3 Houston companies named to semifinals of clean energy competition

game on

Three Houston companies are going into the semifinals of Cleantech.org's competition. Photo via Getty Images

Three Houston energy startups are in the running for the $100,000 cash prize in Cleantech.org's GS Beyond Energy Innovation Challenge.

Amperon Holdings, Cemvita Factory, and Veloce Energy are among the competition's 24 semifinalists, which were announced June 17. Five semifinalists will be chosen to pitch their concepts during a virtual event July 21, and then the winner of the $100,000 prize will be named.

"This is not like the cleantech sector was 10 years ago. Getting down to 24 [semifinalists] was hard. Getting down to five finalists will be extremely challenging," Neal Dikeman, chairman and founder of Cleantech.org and a partner at one of the prize sponsors, Houston-based Energy Transition Ventures, says in a news release.

Amperon, with an office in Houston and headquarters in New York City, is a semifinalist in the "digitization of energy" category. The company, founded in 2017, builds real-time electricity demand tools for utilities, energy retailers, grid operators, and institutional traders. So far, Amperon has raised $4.3 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.

Houston-based Cemvita, founded in 2017 by siblings Tara and Moji Karimi, is a semifinalist in the "new fuels" category. Its biotechnology transforms carbon dioxide emissions into sustainable chemicals and polymers. In a recent interview for the Houston Innovators Podcast, Moji Karimi explained how unprecedented his work is — and how ready for collaboration his team is.

"There weren't biotech companies working with oil and gas companies for this use case that we have now," Karimi says. "We're defining this new category for application of synthetic biology in heavy industries for decarbonization."

Veloce, with an office in Houston and headquarters in Los Angeles, is a semifinalist in the "e-mobility in cities" category. The company, founded in 2020, aims to make installation of electric vehicle charging stations cheaper and faster. Veloce is an inaugural member of Greentown Houston, an incubator for climate technology startups.

Greentown Labs has announced its inaugural batch of members for its new Houston location. Photo via greentownlabs.com

New-to-Houston cleantech incubator names inaugural members

to the lab

A Somerville, Massachusetts-based cleantech accelerator has announced the 16 startups that will be a part of its new Houston incubator program.

Greentown Labs named the companies in the cohort this week just a few weeks after announcing the location of its new lab and workspace. The 40,000-square-foot space is being renovated from a former grocery store and is expected to open next spring.

"These early-access members are innovating across the key greenhouse gas-emitting sectors—including electricity, manufacturing, buildings, and more—and their solutions are helping create a sustainable future for all," reads a blog post on the company's website.

Here are Greentown Houston's inaugural members:

  • Austin-based Applied Bioplastics is creating affordable plastic alternatives with plant matter to help reduce consumers' carbon footprint.
  • Black Mountain Metals, based in Fort Worth, is focused on nickel and copper mining for lithium-ion battery cathodes.
  • Carbon Free Technologiescreated a home battery system that can store electricity when rates are low.
  • ClearValue uses pure hydrogen and oxygen as a sustainable power system.
  • e^2: equitable energy is described as a "multi-brand cause-marketing platform" that connects consumers to sustainable energy solutions through promotion and incentivization.
  • Eclipse Solar Projects builds, owns, and operates solar projects across the country through new technology and battery storage operations.
  • Houston-based Ennuity Holdings allows users to have access to solar energy subscription service — even though they don't have access to installing panels themselves.
  • Excipicio Energy , based in Houston, is taking renewable energy offshore by integrating wind, wave, and more into a single floating platform.
  • Houston-based Quantum New Energy platform, EnerWisely, helps people and companies make smart energy choices "to maximize their monetary savings and reduce their environmental impacts."
  • Spring, Texas-based Renu Energy is creating sustainable change through waste recycling and community engagement, according to its website.
  • REVOLUTION Turbine Technologies, based in North Carolina, is working on a power generator that can be used in the offshore setting.
  • Houston-based Revterra is developing a long-duration energy storage solution.
  • Skylark, based in Houston, created a "broadband last-mile radio systems for internet service providers, with a focus on 40 million unserved Americans in rural markets."
  • Austin-based swytchX is working on a cloud-based SaaS solution that uses blockchain technology to optimize renewable energy delivery.
  • Houston-based Varea Energy, a software company, uses data to build business models focusing on eliminating barriers to green initiatives.
  • California-based Veloce Energy develops faster electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Companies interested in joining the incubator should reach out to Greentown Labs online.

