Energy Tech Startups

Fresh off their win at the Rice Lily Pitch Competition, Sean and Chen-Yang share their journey from PhD students at Rice University to pioneering entrepreneurs tackling the critical issues of energy efficiency and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

In this episode, they discuss how their material science background led to the development of advanced heat management solutions, addressing inefficiencies caused by poor thermal conductivity in traditional semiconductor packaging. With AI and GPU technologies on the rise, HEXASpec is at the forefront of creating next-generation materials to meet the growing demands for efficient heat management. Sean and Chen-Yang also reveal the importance of customer feedback, which prompted them to pivot from HVAC applications to the semiconductor industry, showing how adaptability is key to startup success.

00:00 - Intro
01:00 - What is Heat Management
05:20 - Current Materials in Use
08:15 - Discovering and Developing New Material
10:52 - Market Entry Strategy
16:43 - Pivoting in Business
20:30 - Market Research for Beginners
21:24 - Building a Prototype
23:05 - Fundraising Tips
29:02 - Lessons from Competitions
35:49 - Student Entrepreneurship
39:37 - Houston’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
42:04 - Houston’s Hidden Gems
47:21 - Innovation Ecosystem Gaps
49:40 - Supporting NanoSono
50:13 - Founders' Podcast Thoughts

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Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

This week we sat down with Emma Konet, co-founder and CTO of Tierra Climate to discuss how her startup is decarbonizing the grid by creating a new revenue stream for grid-scale batteries. Tierra Climate has a proprietary algorithm to estimate and certify how batteries can shift power from the grid during periods of low carbon production to supplant producers who are carbon-intensive. They anticipate issuing carbon credits to companies that want to offset their emissions. Emma provides an inside look at how she and her co-founder are building a marketplace to accelerate the energy transition by making batteries an attractive grid asset. She shares insights from her experience in energy trading and the battery industry, fundraising challenges, and key learnings from participating in competitions like the Rice Business Plan Competition. Emma explains how Houston has been an ideal launchpad for Tierra Climate as a hub bridging energy markets and climate solutions.

Key topics covered:

• How grid-scale batteries help enable renewable energy and reduce carbon emissions
• Challenges of making batteries economically viable on the grid
• Creating a new carbon offset methodology for grid batteries
• Partnering with data providers on emissions factors
• Getting practical pitch experience through competitions like RBPC
• Fundraising challenges for hard tech climate startups
• Building diverse founding teams with complementary skills
• Navigating energy regulations and carbon verification
• Houston as a hub for energy innovation

Get in touch: Company Website: www.tierraclimate.com

CEO & Co-founder Jacob Mansfield: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacob-r-mansfield/

CTO & Co-Founder Emma Konet: https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmajohnsonkonet/

Find Emma on Twitter or X? @koneticenergy Her personal website is www.koneticenergy.com

Tierra Climate partners with REsurety, which provides emissions data for the power grid. https://resurety.com/ and https://www.linkedin.com/company/resurety/
Whitepaper: Charging Towards Zero: https://www.tierraclimate.com/resources

Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

Ian Bishop is the CEO and co-founder of Elemental Recycling (ER). Elemental has developed a single step process to recycle all plastics and tires into hydrogen and graphite /graphene. The process is also patented for electronics and greenhouse gases and has the potential to solve single stream recycling challenges while making money for plant operators.

Ian Explores:

• How Ian and Ron made one small change with a Ph.D. chemist and developed a critical innovation for recycling - 1:15
• How a culture of tinkering started with inventing an automated Margarita Machine - 3:35
• How the Elemental Recycling process works - 6:08
• How their new process enables ER to monetize waste streams differently - 13:09
• Why this process can save the world - 18:27
• Why mass producing graphene (an output of the ER process) is a game-changing material - 21:40
• Why Houston has such a strong entrepreneurial spirit - 29:25
• Why the ION district is a hidden gem in Houston - 36:25
• What the basics are which entrepreneur needs to learn - 43:30

Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

Caitlin Smith is a policy entrepreneur who currently works as the Senior Director, Regulatory, External Affairs & ESG at Jupiter Power. Jupiter Power is a leading developer, owner, and operator of stand-alone, utility-scale battery energy storage. We have 650 MWh of operation projects in Texas with over 300 MWh in or near construction, including a 200MWh project in Houston. It is expected to be the first urban battery storage project of that size. Energy is complicated because of the broad stakeholders involved as well as the expectations we all have for its reliability. Join us as Caitlin explores how navigating policy goes hand in hand with bringing new technology to market.

Caitlin explores:

• Caitlin explains the difference between MWh vs MW when it comes to battery storage and why that is important - 2:08
• How Caitlin and the Jupiter team think about reducing emissions using utility-scale batteries - 6:48
• Why Houston will be home to the first urban storage battery project of its size (200 MWh) - 10:26
• How the messaging from companies has changed around energy as users become more informed through technology - 15:30
• How Jupiter’s uses its batteries and its software to dispatch power economically into the grid - 19:20
• How the recently passed IRA will change the economics of standalone storage - 23:40
• How will energy storage developers think about deploying new battery technologies - 28:42
• What a policy entrepreneur does - 31:55
• Why disasters, unfortunately, drive policy changes, and why that sometimes leads to sub-optimal results - 38:00
• Why we should always be thinking about the grid holistically - 43:10

https://www.jupiterpower.io/

twitter: @CaitlinSmithATX ; @jupiterpowerllc

https://www.linkedin.com/in/caitsmith09/

Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

Energy storage isn’t just about batteries, it’s about reshaping the future of American manufacturing, and Mush Khan knows it firsthand. From running supply chains in China to now building Alchemy Industrial from the ground up, Mush breaks down how storing energy is a lot like caching data, why the U.S. needs to get serious about reshoring, and how Houston could become the next hub for advanced manufacturing. He also gets real about the role of education, talent, and tech like AI in bringing industrial innovation back home. It’s a mix of big ideas, practical insight, and one guy’s mission to build smarter from the ground up.

Digital Wildcatters brings the energy community together through events, cutting-edge content, and powerful tools. Join our online community at collide.io. Engage with experts, level up your career, and ask Collide AI your toughest technical questions.

Click here to watch a video of this episode.
Click here to view the episode transcript.
00:00 - Intro
08:11 - Reshoring Strategies in Manufacturing
11:35 - Patience in Industry Transformation
19:09 - Government Regulations Impacting Energy Tech
21:22 - WWII Manufacturing Success Story
24:41 - Understanding Tariffs in Energy Sector
28:14 - Building a Talent Pipeline for Tech
31:03 - Importance of Technical Education
33:28 - Addressing Systemic Issues in Manufacturing
35:45 - The Role of Automation in Industry
38:23 - Defining Wealth in Modern Context
41:14 - Exploring Comfort in Today's Economy
43:26 - Defining Success in Energy Tech
45:22 - Houston as a Global Manufacturing Hub
48:50 - Challenges in the Education System
52:49 - The Power of Storytelling in Tech
54:56 - Tackling the Talent Shortage Crisis
55:53 - AI's Role in Revolutionizing Manufacturing
1:04:13 - Getting Started with AI in Industry
1:05:42 - Innovations in Additive Manufacturing
1:07:17 - Closing Remarks and Future Insights

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