City of Houston joins forces with nonprofit to launch a citywide solar co-op

Climate action

Houstonians can now opt into a citywide solar co-op. Photo courtesy of Houston Mayor's Office

One year ago, the city of Houston announced its Climate Action Plan and its goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. This year, the city has another Earth Day announcement that builds upon CAP.

Mayor Sylvester Turner and solar nonprofit group, Solar United Neighbors, announced a citywide solar co-op on Earth Day — exactly one year since CAP launched. For an update on the plan's execution in Houston, click here for a report from the Kinder Institute for Urban Research.

"As we celebrate Earth Day, I'm proud to welcome this community-driven initiative for local rooftop solar and thank Solar United Neighbors for being such a strong supporter of the Houston Climate Action Plan," says Mayor Turner in a news release. "I encourage Houstonians to take full advantage of this opportunity to learn more about the benefits of residential solar and how they can take part. Bulk buy programs like this will help our city meet our energy transition goals and grow local investment in renewable and resilient energy."

SUN is familiar with Houston, and, since 2018, the nonprofit has hosted six neighborhood solar co-ops in Spring Branch, Lake Olympia, East Houston, Central Houston, the Woodlands, and West Houston. According to SUN, Texas solar co-ops provide 569 kW of solar power, $1.64 million in local economic investment, and more than 18.4 million pounds of lifetime carbon offsets.

"The co-op will enable homeowners and business owners in and around the city of Houston to join the growing community of people taking control of their energy bills and improving grid resilience by harnessing solar power," says Hanna Mitchell, Texas program director for SUN, in the release. "Together, we're building a movement to transform our electricity system into one that is cleaner, fairer, and shares its benefits more broadly."

Data from Environment Texas shows that Houston's installed solar capacity has quadrupled from 2018 to 2020, and Houston is the nation's largest municipal user of renewable energy in the United States, according to the release. Additionally, Houston Permitting Center saw a 63 percent increase in solar installation permits from 2019 to 2020.

For more information on the co-op, visit SUN's Houston website. Or, sign up for one of the two information sessions on Thursday, May 6, at 6:30 pm, or Wednesday, May 19, at noon.

A national solar energy organization is expanding in Houston to promote affordable sustainability. Getty Images

Solar energy co-op shines light on sustainability for Houston-area residents

join the club

A nationwide nonprofit organization that focuses on promoting and educating on the use of solar energy, has chosen a local solar installer business for its West Houston co-op.

Solar United Neighbors, also known as SUN, was established in 2007 to represent the interests and needs of solar owners and those interested in going solar. The nonprofit has already helped more than 4,600 solar owners with over 35,000 kW installed. SUN is currently active in the Houston area with two co-ops formed.

The West Houston co-op, which opened in January of 2020, is open to residents and small businesses from Brookshire to Memorial City and Richmond. The co-op will be open to new members until July 31st. However, members have already chosen a local business, Sunshine Renewable Solutions to install solar panels for the group.

"It is an honor to be selected because we know how thoroughly the co-op reviewed each bid," says Sid Chandrashekar, vice president of sales and operations for Sunshine Renewable Solutions. "SUN's mission is aligned with ours when it comes to education efforts for solar energy, they use a community approach that is really informative to anybody that is interested in solar, and that's how we see ourselves more as educators and consultants."

Hanna Mitchell, the Texas Program Director for Solar United Neighbors says a co-op is a great way to reduce costs for local citizens looking to go solar. The co-op is free to join and there is no commitment to purchase panels.

"Through our education programs and events we hope to demystify the process of going solar," says Mitchell. "There is never any pressure to go forward with the installation, our main goal is to provide access to information so our members can make informed energy choices."

The West Houston co-op committee members chose Sunshine Renewable Solutions from seven other installers that put in a bid. Solar co-op members selected the local installer for their competitive pricing, battery options, and workmanship warranty.

Co-op member Joseph Garfunkel served on the committee who volunteered to review bids and choose an installer. Initially, he joined to learn more about the process to get solar in his home.

"I joined the West Houston Solar Co-op to learn more about the process for installing solar at my house, and to also to get an idea of the cost," says Garfunkel. "The solar co-op has been very helpful in providing webinars and other information describing the entire process."

The experts at SUN were able to hold events to further educate the members of the West Houston co-op of the benefits of solar investment, even after the rise of the coronavirus pandemic moved gatherings to virtual events.

Garfunkel, along with fellow residents of the committee, was able to select the best candidate among those who presented a bid.

"I found that our discussion during that process was extremely helpful," says Garfunkel. "We were able to in better understand the features being offered by the different vendors, as well as the different costs and options that are available."

Sunshine Renewable Solutions, for their part, says they are thrilled to have been chosen from the other solar installers that were in the competition.

"We've worked hard to build our reputation and spread the love of clean energy and energy independence in the Houston area," says Chandrashekar. "We are ecstatic to help more people go solar by providing them with amazing customer experience at an incredibly low cost."

Those interested in joining the West Houston co-op will be presented with an individualized proposal based on the group rate, which leads to a significant number of dollars saved on the cost.