The 16 startups will move into the Greentown space when it opens in the spring. Image via greentownlabs.com

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

UH-backed project secures $3.6M to transform CO2 into sustainable fuel with cutting-edge tech

funds granted

A University of Houston-associated project was selected to receive $3.6 million from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy that aims to transform sustainable fuel production.

Nonprofit research institute SRI is leading the project “Printed Microreactor for Renewable Energy Enabled Fuel Production” or PRIME-Fuel, which will try to develop a modular microreactor technology that converts carbon dioxide into methanol using renewable energy sources with UH contributing research.

“Renewables-to-liquids fuel production has the potential to boost the utility of renewable energy all while helping to lay the groundwork for the Biden-Harris Administration’s goals of creating a clean energy economy,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm says in an ARPA-E news release.

The project is part of ARPA-E’s $41 million Grid-free Renewable Energy Enabling New Ways to Economical Liquids and Long-term Storage program (or GREENWELLS, for short) that also includes 14 projects to develop technologies that use renewable energy sources to produce sustainable liquid fuels and chemicals, which can be transported and stored similarly to gasoline or oil, according to a news release.

Vemuri Balakotaiah and Praveen Bollini, faculty members of the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, are co-investigators on the project. Rahul Pandey, is a UH alum, and the senior scientist with SRI and principal investigator on the project.

Teams working on the project will develop systems that use electricity, carbon dioxide and water at renewable energy sites to produce renewable liquid renewable fuels that offer a clean alternative for sectors like transportation. Using cheaper electricity from sources like wind and solar can lower production costs, and create affordable and cleaner long-term energy storage solutions.

Researchers Rahul Pandey, senior scientist with SRI and principal investigator (left), and Praveen Bollini, a University of Houston chemical engineering faculty, are key contributors to the microreactor project. Photo via uh.edu

“As a proud UH graduate, I have always been aware of the strength of the chemical and biomolecular engineering program at UH and kept myself updated on its cutting-edge research,” Pandey says in a news release. “This project had very specific requirements, including expertise in modeling transients in microreactors and the development of high-performance catalysts. The department excelled in both areas. When I reached out to Dr. Bollini and Dr. Bala, they were eager to collaborate, and everything naturally progressed from there.”

The PRIME-Fuel project will use cutting-edge mathematical modeling and SRI’s proprietary Co-Extrusion printing technology to design and manufacture the microreactor with the ability to continue producing methanol even when the renewable energy supply dips as low as 5 percent capacity. Researchers will develop a microreactor prototype capable of producing 30 MJe/day of methanol while meeting energy efficiency and process yield targets over a three-year span. When scaled up to a 100 megawatts electricity capacity plant, it can be capable of producing 225 tons of methanol per day at a lower cost. The researchers predict five years as a “reasonable” timeline of when this can hit the market.

“What we are building here is a prototype or proof of concept for a platform technology, which has diverse applications in the entire energy and chemicals industry,” Pandey continues. “Right now, we are aiming to produce methanol, but this technology can actually be applied to a much broader set of energy carriers and chemicals.”

------

This article originally ran on EnergyCapital.

Houston innovator drives collaboration, access to investment with female-focused group

HOUSTON INNOVATORS PODCAST EPISODE 262

After working in technology in her home country of Pakistan, Samina Farid, who was raised in the United States, found her way to Houston in the '70s where business was booming.

She was recruited to work at Houston Natural Gas — a company that would later merge and create Enron — where she rose through the ranks and oversaw systems development for the company before taking on a role running the pipelines.

