Houston energy entrepreneur recognized for 2 leadership awards

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Craig Taylor has been named 2022 Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year by the Rice Business Veterans Association and has made it to the finals for EY's Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022. Photo courtesy of Iapetus

Houston’s Craig Taylor is basking in the entrepreneurial spotlight.

On May 10, Taylor, founder and CEO of Houston-based Iapetus Holdings, and Tejpal Singh, co-founder and chief operating officer, were named Entrepreneur Of The Year 2022 finalists in the program’s Central South region. That region includes the Houston area. Professional services giant Ernest & Young sponsors the program.

Meanwhile, Taylor last month was named 2022 Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year by the Rice Business Veterans Association at Rice University’s Jones Graduate School of Business.

Iapetus Holdings is a minority- and veteran-owned portfolio of eight self-funded, multimillion-dollar companies in the energy sector.

“When you set off to become a self-funded entrepreneur, you start with a vision and a ton of grit, but you never really have assurance of the fact that you’re going to be successful,” Taylor says in a news release. “The road to business success takes many turns and that’s why, to find ourselves among those honored with this distinction, to be among the EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalists, is so meaningful.”

Singh says he and Taylor “have much greater ambitions” for Iapetus as well as Atlas Scholars, the nonprofit they launched to provide internships and scholarships to high school students.

“It has taken a ton of dedication and effort to realize our ambition of building this group of energy solutions businesses, creating this number of jobs, serving this quantity and quality of clients,” Singh says.

Regional Entrepreneur Of The Year winners will be announced June 23.

The Entrepreneur Of The Year nod follows Taylor’s acceptance April 23 of Rice’s Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year honor.

Navy veteran Charles “Reid” Schrodel, an officer with Rice Business Veterans Association, says Taylor was chosen for the honor because of his success in business and philanthropy.

“For the Veteran Entrepreneur of the Year award, “we were looking for veteran entrepreneurs that are successful in their field, and we wanted to find a vet entrepreneur whose organization also gave back to their communities,” Schrodel says.

Taylor received the award during the Rice Veterans Business Battle competition. He and Alex Danielides, head of business development at Iapetus Holdings, were judges for the competition. In the competition, 16 early stage companies vied for funding. The 2022 winners were Libre, Opera Bioscience, and Bonappesweet.

In a news release, Taylor notes that veterans who own businesses face an array of challenges.

“Being an entrepreneur is not easy, but the Navy instilled in me a strong sense of responsibility and grit, which are critical characteristics of a successful entrepreneur,” he says.

Businesses under the Iapetus umbrella are:

  • Atlas Commodities, a commodity brokerage firm.
  • Atlas Field Services, which provides safety inspections and audits for energy providers.
  • Atlas Retail Energy, a provider of energy management services for commercial and industrial customers.
  • Gold Coast Utility Specialists, which provides risk management services for energy suppliers.
  • Hyperion Safety Environmental Solutions, whose services include safety programming and environmental planning.
  • Iapetus Infrastructure Services, which encompasses five of the holding company’s eight subsidiaries.
  • Soaring Eagle Technologies, a provider of mapping services.
  • UATI (Unmanned Aviation Training Institute), which trains drone operators.

Collectively, annual revenue for the eight subsidiaries is around $100 million.

“Our customers rely on Iapetus employees who are innovating and are making a difference on the most critical issues of our times. We’re affecting everything from energy security to sustainability to infrastructure reliability, and we do so as a cohesive group of diverse perspectives working toward common goals,” Taylor said in a 2021 news release.

“Our companies are working closely with utilities on strategies to help prevent risks, plan vegetation management, keep the lights on and employees safe,” he added. “We’re also helping commercial and industrial clients procure energy efficiently and sustainably, while providing international energy trade brokerage services in this intense-demand landscape.”

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The promotion of drones helps the city of Houston transition to becoming the energy 2.0 capital of the world, says this expert. Photo courtesy

Houston expert shares how developing drone technology can make an impact across industries

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The state of Texas, as well as the rest of the nation, has been intensely impacted by the effects of climate change as well as aging utility infrastructure. Innovative drone technologies help address the pressing inspection and mapping needs of utilities and other critical infrastructure across the country, primarily bridges and roads, railways, pipelines, and powerplants.

