Houston is the ninth worst U.S. metro for ozone pollution, but the future isn't foggy. Electric vehicles can improve air quality by 50 percent. Getty Images

Let's clear the air about Houston's air pollution: A recent report from the American Lung Association ranks Houston the ninth worst U.S. metro area for ozone pollution and the 17th worst in the broad category of long-term particle pollution.

Yet the future might not be so cloudy for Houston's atmosphere.

A newly published study in the journal Atmospheric Environment indicates that replacing at least 35 percent of Houston's gas- and diesel-powered cars and trucks with electric vehicles by 2040 could improve air quality by 50 percent. And if electric vehicles replaced 75 percent of traditional cars and trucks by 2040, air quality could improve by 75 percent, according to the study.

This conversion to electric vehicles would enable residents of the Houston area to "breathe easier, live longer, and enjoy a better economy," the researchers say.

"The population in 2040 Houston will see a huge increase, but we can apply new technology to reduce emissions, improve air quality, and think about health," says one of the researchers, Shuai Pan, a postdoctoral associate in civil and environmental engineering at Cornell University.

Pan earned a doctoral degree in atmospheric science from the University of Houston in 2017.

Kevin Douglass, president of the Houston Electric Auto Association, tells InnovationMap that the study does a good job of emphasizing "the alarming situation that Houston is in with reference to its air quality and how electrification of the transportation system is a … way to improve the bad-air-quality situation."

The nonprofit Houston Electric Auto Association comprises EV owners, hobbyists, educators, and enthusiasts who promote the benefits of these vehicles.

Douglass says he's confident about the progression of the EV evolution in Houston.

"It only took a decade to go from horse-drawn carriage to automobile in the U.S.," he says. "One and a half decades from now, in 2035, at least half of the cars on the road will be electric. Thirty years from now, the vast majority of vehicles will be electric and autonomous."

Houston — which the nonprofit Smart Energy Consumer Collaborative praises as one of the 10 friendliest U.S. cities for EVs — already is on the road toward enhancing air quality by putting more electric vehicles (EVs) on the road. In fact, a 2018 report from the Environment Texas Research and Policy Center predicts the number of EVs in Houston will rise to 65,000 by 2030.

An estimated 9,500 EVs were being driven by Houston motorists in 2018, according to a presentation given in May by Michael Conklin, external engagement manager at Houston-based utility CenterPoint Energy. And by 2028, that number could reach 110,000, the presentation says.

"Electric cars aren't the future — they're already here, and they work," Douglass said in 2018. "As more people learn about them, they will enjoy owning and driving them."

Among Houston's highest-profile EV champions is Mayor Sylvester Turner, who's leading the charge to shift the city-owned fleet away from traditional vehicles and toward hybrids and EVs.

"Transportation is responsible for 48 percent of Houston's greenhouse gas emissions — the highest per capita of all U.S. cities — and something we must address to move our city forward," Turner, co-chair of the Climate Mayors organization, said in 2018.
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Houston team develops low-cost device to treat infants with life-threatening birth defect

infant innovation

A team of engineers and pediatric surgeons led by Rice University’s Rice360 Institute for Global Health Technologies has developed a cost-effective treatment for infants born with gastroschisis, a congenital condition in which intestines and other organs are developed outside of the body.

The condition can be life-threatening in economically disadvantaged regions without access to equipment.

The Rice-developed device, known as SimpleSilo, is “simple, low-cost and locally manufacturable,” according to the university. It consists of a saline bag, oxygen tubing and a commercially available heat sealer, while mimicking the function of commercial silo bags, which are used in high-income countries to protect exposed organs and gently return them into the abdominal cavity gradually.

Generally, a single-use bag can cost between $200 and $300. The alternatives that exist lack structure and require surgical sewing. This is where the SimpleSilo comes in.

“We focused on keeping the design as simple and functional as possible, while still being affordable,” Vanshika Jhonsa said in a news release. “Our hope is that health care providers around the world can adapt the SimpleSilo to their local supplies and specific needs.”

The study was published in the Journal of Pediatric Surgery, and Jhonsa, its first author, also won the 2023 American Pediatric Surgical Association Innovation Award for the project. She is a recent Rice alumna and is currently a medical student at UTHealth Houston.

Bindi Naik-Mathuria, a pediatric surgeon at UTMB Health, served as the corresponding author of the study. Rice undergraduates Shreya Jindal and Shriya Shah, along with Mary Seifu Tirfie, a current Rice360 Global Health Fellow, also worked on the project.

In laboratory tests, the device demonstrated a fluid leakage rate of just 0.02 milliliters per hour, which is comparable to commercial silo bags, and it withstood repeated disinfection while maintaining its structure. In a simulated in vitro test using cow intestines and a mock abdominal wall, SimpleSilo achieved a 50 percent reduction of the intestines into the simulated cavity over three days, also matching the performance of commercial silo bags. The team plans to conduct a formal clinical trial in East Africa.

“Gastroschisis has one of the biggest survival gaps from high-resource settings to low-resource settings, but it doesn’t have to be this way,” Meaghan Bond, lecturer and senior design engineer at Rice360, added in the news release. “We believe the SimpleSilo can help close the survival gap by making treatment accessible and affordable, even in resource-limited settings.”

Oxy's $1.3B Texas carbon capture facility on track to​ launch this year

gearing up

Houston-based Occidental Petroleum is gearing up to start removing CO2 from the atmosphere at its $1.3 billion direct air capture (DAC) project in the Midland-Odessa area.

Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call that the Stratos project — being developed by carbon capture and sequestration subsidiary 1PointFive — is on track to begin capturing CO2 later this year.

“We are immensely proud of the achievements to date and the exceptional record of safety performance as we advance towards commercial startup,” Hollub said of Stratos.

Carbon dioxide captured by Stratos will be stored underground or be used for enhanced oil recovery.

Oxy says Stratos is the world’s largest DAC facility. It’s designed to pull 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air and either store it underground or use it for enhanced oil recovery. Enhanced oil recovery extracts oil from unproductive reservoirs.

Most of the carbon credits that’ll be generated by Stratos through 2030 have already been sold to organizations such as Airbus, AT&T, All Nippon Airways, Amazon, the Houston Astros, the Houston Texans, JPMorgan, Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks and TD Bank.

The infrastructure business of investment manager BlackRock has pumped $550 million into Stratos through a joint venture with 1PointFive.

As it gears up to kick off operations at Stratos, Occidental is also in talks with XRG, the energy investment arm of the United Arab Emirates-owned Abu Dhabi National Oil Co., to form a joint venture for the development of a DAC facility in South Texas. Occidental has been awarded up to $650 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to build the South Texas DAC hub.

The South Texas project, to be located on the storied King Ranch, will be close to industrial facilities and energy infrastructure along the Gulf Coast. Initially, the roughly 165-square-mile site is expected to capture 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, with the potential to store up to 3 billion metric tons of CO2 per year.

“We believe that carbon capture and DAC, in particular, will be instrumental in shaping the future energy landscape,” Hollub said.

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This article originally appeared on our sister site, EnergyCapitalHTX.com.