent this year compared with 2019. Meanwhile, S&P Global Market Intelligence forecasts $14.26 billion in capital spending this year on renewable energy by major U.S. utilities, up more than 20 percent from an earlier projection for 2020. The share of U.S. electricity generation from renewable energy is expected to increase from 18 percent in 2019 to 20 percent this year and 21 percent in 2021, the U.S. Energy Information Administration says.

"There's a lot of money that used to flow into oil and gas projects that now seems to be flowing into renewable energy projects," Coskey says. "We were lucky to identify that early and be positioned to capture some of that."

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

Houston founders launch edtech startup, pilot to pinpoint why students are struggling

learning gaps

Early detection. It sounds simple enough: identify a problem before it has the chance to become a bigger one.

But in practice, early detection is much more difficult to navigate, especially in education, when it comes to identifying the reasons behind a student's academic struggles.

That’s why co-founders Alapati “Al” Ware and Estela Montanez launched Progress Report, a Houston-built K-12 learning-intelligence platform designed to go beyond identifying that a student is struggling.

The platform recently began its pilot program with 35 educators and more than 200 students in Texas and Arizona.

“It’s a micro-learning school that works with children with disabilities, primarily dyslexia and nonverbal students,” Ware tells InnovationMap.

The platform is also being used by homeschool parents, home teachers and Houston educators, including those at SWPS College & Career Preparatory Academy, a Houston charter school.

Ware says Progress Report was designed to fill a gap he and Montanez saw in existing edtech. Some platforms cater almost entirely to students, leaving teachers with little insight into if and how a child is learning. Others focus heavily on district data, where “the student is just a number,” leaving teachers to navigate disconnected tools.

“Our goal was [to] focus purely on the teacher because the teacher is the backbone,” Ware says.

Progress Report traces student performance to learning gaps and prerequisite skills, helping educators understand not only where a student is struggling, but what may be causing it.

The platform then helps teachers build individualized instruction for general education students, students with special education and Individualized Education Program (IEP) needs, and Spanish-speaking learners—all within one educator-controlled system.

The goal is to reduce the guesswork and hours of manual work educators can spend developing individualized lesson plans.

Progress Report helps idenitify learning gaps and common roadblocks for each student. Image courtesy Progress Report

For Ware and Montanez, the mission is also personal.

The concept dates back to around 2023, when the co-founders first had to navigate and address their children’s educational needs.

Ware, Progress Report’s CEO and CTO with a background in edtech, built the platform end-to-end after watching his daughter, who had an IEP related to speech, struggle to get the support she needed.

Montanez, the company’s COO, brought another perspective. Her son is on the autism spectrum. She now leads Progress Report’s operations, partnerships and pilot execution while helping carry its focus on bilingual families from Puerto Rico to Houston.

Together, they began researching ways to personalize their children’s learning and help them progress academically. Montanez’s son went on to become an AP student and high school athlete, while Ware’s daughter began reading more than two grade levels above her grade, they tell InnovationMap.

But Progress Report isn’t designed simply to give a struggling student more work.

Take a student who appears to have difficulty with math.

The problem may not actually be math, the founders share. The student could understand the calculations but struggle to comprehend complex words used in a math problem.

Progress Report is designed to trace those performance patterns back to learning gaps, prerequisite skills or other instructional barriers. From there, it can recommend a next instructional step while leaving the educator in control.

The same concept applies to accommodations.

The system can read IEPs, 504 Plans, Present Levels of Academic Achievement and Functional Performance (PLAAFPs), evaluations and other special education records. Approved IEP goals can then be mapped into the student’s learning graph, while accommodations can carry over into lesson planning and question delivery.

The founders say that approach separates Progress Report from simply adding another artificial intelligence chatbot to a classroom. And still, they believe teachers have to remain at the center.

Teachers, in fact, helped build Progress Report.

The founders began meeting with Houston-area educators months before the pilot. Their feedback helped shape the platform before testing began.

“We’ve been building alongside these educators,” Ware says.

Parents are another piece.

Progress Report can give parents access to their child’s learning record so they can see learning gaps as they develop. Teachers can also see information on work being completed at home when the parent and educator are working together.

After the pilot wraps, Ware and Montanez plan to introduce a $29.99 monthly subscription for homeschool parents, teachers and other educators. They say the price was intentionally kept relatively low to help make the tools more accessible.

They are also exploring ways to work with organizations that could help families who can’t afford the platform.

Moving forward, the goal is considerably bigger.

