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Dear Friends of Greentown,

What an incredible second Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week! We were thrilled to see entrepreneurs, corporate leaders, investors, philanthropists, and more come together from throughout Houston—and beyond—to celebrate cutting-edge climatetech startups, make valuable connections throughout the ecosystem, and chart our collective path forward for the energy transition.

The week’s dozens of events showed the strength of the energy-transition here in the energy capital of the world. Greentown was excited to host From Local to Global: Helping Climatetech Startups Succeed Internationally with Woodside Energy and Equinor—a pitch-and-panel event on startup growth across borders—and the ACCEL Showcase (sponsored by FUEL and Wilson Sonsini), which featured the eight climatetech startups participating in this year’s accelerator for BIPOC and other underrepresented founders.

During this year’s Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week, Greentown also collaborated with Woodside Energy and Equinor to bring Australian and Norwegian startups to Houston in a one-of-a-kind Ecosystem Exchange program.

These seven startups immersed themselves in Houston’s ecosystem during a dynamic week of pitches, curated meetings, panels, and networking that provided exposure and the opportunity to form and nurture key relationships in the U.S. market.

The programming included a VIP tour of NASA, investor meetings during the Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum, a Houston Astros game, and more!

Want to keep the momentum for the energy transition going? Join us at Greentown Houston’s Climatetech Summit on Nov. 4 for startup pitches, expert panels, a startup lab showcase, and more!

Warmly,
The Greentown Team

Two New Ecosystem Partnerships

Greentown and Energytech Nexus are working together to enhance founders’ access to investors and capital! Energytech Nexus will move into Greentown and open a designated investor lounge, which will host regular fundraising meetups and investor office hours.

It will also launch a new AI-driven investor platform, Cephyron IRM, to better connect early-stage technologies to sources of capital; Greentown members will gain early access to the platform. Learn more.

Greentown and Nominal, developer of a software stack that enables hardware teams to test and iterate rapidly, are launching an Industrial Center of Excellence within Greentown’s Houston incubator.

The two organizations will co-develop and host specialized workshops tailored to the needs of startups, corporates, and technical teams across industries. Nominal will also hold weekly office hours for Greentown startups, offering free consultations on building the right test infrastructure, accelerating iteration cycles, and scaling operations as fast as possible. Learn more.

Startups: interested in tapping into these new offerings? Get in touch.

Climatetech Summit is Around the Corner

Only six weeks until Greentown Houston’s Climatetech Summit, our largest event of the year! The agenda includes a dive into how the shale revolution can serve as a roadmap for the energy transition, 18 startup pitches, the book launch of Disciplined Entrepreneurship for Climate and Energy Ventures, a startup showcase, and more.

We already have over a dozen speakers confirmed, with many more to come. Check out just a sampling:

Denka Wangdi, Vice President of Strategic Accounts & Partnerships at Emerson
Kyle Judah, Executive Director of Rice University's Liu Idea Lab for Innovation & Entrepreneurship
Sameer Bandhu, Managing Director, Ventures and Licensing at GE Vernova
Bobby Tudor, Greentown Labs Board Chair; CEO of Artemis Energy Partners; and Chairman of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative at the Greater Houston Partnership
Varun Rai, Professor of Public Affairs at University of Texas at Austin

Meet Our Newest Member

Secant Fuel develops a one-step thermo-catalytic process that converts flue gas into syngas.

Introducing Four New Team Members

We recently made strategic updates to our team to ensure every role is squarely focused on accelerating startups’ success—empowering Houston and Boston with clear ownership and points of contact at the site level, strengthening the functions that fuel growth across sites and our global community, and positioning Greentown for faster impact.

As part of these changes, we’re thrilled to welcome four new Houston team members; let us introduce you!

Amir Eskafyan — Director of Ecosystem Development
Here to help with: Bringing more companies, programs, and partners into Greentown

Kelsey Kearns — Director of Community Strategy
Here to help with: Building an amazing community here in Greentown

Adam Wells — Director of Ecosystem Strategy
Here to help with: Developing strategic programs with corporations, universities, and other Houston stakeholders

Olivia Barboza — Strategic Programs Manager
Here to help with: Building strategic programs for the Greentown community

Startup News

Cemvita signed an agreement with the government of Rio Grande do Sul to deploy its bio-stimulation technologies at a new industrial plant in southern Brazil that will produce carbon-negative industrial chemical byproducts, such as sustainable aviation fuel and innovative biofertilizers. It also acquired a complementary technology that expands its IP and scale-up capacity.
Ambient Fuels, a pure-play green hydrogen developer, was acquired by Electric Hydrogen.
Haffner Energy signed a new, 15-year SAF off-take agreement with Luxaviation Group.
Mars Materials announced industry-first validation of its product, an impurity-advantaged acrylonitrile made from captured carbon dioxide, by SNF—an industry leader in the global water-soluble polymers market.
Celadyne Technologies, MacroCycle Technologies, ATS Energy, and FAST Metals were named Most Promising Companies at the Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum.
EarthEn, GeoFuels, Janta Power, and PolyQor were named to Energytech Nexus and Browning the Green Space’s COPILOT program, focused on developing pilot projects along the Gulf Coast.
Janta Power won the Energy Access Award and PolyQor won the Most Impactful Pilot award at the Energytech Nexus Pilotathon.
Hertha Metals hosted Congressman Morgan Luttrell at its Texas plant to see its sustainable single-step steel and iron production process, which, within months, has successfully produced environmentally friendly iron and steel.
Ten Greentown members and alumni—Active Surfaces, Capture6, Carbonfree, Electra, e-Zinc, Mantel, Phoenix Tailings, Sublime Systems, Syzygy Plasmonics, and Via Separations—were featured in Decarb Tech Invest’s 2025 Disruptors Report as groundbreaking hardware innovators advancing industrial decarbonization through breakthroughs in clean hydrogen, carbon removal, low-carbon materials, and more.
Greentown members and alumni Amogy, Electra, Fervo Energy, Lydian, Quidnet Energy, Sublime Systems, and WeaveGrid were named to Congruent Ventures' 50 by 2050 list.
Greentown alum VIA Biofuels, a producer of premium drop-in fuels and chemical feedstocks, was named to SOSV’s Deep Tech 100 list.

See You at Climate Week NYC!

Are you at Climate Week NYC this week? We are, too! Here’s where to find the Greentown team and our startups:

Sept. 22: The launch of this year’s Net Zero Insights’s U.S. Clean Energy & Industrial Innovation Report—which we proudly collaborated on—featuring our Chief Growth Officer Aisling Carlson.
Sept. 23: Twelve Greentown startups will pitch at our sold-out Startup Showcase at the SOSV Biome.
Sept. 23: Our CEO Georgina Campbell Flatter will be facilitating a discussion group at Climate Salon about how startups can pilot their technologies in urban environments.
Sept. 24: Together with FischTank PR, we’re diving into the communications strategies for startups and beyond to resonate with target audiences in today’s landscape.

Houston Newsletter — September 2025

From The Ecosystem

Houston Newsletter — September 2025