SUN will be recruiting more members for its East Houston co-op that will close at the end of August.

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MD Anderson makes AI partnership to advance precision oncology

AI Oncology

Few experts will disagree that data-driven medicine is one of the most certain ways forward for our health. However, actually adopting it comes at a steep curve. But what if using the technology were democratized?

This is the question that SOPHiA GENETICS has been seeking to answer since 2011 with its universal AI platform, SOPHiA DDM. The cloud-native system analyzes and interprets complex health care data across technologies and institutions, allowing hospitals and clinicians to gain clinically actionable insights faster and at scale.

The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has just announced its official collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS to accelerate breakthroughs in precision oncology. Together, they are developing a novel sequencing oncology test, as well as creating several programs targeted at the research and development of additional technology.

That technology will allow the hospital to develop new ways to chart the growth and changes of tumors in real time, pick the best clinical trials and medications for patients and make genomic testing more reliable. Shashikant Kulkarni, deputy division head for Molecular Pathology, and Dr. J. Bryan, assistant professor, will lead the collaboration on MD Anderson’s end.

“Cancer research has evolved rapidly, and we have more health data available than ever before. Our collaboration with SOPHiA GENETICS reflects how our lab is evolving and integrating advanced analytics and AI to better interpret complex molecular information,” Dr. Donna Hansel, division head of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at MD Anderson, said in a press release. “This collaboration will expand our ability to translate high-dimensional data into insights that can meaningfully advance research and precision oncology.”

SOPHiA GENETICS is based in Switzerland and France, and has its U.S. offices in Boston.

“This collaboration with MD Anderson amplifies our shared ambition to push the boundaries of what is possible in cancer research,” Dr. Philippe Menu, chief product officer and chief medical officer at SOPHiA GENETICS, added in the release. “With SOPHiA DDM as a unifying analytical layer, we are enabling new discoveries, accelerating breakthroughs in precision oncology and, most importantly, enabling patients around the globe to benefit from these innovations by bringing leading technologies to all geographies quickly and at scale.”

Houston company plans lunar mission to test clean energy resource

lunar power

Houston-based natural resource and lunar development company Black Moon Energy Corporation (BMEC) announced that it is planning a robotic mission to the surface of the moon within the next five years.

The company has engaged NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Caltech to carry out the mission’s robotic systems, scientific instrumentation, data acquisition and mission operations. Black Moon will lead mission management, resource-assessment strategy and large-scale operations planning.

The goal of the year-long expedition will be to gather data and perform operations to determine the feasibility of a lunar Helium-3 supply chain. Helium-3 is abundant on the surface of the moon, but extremely rare on Earth. BMEC believes it could be a solution to the world's accelerating energy challenges.

Helium-3 fusion releases 4 million times more energy than the combustion of fossil fuels and four times more energy than traditional nuclear fission in a “clean” manner with no primary radioactive products or environmental issues, according to BMEC. Additionally, the company estimates that there is enough lunar Helium-3 to power humanity for thousands of years.

"By combining Black Moon's expertise in resource development with JPL and Caltech's renowned scientific and engineering capabilities, we are building the knowledge base required to power a new era of clean, abundant, and affordable energy for the entire planet," David Warden, CEO of BMEC, said in a news release.

The company says that information gathered from the planned lunar mission will support potential applications in fusion power generation, national security systems, quantum computing, radiation detection, medical imaging and cryogenic technologies.

Black Moon Energy was founded in 2022 by David Warden, Leroy Chiao, Peter Jones and Dan Warden. Chiao served as a NASA astronaut for 15 years. The other founders have held positions at Rice University, Schlumberger, BP and other major energy space organizations.

Houston co. makes breakthrough in clean carbon fiber manufacturing

Future of Fiber

Houston-based Mars Materials has made a breakthrough in turning stored carbon dioxide into everyday products.

In partnership with the Textile Innovation Engine of North Carolina and North Carolina State University, Mars Materials turned its CO2-derived product into a high-quality raw material for producing carbon fiber, according to a news release. According to the company, the product works "exactly like" the traditional chemical used to create carbon fiber that is derived from oil and coal.

Testing showed the end product met the high standards required for high-performance carbon fiber. Carbon fiber finds its way into aircraft, missile components, drones, racecars, golf clubs, snowboards, bridges, X-ray equipment, prosthetics, wind turbine blades and more.

The successful test “keeps a promise we made to our investors and the industry,” Aaron Fitzgerald, co-founder and CEO of Mars Materials, said in the release. “We proved we can make carbon fiber from the air without losing any quality.”

“Just as we did with our water-soluble polymers, getting it right on the first try allows us to move faster,” Fitzgerald adds. “We can now focus on scaling up production to accelerate bringing manufacturing of this critical material back to the U.S.”

Mars Materials, founded in 2019, converts captured carbon into resources, such as carbon fiber and wastewater treatment chemicals. Investors include Untapped Capital, Prithvi Ventures, Climate Capital Collective, Overlap Holdings, BlackTech Capital, Jonathan Azoff, Nate Salpeter and Brian Andrés Helmick.

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

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