New report lands Texas among 10 worst states for the environment

Not so green

Texas has one of the worst environmental records in the U.S., a new study finds. Photo courtesy of Union of Concerned Scientists

Everything is bigger in Texas, even the negative impact it has on the environment, a new study finds.

Ahead of Earth Day (April 22), personal finance site WalletHub analyzed all 50 states, looking at 27 metrics across three categories: environmental quality, eco-friendly behaviors, and climate-change contributions.

Texas' overall ranking is an abysmal No. 41, making it one of the least green places in America.

The Lone Star State comes in at No. 48 in environmental quality, No. 28 in eco-friendly behaviors, and No. 37 in climate-change contributions. Under climate-change contributions, WalletHub analyzed carbon-dioxide, methane, nitrous-oxide, and fluorinated greenhouse-gas emissions per capita. The higher the number, the worse a state performs in that category.

Despite an overall poor showing, Texas claims a few top spots in individual metrics, performing best in renewable portfolio standards (No. 1), states with electronic waste recycling programs (No. 1), and corporate clean energy procurement index score (No. 5). On the other side of the spectrum, Texas performs worst in the number of alternative-fuel stations per capita (No. 40), air quality (No. 41), water quality (No. 44), and energy consumption per capita (No. 45).

So why exactly is this a WalletHub story? What does this have to do with your money?

"Eco-friendliness and personal finance are related," the report says. "Our environmental and financial needs are the same in many areas: providing ourselves with sustainable, clean drinking water and food, for example. We also spend money through our own consumption and taxes in support of environmental security."

Vermont ranks first in environmentally friendliness, landing at No. 1 in environmental quality, No. 3 in eco-friendly behaviors, and No. 25 climate-change contributions.

Eight states have worse records than Texas: Oklahoma, Mississippi, Arkansas, Alabama, North Dakota, Wyoming, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Louisiana.

While not so green right now, Texas has made great strides in wind energy in recent years. The American Wind Energy Association's annual report for 2018 shows the Lone Star State is home to roughly one-fourth of all U.S. wind power production. If Texas were a country, the wind energy group says, it would rank fifth in the world for wind power capacity, with nearly 25,000 megawatts installed. And with nearly 7,000 megawatts of wind energy projects under construction or development at the end of 2018, Texas is adding more wind energy capacity than what all but two other states actually have installed.

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This story originally ran on CultureMap.

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Cancer diagnostics startup wins top prize at annual Rice competition​

winner, winners

Rice University student-founded companies took home a total of $115,000 in equity-free funding at the annual Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship's H. Albert Napier Rice Launch Challenge last week.

2025 Rice Innovation Fellow Alexandria Carter won the top prize and $50,000 for her startup Bionostic. The startup offers personalized diagnostics for cancer patients by using 3D culturing through its Advanced Tumor Landscape Analysis System (ATLAS) platform.

Carter is working toward her PhD in bioengineering in Professor Michael King's laboratory. She recently completed the Rice Innovation Fellows program and plans to commercialize ATLAS, according to a news release from Rice.

Actile Technologies, founded by another former Rice Innovation Fellow, Barclay Jumet, won second place and $25,000. The company is developing and commercializing textile-integrated technologies. InnovationMap first covered Jumet's wearable technology back in 2023.

Kairos took home the third-place prize and $15,000, plus the $2,000 audience choice award and the $5,000 undergraduate business award. Founded last year by Sanjana Kavula and Adhira Tippur, Kairos is an AI-powered patient intake platform built specifically for independent dental practices.

The NRLC features top startups founded by undergraduate, graduate and MBA students at Rice each year. The top three finishers were named among a group of five finalists earlier this year, which also included HAAST Autonomous and Project Kestrel.

HAAST is developing an unmanned aircraft for organ transport, while Kestrel uses machine learning to organize bird photographers’ photo collections.

Teams presented multiple five-minute pitches throughout the application process over Zoom and in-person before the five finalists presented at the NRLC Championships April 21 at the Rice Memorial Center. Each finalist walked away with an equity-free investment.


