The manufacturing industry is responsible for 31 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is notoriously challenging to decarbonize—primarily due to its heavy reliance on fossil fuels and extremely high heat. Focal obstacles to decarbonizing the sector include producing iron, steel, chemicals, plastics, and cement—which together account for more than half of industrial emissions.
Climate challenges like this require an ecosystem-wide approach; that’s why we convene our startups, partners, and investor network four times a year for our Sector Pitch Day series, each time exploring innovation areas and opportunities present in a particular sector.
Our spring Sector Pitch Day dove into three dimensions of the manufacturing industry and featured pitches from Greentown startups working in each:
Resources
- Katz Water Technologies aims to solve the world’s water problems by deploying cutting-edge water purification and desalination technology worldwide.
- Elemental Recycling’s proprietary process recycles any and all plastics and tires into high-purity hydrogen and graphene.
- Criterion Energy Partners is an exploration and production company developing decentralized direct geothermal energy projects to help commercial and industrial customers reduce emissions and improve operating efficiency.
Processes
- Eugenie AI has developed an AI-based predictive maintenance platform for manufacturing, oil & gas, energy, and smart city industrial operations.
- H2Ok Innovations is an IoT analytics platform providing comprehensive, real-time visibility into industrial liquid systems to enable data-driven, optimized operations.
- R&B Technology’s Ari product is a cloud-based augmented intelligence software platform powered by a proprietary artificial intelligence engine that is hardware-agnostic, easily scalable, and highly customizable for practically any use case or industry.
Products
- Wootz takes raw carbon nanotubes and aligns them so they are as strong as Kevlar, as flexible as cotton thread, half as lightweight as aluminum, nearly as thermally conductive as diamond, highly resistant to chemicals, and electrically conductive enough for most electronics applications.
- Bucha Bio creates novel biomaterials grown by fermenting renewable bacterial-nanocellulose for high-performance textiles and composites for premium applications instead of animal leather, polyurethane, latex, vinyl, epoxy, and more.
- Carbonext produces high-quality graphene in a cost-effective, scalable, sustainable manner.
- Applied Bioplastics is commercializing plant-based polymers that are far healthier and more sustainable than—and at competitive pricing to—their petrochemical-based analogues.
In addition to sessions focused on these three topic areas, we were proud to kick the day off with a keynote speaking program featuring Greater Houston Partnership’s Senior Director of Regional Economic Development, Craig Rhodes, and HARC’s Consultant and Equity Champion, Catherine Flowers.
“Our goal, collectively, is to forge solutions for climate challenges as we keep in mind our common values: clean air and water, clean and reliable energy, preservation of our natural areas, environmental equity, and a thriving economy,” Flowers said. “The challenges that we are facing are daunting, but I’m sure that we can confidently understand that there is a path forward that is sustainable, equitable, and inspiring.”
Check out all of our manufacturing startups here!
Upcoming Sector Pitch Days will focus on agriculture, transportation, and electricity. Interested in attending? Reach out to us at hello@greentownlabs.com.