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Greentown Houston’s 2024 Climatetech Summit Highlights Energy-transition Tech with Focuses on Financing, Partnerships, and Pilots

Greentown Houston’s 2024 Climatetech Summit was an immersive deep dive into the region’s groundbreaking climatetech startups, areas of strength and opportunities for growth in its energy-transition leadership, the landscape of corporate and financing partners, and more.

The event, which brought together hundreds of entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, investors, policymakers, and other climate champions, featured a speaking program with top climate leaders—including a keynote from J.P. Morgan’s Head of Climate Tech Kelly Belcher—and a startup showcase that offered attendees the chance to network with our incredible Greentown Houston startups and see their work in the prototyping lab.

Greentown Houston’s Climatetech Summit kicked off with opening remarks from Senior Reporter at Canary Media Julian Spector—the event’s emcee—and Greentown Houston’s General Manager and Senior Vice President Timmeko Moore Love. Love acknowledged the severity of this year’s hurricane season and that even as the Houston region is experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand, it’s also uniquely positioned to advance the energy transition—something she already sees unfolding among Greentown Houston’s 70+ startups and network of corporate partners and investors.

“The Gulf Coast region faces some of the most severe climate risks, but is also a global hub for energy leadership, innovation, and entrepreneurship,” Love said. “This is the place for promising solutions.”

From there, GE Vernova’s Managing Director, Ventures and Licensing Sameer Bandhu discussed the global growth in electricity demand and the importance of startup-corporate collaboration in the energy transition, teeing up the keynote fireside chat with J.P. Morgan’s Head of Climate Tech Kelly Belcher

The keynote conversation, moderated by Love, explored the transformative role of finance in advancing climate solutions. Belcher shared details on J.P. Morgan’s approach to deploying $1T into the climate-innovation economy, the bank’s new efforts to support earlier-stage startups, how finance institutions can help climatetech startups navigate valleys of death, and ESG’s “secularized” future.

Next up was the first set of lightning pitches from Greentown startups:

  • SkyH2O, which is advancing and scaling atmospheric water generation for commercial and government projects.
  • GigaDAC, a startup meeting the need for lower-cost direct air capture (DAC) by fundamentally changing how DAC removes CO2 from air at the gigaton scale.  
  • frakktal, which is developing a biobased-polymer process to upend polyvinyl chloride (PVC) overuse, especially in the built environment.
  • Hertha Metals, a startup developing technology to cost-effectively produce steel from low-grade iron ores with 98 percent less CO2 emissions than the conventional process.
  • Capwell, which is pioneering a modular, transportable, and affordable technology that fits onto end-of-life oil and gas wells to capture and destroy leaking methane.
  • Axis Sky Renewables, a startup developing a towerless, vertical-axis wind turbine for offshore applications that’s more financially competitive than current offshore solutions are.

Then Aisling Carlson, Greentown’s Senior Vice President of Partnerships, shared her perspective on the power of startup-corporate collaborations to advance climatetech deployment and commercialization. Fostering these collaborations is a key component of Greentown’s incubator partnerships and Greentown Go programs.

Jeff Mamera, Founder and General Partner of Mission Vertical Capital and TiE Houston Charter Member, introduced the second set of startup lightning pitches. It featured:

  • Aquasaic, whose engineered yeast removes heavy metals—including lead, mercury, arsenic, and more—from water without using harsh chemicals.
  • Stepwise, a startup making home electrification effortless and affordable by reducing the infrastructure upgrades costs associated with installations and helping homeowners save money on their electricity bills through energy management.
  • COI Energy, whose digital energy-management platform eliminates energy waste in buildings and repurposes that waste for good.
  • Pecos Wind Power, a startup deploying low-wind-speed, community-scale wind turbines for on-site, low-cost electricity.
  • SUPERGirls Shine Foundation, which is dedicated to helping underprivileged girls by providing the opportunities and resources to succeed in STEM.

The first panel of the day, “Hot Take: the Essential Role Startups Play in Houston’s Hydrogen-innovation Ecosystem,” explored how startups can collaborate with large industry participants, state and local governments, and community partners to accelerate their hydrogen technologies, secure funding, and shape Houston’s hydrogen economy.

Speakers included:

  • Center for Houston’s Future’s Managing Director, Hydrogen Program Brett Perlman
  • Ambient Fuels’ Senior Vice President, Development Chris Shugart — a Greentown member
  • Capgemini’s Principal, Hydrogen and Clean Fuels Mark Viehman 
  • Greentown’s Director of Partnerships Manon Chappat-Alarcon (moderator)

The final group of Greentown startup pitches featured:

  • Corrolytics, which digitizes corrosion-detection and asset-integrity monitoring across industrial infrastructure.
  • CalWave, a startup whose wave-energy-converter technology achieves high performance while surviving storms and extreme conditions. 
  • CLS Wind, whose self-erecting system allows for multiple wind turbine installations without the need for large, heavy, and expensive cranes, reducing both the time and cost to install them and allowing wind companies to produce energy in a shorter time frame.
  • Kanin Energy, a startup helping heavy industry monetize its waste heat and decarbonize its operations with waste-heat-to-power, carbon capture, and heat pump solutions. 
  • Imperium Technologies, whose electrochemical solution for wasted steam offers a complete system to reduce steam-trap failures and provide unprecedented monitoring of the entire steam-distribution system.
  • Elementium Materials, a startup that unlocks lightweight, long-lasting, intrinsically safe batteries that are affordable across a myriad of applications, including automotive transport, consumer electronics, and grid-scale storage.

Next up was “Leveraging Pilot Projects for Startup Success,” a panel that dove into the significance of pilot projects, the challenges startups face along the way, and best practices from entrepreneurs who have successfully navigated these waters. Advice included evaluating whether piloting is the best step for your particular startup, finding the right people within a prospective pilot partner who will push the agreement forward, and being clear about what each party wants out of a potential pilot.

This session featured four Greentown members and alumni:

The final conversation of the day—“Founder’s Narrative: a Firsthand Account from a Climatetech Entrepreneur”—spotlighted Fervo Energy, a Greentown alum that’s experienced huge success in recent months, including securing a partnership with Google, world-record-breaking commercial flow rates at its Cape Station project, and 320MW of power purchase agreements (PPAs) with utility Southern California Edison.

The interview, moderated by Spector, traversed Fervo Energy CEO and Co-founder Tim Latimer’s highs and lows on the journey to commercialization, how to forge a sustainable business model, the workforce transition from oil and gas to clean energy, and more.

After a lunch break came one of our favorite parts of the Climatetech Summit: the Startup Showcase, an opportunity for attendees to speak directly with our climatetech entrepreneurs, see their technologies in the prototyping lab, and make valuable connections. Learn about our startups innovating across the key greenhouse-gas-emitting sectors—agriculture, buildings, electricity, manufacturing, and transportation—and on resiliency and adaptation.

The Greentown Houston Climatetech Summit 2024 wrapped up with an impactful evening of networking—sponsored by SLB—that forged connections to accelerate the deployment of climatetech solutions. We’d like to send a huge thank you to all the speakers, sponsors, and all attendees who joined us for this year’s event!

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