Ahead of the inaugural Houston Energy + Climate Startup Week, the AP Ventures team sat down with Roslynn Velasquez and Matt Peña from the Rice Alliance to hear about why Texas is a great place to start and grow a cleantech venture, how Rice Alliance supports these startups, and other exciting cleantech developments in Texas. We also spoke with AP Ventures’ portfolio company Amogy on why it chose Texas to build its ammonia-to-power clean energy technology there.
APV: What makes Texas an attractive location for start-ups in the cleantech space?
Rice Alliance: With many energy majors headquartered in Houston, cleantech startups have unparalleled opportunities to launch and scale their businesses alongside established industry leaders who understand the complexities of large-scale energy solutions. This proximity facilitates collaboration, partnerships, and market access that can accelerate growth. Texas has a high concentration of businesses across the entire energy value chain. Startups benefit from being close to potential customers who are directly invested in energy transition and innovation.
Texas has a dense network of CVCs who are well-versed in the energy sector. Their expertise in navigating the energy landscape and fostering strategic partnerships is invaluable for startups looking to scale.
Finally, Texas offers more affordable and ample space for startups to grow. This can be a crucial advantage for cleantech companies that often require space for research, development, and pilot projects.
Seonghoon, CEO and Founder, Amogy: Amogy chose to build our ammonia-to-power clean energy technology in Texas because of the access to global top energy-focused talent pool, state's abundant and affordable land, and advanced energy infrastructure, including a burgeoning cleantech ecosystem. The state’s public and private universities are producing qualified and talented graduates eager to put their skills to work for companies at the forefront of the energy transition. We also benefit from experienced energy professionals who want to transition from the oil and gas sector into cleantech
APV: What is Rice Alliance's role?
Rice Alliance: The Rice Alliance acts as a strategic connector, fostering meaningful interactions between investors, startups, corporations, academics, and the broader community. We partner with each of these groups to facilitate purposeful conversations and build valuable connections. Our approach is designed to maximise deal flow for investors while providing startups with a prominent platform to showcase their innovations.
Through our tailored programs, we guide, mentor, and support ventures to achieve commercial readiness, ensuring they have a trusted partner to help them make the right connections at every stage of their growth. These programs include two accelerators, one of which is specifically designed for cleantech startups looking to scale in Houston.
We also create large-scale platforms like the Energy Tech Venture Forum, which brings together over 100 startups, 70+ investor groups, and 600+ attendees. Additionally, we host the world’s largest and richest intercollegiate startup competition, the Rice Business Plan Competition, which attracts top student-led ventures from across the country to compete for over $1 million in prizes. Many of these ventures are focused on cleantech.
By combining deep industry engagement, specialised programs, and large-scale events, Rice Alliance plays a role in driving innovation, growth, and collaboration in the cleantech ecosystem and beyond.
APV: What are some of the interesting developments that are taking place in Texas in the clean tech space?
Rice Alliance: Texas is seeing some of the largest installs of renewable energy sources and battery storage in the United States, demonstrating its commitment to move towards decarbonisation.
Geothermal seems to be doing well, with Houston-based Fervo Energy and Sage Geosystems signing deals to provide power to data centres, which are just going to be more numerous and more energy-hungry.
We’ve also seen significant activity with startups focused on hydrogen or gas-to-liquid technologies capable of producing electrofuels. Syzygy Plasmonics, a Houston-based startup with technology first developed at Rice University, has a game-changing photocatalyst platform technology that can produce both, with capabilities of performing ammonia cracking, generating hydrogen, and CO2-to-Fuel conversion, producing drop-in ready e-fuels, such as sustainable aviation fuels and other synfuels. Syzygy Plasmonics is in the engineering phase of the development of multiple small-commercial plants.
Infinium*, another AP Ventures’ startup addressing decarbonisation of the transportation sector, is building what they claim to be the world’s first commercial-scale facility for e-fuels just “down the road” in Corpus Christi.
Beautifully, there is potential for synergy with the aforementioned geothermal power solutions, which could power the utilisation of greenhouse gases and the production of e-fuels. This is all happening in Texas because nowhere else in the world can you find the population density of engineering talent, project management talent, and expertise around these big capital-intensive projects.
Supermajors have a big role in this too. ExxonMobil is building out the Baytown low-carbon hydrogen facility, which, as the name suggests, strives to produce nearly carbon-free hydrogen. (ADNOC just acquired a 35% equity stake in it.) On the Carbon Capture and Storage side, we believe that it will be managed almost entirely by traditional energy companies.
APV: What’s next for Rice Alliance?
Rice Alliance: We will continue to support the growth of energy companies in Texas and to build an ecosystem where startups can thrive. Earlier this year, the Rice Alliance began to lead the programming and activation in the Ion, the namesake building of Ion District. Houston’s new innovation district takes our city’s talent and sprawl and connects it all, harnessing Houston’s potential to emerge and endure as a tech hub, a thought leader, a cultural core, and a global economic force.
*Infinium is an AP Ventures portfolio company – to learn more about their project in Texas please click here
