Corey’s Climate Success Chat - Sept 13, 2024
Highlights from Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week
Earlier this week I attended the first annual Houston Energy and Climate Week events. Like other Climate Weeks across the country (NYC is coming up), local technology and investment organizations across the city sponsored events. Accelerating the energy transition is my top interest in Climate so getting a chance to meet people and learn about these climate solutions first hand was as exciting as attending my first Phish concert. What’s unique about Houston is the understanding and involvement that the current energy industries have to be included for our energy transition to be successful. Electricity generation and most heavy industries are highly dependent on oil and gas. While we should always push to decarbonize them faster, we need stable economic systems to continue investment in Climate solutions.
In today’s post, I’m going to share a sample of some of the startups and companies that I found the most interesting and exciting from the panels and presentations in Houston. As a life-long software technology geek, it was humbling to learn about all the deep tech and advanced science innovation. As Matt Damon said in The Martian, we are going to have to “science the shit out of this” Climate challenge that we’ve created.
That’s exactly what these companies are doing.
Kanin Energy: Capturing and Using Industrial Heat Waste
Did you know that approximately 50% of heat is wasted in industrial processes that require heat to manufacture products? That’s a huge loss when you consider how much we use heat for. Kanin Energy is reducing this waste by capturing waste heat from industrial processes to generate clean energy. Janice Tran, CEO of Kanin, explained how they are scaling these solutions across a variety of heavy industries by partnering with them as a developer.
Solugen: Decarbonizing Chemical Manufacturing
Petrochemicals are currently used across almost every industry. At Solugen, they combine engineered enzymes, metal catalysts, and sustainable feedstocks to create essential materials with minimal emissions and no harmful byproducts. This allows industries across energy, agriculture, aerospace, and even personal care to replace fossil fuel dependencies with sustainable options. Earlier this year, the Department of Energy announced a $216M loan guarantee that will enable Solugen to build even more bioreactors in the US.
Their founder/CEO, Gaurab Chakrabarti spoke about how to bend the surface area of luck to increase your odds of being successful. He acknowledged that some of success does come from luck, but the amount of effort you put into hitting your goals is the surface area you create and the byproduct of your effort. The larger your surface area, the more likely you’ll hit your target.
Base Power: Battery power for every home owner
I was particularly excited to hear Zach Dell speak because Base Power is one of the hottest Climate startups in Austin right now. Their model of providing affordable backup batteries and energy prices to homeowners is going to transform how Americans think about their electricity and provide more reliability to our grids. Though they are now only serving Texas customers, Base Power is vocal about their plans to expand. I’m confident that by the time my kids are buying their first homes, battery systems will be as standard as water heaters and Internet connections are today.
Showcase Panels
There were several showcase panels with rapid fire presentations from founders of startups of various stages and sizes at locations like The Ion, Greentown Labs Houston, and Energy Tech Nexus. The Houston Activate Fellows Showcase was especially inspiring. Activate has a mission to help scientists bring their world changing science to market and Climate is one of their key areas of focus.
A few of my favorites:
Phoenix Materials - It’s great news that coal power plants are shutting down but one challenging side effect is that the coal ash has been a critical source of feedstock for cement and other production. Phoenix has developed technology that can recycle trash dumps from historical coal plants and extract the raw ash and other precious minerals. Their founder, Krish Mehta, has a friendly confidence that leaves me no doubt they’ll be successful.
Solidec - There are already several existing technologies that can create sustainable fuels from air and water. These are being used in Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) and as a carbon neutral liquid fuel since they are using the same carbon that is taken out of the air. The challenge is that these processes are energy and time intensive. Solidec is improving this process by removing intermediate steps and reducing energy intensity.
Coflux - Forever chemicals in our water in food systems have been getting a lot of attention lately. In fact, just this morning the Austin Fire Department announced they would eliminate using PFAS chemicals in their gear and systems. The challenge is once the chemicals are in the water, they will continue to circulate until removed. Coflux has developed a system that removes and destroys PFAS chemicals in one pass.
CleanTech Office Hours: Virtual Power Plants & Distribution Grids
The grand finale in Houston for me was a 3-hour long “office hours” session with Arushi Sharma Frank, J.T. Thompson, and Jesse Peltan. These three experts in the electrical grid and distributed energy resource (DER) space are brilliant, passionate, and so generous to share what they know. It was an extremely deep dive into the relationship between Public Utility Commissions, grid operators, and the price signals that are needed to modernize our energy systems. You’ll likely see me write more about this in the future because it deserves its own post. If you really want to keep out and learn more on these topics, I highly recommend the Substack from
: Teach What I Know - Energy & Policy Learning.With that, I think I’ve given you plenty of rabbit holes to dive down if you’re interested in learning more about anything I pass along today. Transforming our energy system is the only way we’re going to solve our climate crisis. I hope you enjoyed learning more about some of the startups that are helping do that!
Thanks!