There is a significant need for high-precision inspection services in today's market. Additional work will result if the proposed infrastructure bill passes. The bill has $73 billion earmarked toward modernizing the nation's electricity grid. Drone —or UAS (unmanned aerial systems)— technological advances, including thermal imaging, LiDAR (light detection and ranging), IRR (infrared radiation and remote sensing), and AI/ML (artificial intelligence/machine learning) are applied toward determining and predicting trends and are instrumental toward making our country safer.

"The newest advances in drone technology are not so much in the drones themselves, but rather, in the sensors and cameras, such as thermal cameras. Technologies such as LiDAR are now more cost-effective. The newer sensors permit the drones to operate in tighter spaces and cover more acreage in less time, with higher accuracy and fidelity", according to Will Paden, president of Soaring Eagle Technologies, a Houston-based tech-enabled imaging company servicing utility and energy companies.

Paden anticipates growth in the use of the technology for critical infrastructure including utilities, pipelines, power plants, bridges, buildings, railways, and more, for routine and post-storm inspections

"[Soaring Eagle's] ability to harness UAS technology to efficiently retrieve field data across our 8,000+ square mile area is unprecedented. Coupling this data with post-processing methods such as asset digitization unlocked a plethora of opportunities to visualize system resources and further analyze the surrounding terrain and environment," says Paige Richardson, GIS specialist with Navopache Electric Cooperative. "Our engineering and operations departments now have the ability to view 3D substation models, abstract high-resolution digital evaluation models, and apply these newfound resources as they work on future construction projects."

The promotion of drones helps the city of Houston transition to becoming the energy 2.0 capital of the world. The UAS (unmanned aerial systems) technology offers an environmentally cleaner option for routine and post-storm inspections, replacing the use of fossil fuels consumed by helicopters. The use of drones versus traditional inspection systems is significantly safer, more efficient and accurate than traditional alternatives such as scaffolding or bucket trucks. Mapping and inspection work can be done at much lower costs than with manned aircraft operations. These are highly technical flights, where the focus on safety and experience flying both manned and unmanned aircraft, is paramount.

There is much work ahead in high-tech drone technology services, especially for companies vetted by the FAA with high safety standards. According to one study, the overall drone inspection & monitoring market is projected to grow from USD 9.1 billion in 2021 to USD 33.6 billion by 2030, at a CAGR of 15.7 percent from 2021 to 2030. North America is estimated to account for the largest share of the drone inspection & monitoring market from 2021 to 2030.

Paden predicts the use of machine learning/artificial intelligence (ML/AI) and data automation will continue to improve over the next 3-5 years, as more data is collected and analyzed and the technology is a applied to "teach it" to detect patterns and anomalies. He anticipates ML/AI will filter out the amount of data the end users will need to view to make decisions saving time and money for the end users.

Learn more at the Energy Drone & Robotics Summit taking place in The Woodlands on October 25 through October 27.

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Alex Danielides is head of business development for Houston-based Iapetus Holdings, a privately held, minority and veteran-owned portfolio of energy and utility services businesses. One of the companies is Soaring Eagle Technologies.

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MD Anderson launches $10M collaboration to advance personalized cancer treatment tech

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The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and Japan’s TOPPAN Holdings Inc. have announced a strategic collaboration to co-develop TOPPAN Holdings’ 3D cell culture, or organoid, technology known as invivoid.

The technology will be used as a tool for personalized cancer treatments and drug screening efforts, according to a release from MD Anderson. TOPPAN has committed $10 million over five years to advance the joint research activities.

“The strategic alliance with MD Anderson paves a promising path toward personalized cancer medicine," Hiroshi Asada, head of the Business Innovation Center at TOPPAN Holdings, said in a news release.

Invivoid is capable of establishing organoid models directly from patient biopsies or other tissues in a way that is faster and more efficient. Researchers may be able to test a variety of potential treatments in the laboratory to understand which approach may work best for the patient, if validated clinically.

