Newlab has partnered with Greater New Orleans, Inc., along with strategic regional and industry stakeholders including Shell, Battelle, Carbonvert, and Louisiana State University, to launch two Department of Energy-funded programs focused on commercializing carbon management and clean hydrogen technologies.
By creating a strong coalition of government, industry, and startups players, these programs will also lay the groundwork for Newlab to expand into the Gulf South Region.
The Newlab applied innovation programs in Louisiana are being launched through two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funding opportunities that Newlab was awarded to help carbon management and clean hydrogen startups accelerate and de-risk their commercialization efforts.
"We're not going to solve climate change with one breakthrough technology. It's going to take hundreds of founders with amazing ideas to create the sea change we need," said CEO of Newlab, Cam Lawrence. "Greater New Orleans Inc. shares that vision, and I can't think of a better place than the state of Louisiana for our work supporting startups developing industrial decarbonization and carbon management technologies."
Called the Energy Program for Innovation Clusters (EPIC), participating startups will receive valuable assistance by developing first-of-a-kind pilot project concepts with regional partners in south Louisiana. Through this work, founders will have facilitated access to technical and commercial insights, regional government and industry partners, and relevant subject matter experts to enable more efficient in-field pilot development and scale-up in Louisiana.
"By aligning and activating infrastructure, industry programs, and venture capital investment, Newlab Louisiana stands to bolster the state's competitiveness in creating and attracting startups across strategic energy growth sectors," said Michael Hecht, President & CEO of Greater New Orleans, Inc. (GNO, Inc.) "We and our public-private partners across the H2theFuture initiative are firm believers that Louisiana is best-positioned to extend its energy leadership while supporting the commercialization of climate technologies such as those participating in the EPIC program."
To seize this moment, GNO Inc.has strategically partnered with Newlab to support their development of a deep-tech venture platform in Louisiana focused on driving strategic investment and startup ecosystem development across integrated energy value chains in the state.
The initiative kicked off with a two-day event that brought the participating companies to Louisiana, where they interacted with the U.S. Economic Development Administration, Louisiana Economic Development, National Science Foundation, Worley, Louisiana State University, Climeworks, The Idea Village, WSP, Exxon and other regional stakeholders. The event included panel discussions on how climate tech innovation can drive Louisiana's energy transition and building community benefit plans in Louisiana, as well as an innovation showcase and a pitch competition.
Chosen in partnership with the program's industry partners, the startups represent a range of technologies across the carbon management and clean hydrogen value chains. The nine (9) startups selected for the program are:
- Airhive: Direct air capture through fluidisation
- Arculus Solutions: Natural gas transmission retrofitting for hydrogen
- Banyu Carbon: Seawater carbon removal
- Encore CO2: Carbon utilization
- Mantel Capture: Carbon capture using molten borate technology
- Molten Industries: Carbon-negative hydrogen and graphite
- Parallel Carbon: Direct air carbon capture and clean hydrogen
- RepAir Carbon: Gigaton-scale carbon removal
- Vaulted: Biomass carbon removal and storage
Louisiana has a generational opportunity to harness its energy legacy and existing industrial base, infrastructure, and workforce to be the national epi-center of future energy technologies. To date, Louisiana has been awarded $10.2 billion in federal funding for energy transition initiatives in renewable energy, carbon capture, synthetic fuels, and clean hydrogen.
One of the first grant recipients was the GNO, Inc.-led H2theFuture project, composed of 26 partners from across south Louisiana in a shared mission to build a clean hydrogen energy cluster through the execution of projects across five interrelated workstreams.
Louisiana also leads the Gulf Coast in energy transition project announcements, with over $47 billion of commercial project investments announced as of 2023. This past year, the National Science Foundation awarded the Future Use of Energy in Louisiana (FUEL) collaborative $160 million, the largest and most competitive grant ever awarded in the agency's history.
With the launch of these strategic programs, Newlab is building on the regional momentum to advance the energy transition and create a unique ecosystem of next generation climate technologies in Louisiana that will decarbonize industry.
