More Energy, Fewer Emissions: Graphic Recording at the Greentown Houston Climatetech Summit
When I moved to Houston in 2021, I was intrigued to see that a climate tech business incubator, Greentown Labs, had just opened. Fast forward to today, at the 2026 Climatetech Summit.
About Greentown Labs
Founded in Boston fifteen years ago, Greentown Labs helps climate and energy entrepreneurs build faster, connecting them to the labs, community, capital, customers, talent, and partners they need to build, deploy, and scale new technologies.
Part of the massive Houston Energy & Climate Week events, Greentown's Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week focuses on the startups, industry leaders, investors, and dealmakers shaping the future of climate, energy, and industrial innovation.
I was onsite to provide graphic recording for four of the morning's sessions.
A Small Detail Worth Sharing
Just before the conference, Greentown's Houston Head, Kelsey Kearns, spotted the Banksy-style stencil portrait I made for Wade Pinder and commissioned portraits of her and her co-host, Neal Dikeman, for the cue cards.
Scaling the Biggest Clean Energy IPO on Wall Street
Fervo's Tim Latimer and David Baldwin of SCF Partners traced a 25-year arc — from "peak oil" panic in 2000, to the shale revolution at scale, to this May's Fervo IPO — moderated by Jeremy Pitts, Managing Director of Activate Houston. Their throughline: Embrace failure early, and know exactly what went wrong before claiming you have a plan to fix it. Learn how Fervo achieved a 70% reduction in geothermal drilling time.
Launching Unicorns: What Breaks on the Way to Scale
Arne Ballantine of Ohmium International, Nicolaus Radford of Persona AI, and Prag Mishra of Armada sat down with Greentown's CEO, Georgina Campbell Flatter, on the unglamorous parts of building deep-tech companies. There is no finish line. Deal with problems early before they become tragedies. Raising capital is a grueling, unpleasant, yet necessary process. Their advice to founders: Be outrageous about your vision, humble about your execution which requires hard work, solid teams, understanding partners, and excellent timing.
The U.S. Nuclear Renaissance: Is This Comeback Different?
Bobby Gallagher of Deployable Energy, Christopher Hanson of Project Omega, and Marcus Nichol of the Nuclear Energy Institute, moderated by Lawson Gow, Chief Strategy Officer of Greentown Labs, dug into what's actually different this time: an executive order removing barriers to entry, a supercycle touching everything from mining to spent-fuel recycling, and three distinct reactor scales — micro, small modular, and large — each solving a different piece of the puzzle.
Powering the AI Boom: Energy, Siting, and the Capital Behind It
Jason Wells, CEO of CenterPoint Energy, and Eliecer Viamontes, CEO of Entergy Texas, closed the morning with Aisling Carlson, Chief Growth Officer of Greentown Labs, moderating. The Gulf region, they argued, already knows how to build large capital projects and infrastructure — ports, trains, oil and gas, aerospace — which makes it a natural fit for the next wave of data center demand. Texas Senate Bill 6, now regulating the planning and interconnection of large electrical loads, was the regulatory backdrop the whole conversation kept circling back to.
Catching Visions for a Future with More Energy without Harmful Emissions
Four sessions, four different frontiers of the energy transition, one room full of founders, operators, and investors trying to answer the same underlying question: “How do you scale something this capital-intensive without breaking it along the way?”
Learn more: Houston Energy and Climate Startup Week.
Check out graphic recording and live illustration at other events.
