"Companies and stakeholders across the energy spectrum need to act together and act fast." Photo via Getty Images

Houston is home to some of the nation's largest oil and gas exploration and production firms, making it one of the world’s most important energy capitals. Growing regional support for pioneering clean tech, such as carbon capture, will help achieve the crucial transition to net zero whilst maintaining economic stability, boosting local industries and creating jobs.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), North America and Asia Pacific are expected to hold the largest share in carbon capture capacity. North America’s world-leading carbon capture potential comes as no surprise given the nation’s dominance in oil and gas, and ideal geology for sequestration.

The IEA’s recently published World Energy Outlook 2023 depicts a global market that is in transition. With more companies, world leaders and governments recognizing that a shift towards sustainable energy is both inevitable and transformative, the question is no longer whether we switch to clean energy, but rather how soon the transition can happen.

For every $1 in investment spending on fossil fuels globally, $1.8 is now being spent to develop clean energy, according to the IEA. Although the clean energy market has almost doubled in the past five years to reach an estimated $2.8 trillion in 2023, investment needs to hit $4.2 trillion per year by 2030 to achieve the universally shared goal of net zero. The IEA believes around 1 Gigaton of CO2 must be captured in 2030, rising to 6 Gigatons by 2050 to achieve the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario (termed NZE Scenario). This presents a tremendous opportunity for government stakeholders and the business community in Houston to turbocharge the economy and protect the planet from the impact of climate change.

While volatility around the energy market lingers, sustainable technologies remain one of the most dynamic areas of global energy investment. An essential ingredient to its success is bringing on board innovators, entrepreneurs, corporations, and financiers to ensure technology innovation is front and center in facilitating the clean energy transition.

Carbon capture technology is critical, but energy leaders and hard-to-abate industries are under pressure to move faster. To do that, the carbon capture industry must scale up its deployment and increase adoption if hard-to-abate sectors are to address the 30 percent of global CO2 emissions for which they are responsible. Governments have a pivotal role to play in providing financial, regulatory and policy incentives, facilitating a collaborative environment between financiers, hard-to-abate operators, and clean tech companies. While we are moving in the right direction, there is no room for complacency or procrastination given the short timescales for meaningful action.

Over the past several years, Carbon Clean, a global company that is revolutionizing carbon capture, has enjoyed significant expansion in North America. Following the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in August 2022, we saw huge interest in our modular industrial carbon capture technology almost overnight, resulting in a 64 percent increase in inquiries from the U.S. To meet this booming demand, we have opened a U.S. headquarters in Houston, and have plans to double our U.S. headcount to meet industry requirements for our scalable and cost-effective technology, CycloneCC. In short, the United States is poised to become our biggest market. Given our latest lead investor and partner is Houston-based Chevron New Energies, there is no better place than Houston to drive innovation in the country’s energy sector.

The IRA did more than just bring in new inquiries for our breakthrough technology – it also signaled to the energy sector that the federal government is getting serious about bringing emissions down. The impact of the IRA cannot be overstated, especially for the point-source carbon capture technology pioneered by Carbon Clean. While the IRA involves billions of dollars of public investment, it is set up in such a way that companies must make substantial investments first, acting as a down payment on fostering jobs and ensuring the business community is delivering ambitious climate action. The benefits are being felt locally as well – cities like Houston are at the forefront of what the IRA has to offer, taking advantage of these investments and reducing emissions.

Companies and stakeholders across the energy spectrum need to act together and act fast. With the dramatic growth required for carbon capture to have full effect, it will be essential for government, industry, and innovators to join together to concentrate on a number of projects and clusters. We are confident that with new cutting-edge technology and broad collaboration we can rapidly get the world on the right path to net zero.

———

Prateek Bumb is CTO and co-founder of Carbon Clean and the principal innovator of Carbon Clean’s industrial carbon capture technologies.

This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.
Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Intel Corp. and Rice University sign research access agreement

innovation access

Rice University’s Office of Technology Transfer has signed a subscription agreement with California-based Intel Corp., giving the global company access to Rice’s research portfolio and the opportunity to license select patented innovations.

“By partnering with Intel, we are creating opportunities for our research to make a tangible impact in the technology sector,” Patricia Stepp, assistant vice president for technology transfer, said in a news release.

Intel will pay Rice an annual subscription fee to secure the option to evaluate specified Rice-patented technologies, according to the agreement. If Intel chooses to exercise its option rights, it can obtain a license for each selected technology at a fee.

Rice has been a hub for innovation and technology with initiatives like the Rice Biotech Launch Pad, an accelerator focused on expediting the translation of the university’s health and medical technology; RBL LLC, a biotech venture studio in the Texas Medical Center’s Helix Park dedicated to commercializing lifesaving medical technologies from the Launch Pad; and Rice Nexus, an AI-focused "innovation factory" at the Ion.

The university has also inked partnerships with other tech giants in recent months. Rice's OpenStax, a provider of affordable instructional technologies and one of the world’s largest publishers of open educational resources, partnered with Microsoft this summer. Google Public Sector has also teamed up with Rice to launch the Rice AI Venture Accelerator, or RAVA.

“This agreement exemplifies Rice University’s dedication to fostering innovation and accelerating the commercialization of groundbreaking research,” Stepp added in the news release.

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.”