"When you're in technology, you're always looking for inefficiencies, and you always see areas where you can improve," Farid says on the Houston Innovators Podcast, explaining that she moved on from Enron in the mid-'80s, which was an exciting time for the industry.

"We had these silos of data across the industry, and I felt like we needed to be communicating better, having a good source of data, and making sure we weren't continuing to have the problems we were having," she says. "That was really the seed that got me started in the idea of building a company."

She co-founded Merrick Systems, a software solutions business for managing oil and gas production, with her nephew, and thus began her own entrepreneurial journey. She came to another crossroads in her career after selling that business in 2014 and surviving her own battle with breast cancer.

"I got involved in investing because the guys used to talk about it — there was always men around me," Farid says. "I was curious."

In 2019, she joined an organization called Golden Seeds. Founded in 2005 in New York, the network of angel investors funding female-founded enterprises has grown to around 280 members across eight chapters. Suzan Deison, CEO of the Houston Women's Chamber, was integral in bringing the organization to Houston, and now Farid leads it as head of the Houston Chapter of Golden Seeds.

For Farid, the opportunity for Houston is the national network of investors — both to connect local female founders to potential capital from coast to coast and to give Houston investors deal flow from across the country.

"It was so hard for me to get funding for my own company," Farid says. "Having access to capital was only on the coasts. Software and startups was too risky."

Now, with Golden Seeds, the opportunity is there — and Farid says its an extremely collaborative investor network, working with local organizations like the Houston Angel Network and TiE Houston.

"With angel investing, when we put our money in, we want these companies to succeed," she says."We want more people to see these companies and to invest in them. We're not competing. We want to work with others to help these companies succeed."

Building a biotech workforce: How this Houston program is shaping the next generation

future focused

Houston is currently in need of biomanufacturing professionals to keep up with the ever-growing industry. That's what Saniya Mansuri, health care consultant for BioPath @ TMC, says.

“Houston has lost out on a big biopharmaceutical company. And when there was a feasibility study that was done, it was identified that one of the reasons that Houston wasn't chosen was the lack of a workforce and a lack of workforce development programs,” she explains.

Mansuri and the TMC Innovation team are doing just that with the introduction of the new program. She moved from Toronto in 2023. When she applied for a role at TMC Innovation, she was handpicked to help shepherd the BioPath program, thanks to her background that included starting a nonprofit for underserved youth in Canada.

The goal of the BioPath program is to attract young people considering going into the trades to learn the skills to become biomanufacturing professionals. According to BioPath’s website, 42 percent of TMC institutions anticipate a great need for biotechnicians in the near future, but there’s a lack of places for workers to train that aren’t part of a four-year degree. BioPath not only helps to recruit youths to careers that only require two years of training, but educates them for success in their newly chosen jobs.

“For the role of biomanufacturing technician, you can do a certificate program, get certified and enter into an entry level career that pays upwards of $50,000 — a stable career where there is a lot of development and job mobility involved,” says Mansuri.

This school year saw the debut of a pilot program that began with marketing and awareness to begin to get kids excited. Working with the organization Bridge Year, BioPath has created a booth for career fairs at which there’s a simulation of the skills involved in column chromatography that potential technicians would be learning. The booth is currently touring HISD high schools.

BioPath is also partnering with the national nonprofit, Learning Undefeated, to create a mobile STEM lab that will park at schools starting in January.

“Instead of students going to a biology class, you would swap it out for a class on this mobile STEM lab, and we have a biomanufacturing activity and curriculum that the students would learn,” explains Mansuri.

But that’s only the beginning. BioPath is looking at securing internships for the students, as well as sponsoring interested students in attending a biomanufacturing summer camp run by Texas A&M. Once educated, Mansuri and her team will help their charges with certification, mentorship and finding jobs post-certification.

Mansuri says she’s already received emails from interested students who have taken part in the “Career Test Drive” booth, but expects more after a soft launch in February in which 200 high school students will come to the TMC to learn more. The future for biomanufacturing in Houston is looking more promising already.

View All Listings