Other awards went to:

UnitCode

  • $5,000 MBA Venture Award

HAAST Autonomous

  • $2,500 Chan-Kang Family Prize for Bold Ambition
  • $1,000 Healthcare Innovations Prize

Telstar Networks

  • $2,500 Outstanding Undergraduate Startup Award

Multiplay

  • $1,500 Frank Liu Jr. Prize for Creative Innovation in Music, Fashion, & the Arts

Butterfly Books

  • $1,500 Social Impact Award

SOOZ

  • $1,000 Interdisciplinary Innovation Prize sponsored by OURI

Dooly

  • $1,000 Consumer Goods Prize

Project Kestrel

  • $1,000 AI Prize

Veloci Running won the NRLC last year for its naturally shaped running shoe. Founder and CEO Tyler Strothman recently told InnovationMap that the company has gone on to sell roughly 10,000 pairs of its flagship Ascent shoe, designed to relieve lower leg tightness and absorb impact. Read more here.

Houston-based, NASA-founded cleantech startup closes $12M seed round

Fresh Funds

Houston-based Helix Earth Technologies has closed a $12 million Seed 2 funding round to scale manufacturing of its energy-efficient commercial HVAC add-on technology.

Veriten, a Houston-based energy investment firm, led the round. Rua Ventures, Carnrite Ventures, Skywriter LLC and Textbook Ventures also participated.

Helix Earth—which was founded based on NASA technology, spun out of Rice University and has been incubated at Greentown Labs—is developing high-efficiency retrofit dehumidification systems that aim to reduce the energy consumption of commercial HVAC units. The company reports that its technology can lead to "healthier indoor air, lower energy bills, reduced building maintenance, and more comfortable spaces for building owners and occupants."

"Building owners are dealing with rising energy costs, uncontrolled humidity, and aging infrastructure with no viable, cost-effective path forward. We are in the field today solving these problems for commercial customers, and this capital puts us on an aggressive path to scale,” Rawand Rasheed, Helix Earth co-founder and CEO, said in a news release.

“The strength of this round reinforces our team's conviction that we can transform innovation-starved sectors with transformational solutions that deliver order-of-magnitude improvements to owners and operators, for both their bottom line and the environment,” Rasheed added.

Maynard Holt, Veriten’s founder and CEO, said that the investment firm is tripling its investment in Helix Earth.

"The team has built breakthrough technology with real applicability across multiple industries,” Holt said in the release. “Their first product will have an immediate and measurable impact on our energy system, and they are already pursuing adjacent innovations to help heavy industries operate more efficiently and with less waste. This is a well-rounded team with a proven track record of strong execution and disciplined capital management.”

Helix Earth also closed a $5.6 million seed funding round in 2024, led by Veriten.

Last year, the company secured a $1.2 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II grant and won in the Smart Cities, Transportation & Sustainability contest at the 2025 SXSW Pitch Showcase. Rasheed was also named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 Energy and Green Tech list for 2025.

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This article originally appeared on EnergyCapital HTX.com.

Texas earns 22nd 'best state for business' title as GDP hits $2.9T

booming economy

The Texas business sector recently received a double dose of good news.

For the 22nd consecutive year, Chief Executive magazine named Texas the best state for business. In tandem with that achievement, preliminary new estimates from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis show the size of Texas’ economy jumped to $2.9 trillion in 2025, up by a nation-leading growth rate of 2.5 percent compared with the previous year.

Speaking about the Chief Executive honor, Gov. Greg Abbott says Texas benefits from pro-growth policies, a strong workforce, strategic investments in education, training for high-demand skills and the presence of critical infrastructure.

“Texas is where businesses innovate and where opportunity abounds. … We will continue to move at the speed of business as we build a more prosperous Texas for generations to come,” the governor says.

An annual Chief Executive survey of CEOs, presidents and business owners determines which state is the best for business. Texas has landed at No. 1 every year since Chief Executive launched the ranking.

“Truly, this is an incredible run that Texas has going,” says Christopher Chalk, publisher of Chief Executive. “CEOs are a tough group to please, and yet year after year Texas continues to earn the top spot—no small feat.”

It’s also no small feat for a state to notch annual gains in its gross domestic product (GDP), a measurement of economic power based on the value of goods and services produced each year.

With an estimated GDP of $2.9 trillion last year, Texas maintains its position as the eighth-largest global economy compared with the nations of the world, based on preliminary estimates from the International Monetary Fund.

In reference to Texas’ GDP growth, Abbott says the Lone Star State is “the premier destination for job creators from across the country and world. We will keep attracting world-class investment, create jobs, and expand opportunity for Texans for generations to come.”
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