Trevor Best

Trevor Best

Author: collide. September 28, 2022 Duration: 56:59

In this episode, we sit down with Trevor Best, serial entrepreneur and CEO of Syzygy Plasmonics, to explore how his company is reinventing chemical refining with light-driven reactors powered by renewable electricity. Spun out of Rice University and built on decades of nanophotonics research, Syzygy’s breakthrough photocatalyst replaces heat with light to enable ultra-efficient chemical reactions for green hydrogen and carbon conversion. Trevor shares how his oil and gas background prepared him for entrepreneurship, what it takes to pilot breakthrough energy technologies, how far Houston’s innovation ecosystem has come, where to find top talent, and which climate technologies he believes will have the biggest global impact—plus a few unexpected lessons along the way.


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If you are working in an energy company and are working on chemical reactions or need hydrogen or have CO2, please reach out!
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Syzygy Plasmonics

Learn how Syzygy Plasmonics, a deep decarbonization company, is electrifying the chemical industry.

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They say everything's bigger in Texas, including the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change. That's precisely why Houston has become a surprising epicenter for the global energy transition. In H-Town, the fourth largest city in the United States, a new wave of entrepreneurs is converging, partnering with established industry titans to forge the technologies that will slash emissions and power a low-carbon future. This is the landscape explored in Energytech Startups, a podcast from collide. that goes straight to the source. Hosts Nada Ahmed and Jason Ethier sit down with the very people driving this change-the founders, investors, and innovators who are building companies at the intersection of energy and technology. Each conversation digs into the real work: the engineering breakthroughs, the complex business models, and the hard-won lessons from the front lines of a sector undergoing massive transformation. It’s a direct line to the strategies and stories shaping the future of energy, making this podcast an essential listen for anyone curious about the business and investment dynamics behind building a sustainable world. You’ll hear frank discussions about funding, scaling, and the practical realities of bringing a transformative idea to market, all set against the backdrop of a city historically known for oil and gas now betting big on its own reinvention.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 87

Energytech Startups
Podcast Episodes
Eric Rubenstein from New Climate Ventures [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:11:20
Eric Rubenstein, managing partner at New Climate Ventures, joins Jason and Nada live from Ceraweek to make the case that what we're calling an energy transition is actually a new industrial revolution. He breaks down why…
Donald Kendall from New Climate Ventures [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:56
Venture capital in the energy transition is getting more complicated, but Donald R. Kendall Jr., General Partner at New Climate Ventures, says the multi-trillion dollar opportunity isn't going anywhere. We get into how t…
Ashish Gupta & Siddhartha (Sid) Paul from KonsciousPlanet/KP Labs [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 48:13
Critical metals like nickel and cobalt are slipping through the cracks and into landfills, and KP Labs is on a mission to get them back. Dr. Ashish Gupta and Siddhartha Paul, CEO and CTO and co-founders of KonsciousPlane…
Imran Kizilbash & Abhinav Jain from Titanium Innovation Investments [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:10:52
The industrial world is still running on manual processes and siloed data while our phones got smarter ten times over, and that gap is exactly where Titanium Innovation Investments is placing its bets. Abhinav Jain and I…
Jamal Khawaja from Symplii.ai [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 54:37
Jamal Khawaja, founder and managing director of Symplii.ai, sits down to talk about his journey from studying scorpion mating habits in Brazil (seriously) to 25 years in tech at IBM, Deloitte, and Accenture before starti…
Mehrab Momin from aiCTO [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:12
AI has been “old news” since the 1950s, but Mehrab Momin of aiCTO Services breaks down why it suddenly feels everywhere, how founders should actually think about AI (data first, buzzwords later), and why Houston’s physic…
Thomas Chepucavage from Zenthos Energy [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 46:44
Zenthos Energy is tackling two big challenges at once: energy storage and carbon capture. Their aluminum batteries aren’t just safer and cheaper than the usual lithium or cobalt options, they also last longer and actuall…
Sandy Guitar from TEX-E [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 58:39
Houston’s got big plans for the energy transition, and Sandy Guitar is right in the middle of it. As Executive Director of TEX-E, she’s helping connect Texas universities (and even MIT) with industry to make sure the nex…
Emily Avagliano from Resollant Inc. [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 56:55
Resollant is shaking up hydrogen production with a twist that sounds almost too good to be true, turning natural gas into hydrogen and graphite, without the need for air permits or government handouts. Emily Avagliano, t…
Aaron Fitzgerald from Mars Materials [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:08:37
Turning CO₂ into carbon fiber sounds like science fiction, but Aaron Fitzgerald and the crew at Mars Materials are making it happen. Their process creates carbon-negative acrylonitrile, the stuff that goes into everythin…