Two Climate Weeks are taking shape in Houston, showcasing different visions

See Correction/Clarification at end of article

As the energy industry's fall conference season gets underway, the week of Sept. 9-13 will be a busy one in Houston.

Two separate groups of organizations are hosting new events branded Climate Week, both consisting of a series of panels and speakers and both hosted by energy industry companies and investors alike. Although "climate" is in both events’ names, their origins and visions for their events are very different. But both sets of organizers say they have the same goal: putting Houston on the map as the hub to work in climate.

“Anybody who's still wondering what Houston's view on climate is isn't paying attention. We've been demonstrating that some of the biggest startups are coming from here, some of the biggest opportunities are coming from here," said Jane Stricker, senior vice president of energy transition at the Greater Houston Partnership and executive director of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative.

HETI is one of the members organizing Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week, in collaboration with Halliburton Labs and the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship. Two Houston-based incubators — Greentown Labs and the Ion, which are located on property owned by Rice University — are among the founding partners and venues. Houston-based startup-focused media company Digital Wildcatters and accelerator program Activate Houston are listed as founding partners as well.

Meanwhile, the Houston Energy and Climate Week was organized through Allies in Energy, a local nonprofit. Katie Mehnert, CEO of Houston-based Ally Energy — a career platform for energy workers — is co-chairing this event alongside Juliana Garaizar, the former head of Greentown Labs’ Houston office. The event aims to attract a broader base of attendees, including established energy companies and climate organizers.

“The big thing people said was, 'Don't make this another energy event,'” Mehnert said. "Please make this something different and accessible. You have people in the industry or in the climate world who are anti-fossil fuel, but then you've got people even in the city that know nothing about energy and climate even if it's a huge part of our economy and workforce."

Energy and Climate Week includes the city of Houston on its host committee. The event’s hotel partner is Moxy by Marriott, which opened its first Houston location in the former State National Building last year.

Organizers of both events said they had reached out to the other to see if there was any possibility of collaborating, but ultimately they decided to keep the organization of the two Climate Week events separate.

"I think there's nothing inherently different around the Houston message in in these two events; I would say they just have different objectives," Stricker said. "It's unfortunate that they are happening at the same time, and that is creating confusion. But I think at the end of the day, Energy and Climate Startup Week is about demonstrating our commitment to developing Houston as the global leader in solving the dual challenge [of] more energy, less emissions."

Allies in Energy's webpage displays events associated with the Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week, as Mehnert said the increased foot traffic in Houston will benefit both events.

"We reached out [to Energy and Climate Startup Week] and sent three or four emails from last year onward up until recently," Mehnert said. "The volunteers that maintain the calendar have put up all of the events that we're aware of on [Startup Week's] calendar because why not? Our mental model is that you reach more channels, more people through inclusion, right?"

Side-by-side events across Houston

Neither organization disclosed their specific sources of funding for their Climate Week events. Mehnert said Houston Energy and Climate Week drew most of its funding from grassroots donors, while HETI said individual organizers hosting the panels during Energy and Climate Startup Week were responsible for funding their events on their own.

The Houston Business Journal reached out to the city of Houston to ask whether city funds were directly used for either event but did not receive a response from Mayor John Whitmire’s office before press time. HETI said the city has offered support to Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week, but details of that support have not been clarified as of press time.

Unlike other conferences, such as S&P Global's CERAWeek, neither Climate Week has chosen a central location, but Stricker said that Houston's sprawl does allow attendees to choose where they are headed during Climate Week.

"S&P does a really great job of trying to put as many events as possible in the convention center and in the Hilton, but the reality is, there's 100 side events that happened that week," Stricker said. "And people will pick and choose the place that they want to be. I think the more things that we can give them to attend, the more opportunities they can have to pick and choose the things they want to go to."

Meanwhile, Lindsay Roe, president of Allies in Energy, is also coordinating the planning and volunteers for the series of events for Houston Energy and Climate Week. She said that one tightrope she’s had to navigate is making sure large fossil fuel companies are included in the event’s planning, while also acknowledging concerns about their role in the global climate crisis.

“We wanted this to be an inclusive event where it's not an energy-only event or a climate-only event. So our first approach was, 'Let's get this up, and let's get this running,'" Roe said. "I would also like to see not necessarily just the energy industry, or the oil and gas industry, discussing only climate but also talking about how they see the energy resilience and sustainability progressing."

Both events also declined to disclose an exact estimated turnout for their events. Mehnert estimated over 1,000 in-person attendees for Energy and Climate Week, but she hopes the event will reach millions more online. Meanwhile, HETI said through a spokesperson that an exact expectation for Energy and Climate Startup Week hasn’t been calculated.

Crowded schedules, past and present

Halliburton Labs and the Rice Alliance hit on the idea for a single Climate Week series after both of their events landed on the same day in 2023, according to Stricker.

“Rather than trying to get people to come to Houston 16 different times throughout the year, this first year was an idea of, 'Can the whole be bigger than the sum of the parts?'” Stricker said.

The combined event, which includes HETI as a marketing partner, is taking aim at one area Houston needs to improve in terms of climate technology: sustainable sources of capital for new research and ideas. In a 2023 study by the Texas Climate Tech Collective, 27% of respondents — including local founders and investors — said Houston’s top priority should be bringing in more outside capital.

Washington, D.C.-based venture capital firm Revolution found that Houston ranked No. 5 for 2023 climate tech VC funding in cities outside New York City, Boston and the Bay Area. But the Bayou City pulled in $199.9 million across 14 deals, a long way off from Los Angeles, which raised $546.2 million over 25 deals.

The startup focus of the Energy and Climate Startup Week also includes showcasing successful companies that have originated in Houston’s climate technology ecosystem. CEOs like Trevor Best of the chemicals manufacturing company Syzygy Plasmonics, Moji Karimi of bioengineering startup Cemvita and Gaurab Chakrabarti of chemicals unicorn Solugen Inc. are all speaking.

Meanwhile, the Allies in Energy event has a broader vision of a space where anyone can host events, regardless of their affiliation with the industry. But the overarching goal remains to correct a perception about Houston's presence in climate. Houston and Energy Climate Week is a continuation of the city's attempts to mirror New York City's annual Climate Week, which has been run by The Climate Group for 15 years.

"As somebody who cares about workforce of the future and marketing [and] Houston as a place to live in, to work, this became a passion, obviously, for me.” Mehnert said. "We've got to own [that identity of] Houston does hard things, and we've got to take credit for our successes."

Another factor that led Allies in Energy to select the week of Sept. 9-13 for its event is a crowded schedule of conferences both in Houston and abroad. DMG Events’ Gastech conference for natural gas is returning to the Bayou City for the first time in since 2019, taking place at the George R. Brown Convention Center Sept. 17-20. Mehnert said the plan was to pull in attendees for both Climate Week and the following Gastech event. A spokesperson for Houston First Corp., the organization tasked with promoting the city's convention and tourism industries, said Gastech this year is estimated to bring in more than 14,000 attendees to Houston.

Additionally, representatives from Climate Week NYC are set to appear at the closing ceremonies on Sept. 13, part of what Mehnert described as a handoff to the upcoming New York event later in September.

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