Over the next five years, Ware and Montanez want Progress Report to become what they describe as a “gold standard” in every state. They know getting there will require building relationships with educators, technology leaders, policymakers and school board members.

For now, they’re starting with a few hundred students and a question that sounds simple but can be remarkably difficult to answer: Why is this student struggling?

If Progress Report works the way its founders envision, teachers and parents will have a clearer answer.

Pioneering cohousing development opens in Houston's historic 2nd Ward

Housing in Hou

An experimental, multi-generational building in the East End is now open and accepting residents. Only 10 of the 33 units remain available at East End Commons, the first project from CoHousing Houston.

Located at 115 Lenox, East End Commons was first conceived in 2017 and is designed to combine the security of home ownership with the community aspect of apartment life, essentially a condominium but with added focus on bringing neighbors together.

Units range from 900-2,000 square feet, offering ample private home space, but with a large Common House area and central courtyard for gatherings, working, and interaction. Large front porches encourage people to spend time outside where they can meet their neighbors, as do extensive foot paths for casual meetings.

"At East End Commons, you know your neighbors before you move in — so you have a network of people and spaces that are immediately there for you," said founding resident Kelli Soika. "We designed for larger shared spaces versus larger personal spaces in order to foster the breakdown of the barriers that lead to loneliness."

Combating loneliness and isolation is certainly necessary. A 2025 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association shows that most Americans feel a sense of societal division and lonely. A loss of "third spaces," where people gather outside the home or work, is a prime factor. East End Commons aims to alleviate some of that disconnectedness.

"I wanted to live in a neighborhood that is imbued with a sense of community above the individual, like we have all experienced in Houston during times of disaster recovery," said Lynn Morstead, one of East End Commons‘ founding residents. "In those instances, such as Hurricane Harvey, we surface from our separateness and come together in new and unexpected ways. With East End Commons, the goal is to translate that notion beyond a set period of time and make it a fixture of everyday life. I call it 'disaster-free neighborliness.'"

East End Commons was designed by Kathleen English of English + Associates. Sustainability is part of the project's design, with amenities such as geothermal heating and cooling exchange HVAC, pre-heated water systems, low-energy use air conditioning and heating, and native landscaping.

Prices for units range from $300,000 to the $900,000s, which can be more than double the home price in the rapidly gentrifying East End. HOA fees not only help maintain communal areas, they also cover shared internet, water, and other communal expenses. Similarly, government of the building is handled democratically via a community board that aims to make decisions by building consensus.

For more information, email info@cohousinghouston.com or call 832-900-2919.

MD Anderson president to retire after nine years, interim successor named

retirement plan

An era is ending at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.

On Aug. 26, Dr. Peter WT Pisters announced his plans to retire from his role as president of the comprehensive cancer center. He will work on a smooth transition of leadership with interim president Dr. Jeffrey E. Lee throughout September.

“I first arrived at UT MD Anderson 32 years ago with a passion for doing everything I could to advance our mission to end cancer. Serving as the only faculty member to become president, and now marking nine years in the role, I can say with great pride and gratitude that there is no better place than UT MD Anderson to turn hope into healing for patients and families everywhere,” Pisters said in a news release. “With a timeless strategy, a strong leadership team, unprecedented levels of financial health, and a priceless culture anchored in our deeply held Core Values, now is the right time for me to transition to other opportunities. UT MD Anderson has never been stronger, and its future has never been brighter.”

Pisters assumed the presidency in 2017 and helped launch some of the most cutting-edge new clinics in MD Anderson history. One of those was the James P. Allison Institute, named for the Nobel Laureate scientist who discovered a way to suppress immune response on tumors so that immune cells would attack cancer cells instead. As head of his titular clinic, Allison pioneered several new immunotherapies against cancer.

Pisters also oversaw the creation of the Institute for Data Science in Oncology in 2024, an innovative consortium of scientists dedicated to enhancing single-cell imaging to improve precision in cancer treatments. The institute also brought together teams to use data-driven analytics regarding safety, quality and access.

The UT System Board of Regents praised the leadership and work of Pisters in a statement, wishing him well in the next phase of his career.

“The Board of Regents and I are profoundly grateful to Dr. Pisters for his exceptional presidency over the past nine years and for thoughtfully concluding his service when UT MD Anderson is thriving at its best position of peak performance, strength and impact. We wish him our very best with his retirement and in his next chapter,” Kevin P. Eltife, chairman of the UT System Board of Regents, added in the release.

View All Listings