“Organoids allow us to model the three-dimensional complexity of human cancers in the lab, thus allowing us to engineer a powerful translational engine—one that could not only predict how patients will respond to therapy before treatment begins but also could help to reimagine how we discover and validate next-generation therapies," Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of pathology and laboratory medicine at MD Anderson, added in the news release. “Through this collaboration, we hope to make meaningful progress in modeling cancer biology for therapeutic innovation.”

The collaboration will build upon preclinical research previously conducted by MD Anderson and TOPPAN. The organizations will work collaboratively to obtain College of American Pathologists (CAP) and Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) certifications for the technology, which demonstrate a commitment to high-quality patient care. Once the certifications are obtained, they plan to conduct observational clinical studies and then prospective clinical studies.

“We believe our proprietary invivoid 3D cell culture technology, by enabling the rapid establishment of organoid models directly from patient biopsies, has strong potential to help identify more effective treatment options and reduce the likelihood of unnecessary therapies,” Asada added in the release. “Through collaboration on CAP/CLIA certification and clinical validation, we aim to bring this innovation closer to real-world patient care and contribute meaningfully to the advancement of cancer medicine."

NASA taps Houston-area company to explore low-cost spacecraft delivery

Webster-based Arrow Science and Technology is one of six companies picked by NASA to study low-cost ways to launch and deliver spacecraft for difficult-to-reach orbits.

In all, nine studies will be performed under a roughly $1.4 million award from NASA. Another Texas company, Cedar Park-based Firefly Aerospace, is also among the six companies working on the studies.

“With the increasing maturity of commercial space delivery capabilities, we’re asking companies to demonstrate how they can meet NASA’s need for multispacecraft and multiorbit delivery to difficult-to-reach orbits beyond current launch service offerings,” Joe Dant, a leader of the Launch Services Program at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, said in a news release. “This will increase unique science capability and lower the agency’s overall mission costs.”

Arrow is teaming up with Rockville, Maryland-based Quantum Space for its study. Quantum’s Ranger orbital transfer vehicle provides payload delivery services for spacecraft heading to low-Earth and lunar orbits.

Arrow, a Native American-owned small business, offers technical support and hardware manufacturing services for the space and defense industries.

James Baker, founder and president of Arrow, said in a news release that the combination of his company’s deployment systems with Quantum’s Ranger vehicle “allows our customers the ability to focus on the development of their payload[s] while we take care of getting them where they need to be.”

“This is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate the unique capabilities of our highly maneuverable Ranger spacecraft, which will expand NASA’s options for reaching dynamic and challenging … orbits,” Kerry Wisnosky, CEO of Quantum Space, added in the release.

The nine studies are scheduled to be completed by mid-September.

NASA said it will use the studies’ findings “to inform mission design, planning, and commercial launch acquisition strategies for risk-tolerant payloads, with a possibility of expanding delivery services to larger-sized payloads and to less risk-tolerant missions in the future.”

ExxonMobil may pause plans for $7 billion Baytown hydrogen plant

Change of Plans

Spring-based ExxonMobil, the country’s largest oil and gas company, might delay or cancel what would be the world’s largest low-carbon hydrogen plant due to a significant change in federal law. The project carries a $7 billion price tag.

The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act created a new 10-year incentive, the 45V tax credit, for production of clean hydrogen. But under President Trump’s "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," the window for starting construction of low-carbon hydrogen projects that qualify for the tax credit has narrowed. The Inflation Reduction Act mandated that construction start by 2033. But the Big Beautiful Bill switched 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,” ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods said during the company’s recent second-quarter earnings call.

Woods said ExxonMobil is working to determine whether a combination of the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture projects and the revised 45V tax credit will help pave the way for a “broader” low-carbon hydrogen market.

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

“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.

Woods said ExxonMobil is trying to nail down sales contracts connected to the project, including exports of ammonia to Asia and Europe and sales of hydrogen in the U.S.

ExxonMobil announced in 2022 that it would build the low-carbon hydrogen plant at its refining and petrochemical complex in Baytown. The company has said the plant is slated to go online in 2027 and 2028.

As it stands now, ExxonMobil wants the Baytown plant to 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 company has said the project could store as much as 10 million metric tons of CO2 per year.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapitalHTX.com.

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